For my entire life, I have been aware that I must die, and that my time alive is finite. This has always been a helpful motivator in doing important things, such as writing hundreds of words each day. When you recognize the timescale of epochs and eras, you also recognize how short your own existence is, and how pressing and urgent your actions must be. And for the most part, this has oriented me towards good—I want to try to leave the world better than I found it, and make use of my capabilities for the sake of others. But I am compelled not only to write, but to write in public. A compulsion to show my work and share myself as much as possible. I want there to be a record—a carving in the stone. And I have to reconcile this compulsion toward legacy with the fact that I want to remain, personally, unremarkable. There's an obvious tension there, if not an outright contradiction. I want to contribute good to the world, but I want my contributions separated from myself. I want people to discuss any good ideas I may have and forget the author. How do I negotiate the bargain between public writing and private obscurity? For I am unremarkable—I am just some guy writing on the Internet and I never forget that. My opinions don't matter, and I am far more often compiling the original efforts of others rather than investigating things first-hand or breaking a story myself. I am a layperson through and through. And perhaps this is why I would want to remain forgettable—it is more aligned with reality. There is a Daoist argument that uselessness is a survival strategy—the gnarled tree that the carpenter cannot make good wood from is the only one left standing. You cannot be extracted and exploited if you have nothing to offer. Crypsis is the biological ability—and evolutionary advantage—to freeze and mask your scent, after all. And I think I have done a good job of that, in many ways. Despite my output, I'm not enticing to brands or sponsorships, and there is no real way to make revenue off of me. Good. Epicurus had the idea of lathe biōsas, live unnoticed—the ethical maxim that we ought to withdraw from public ambition and civic visibility, as recognition invites both envy and obligation. This is the direct opposite of the Stoic/Aristotelian model of virtue requiring a public life. In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott describes the concept of "legibility" and argues that state power depends on making populations, lands, and transactions legible. Mapped, named, standardized and countable. In his follow-up, The Art of Not Being Governed, he examined hill peoples in Southeast Asia who organized their agriculture, kinship, and even their lack of writing systems to stay outside that legibility. Illegibility is a method to evade capture. Similarly, Deleuze and Guattari discuss the idea of "becoming imperceptible" in A Thousand Plateaus. An endpoint of a line of flight: the fixed, representable self dissolved so it can no longer be captured by systems of identity, classification, and control. We have lost the practical obscurity of DOJ v. Reporters Committee, 1989 given how frictionless search and aggregation have become. But the end-user still has obfuscation—the act of producing signals of excessive ambiguity and misleading noise. If how we act is too confusing and unpredictable, we cannot be predicted. Of course, how people perceive me is outside of my control entirely. While I can write whatever I want, I cannot control the response—and I likewise cannot control what people think (or don't think) of me. And of course I'm only writing this because my writing yesterday gained thousands of views and dozens of comments. But it will fade and pass just as every other spike and blip has in the past, and I will return to my small number of dedicated, lovely readers. The most peaceful and relaxing choice is, as usual, surrender. I'll keep writing what I write, regardless. No matter what I contribute and no matter the reception, I will reach the same oblivion as everyone else. And this is exactly why I do what I want. And I am so thankful for this absurd, mostly invisible life I have. I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! — Emily Dickinson, #260 About Brennan Kenneth Brown Queer Métis writer, cultural critic, and web developer based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary), Treaty 7 territory. Author of nine books and counting, the founder of Fireweed Writing School and Berry House Studio, and of Write Club at Mount Royal University. His work has been cited in Le Monde and other publications. Enjoy this content? Support my work and help me create more: Patreon | Ko-fi | GitHub Sponsors