Writing is both a craft and an art. We craft our thoughts into a particular sentence structure, which our language strictly defines. A word expresses a single concept. A sentence is a relationship between words that expresses a single idea. A paragraph is a relationship between sentences that expresses a thought. The concept, the idea, and the thought can be simple or complex, intricate or straightforward.

The art of this craft comes from word choice and sentence structure, which have the ability to convey more meaning. Sometimes art conveys more meaning than is necessary; at other times, it confuses. For this reason, I rarely attempt art when crafting my prose. I believe the art of writing should be used rarely and with respect.

The purpose of the prose should guide the balance between art and craft. If writing to convey information, as I often do, then one should place information before all else. In my writing, therefore, style is much less important than structure. If a sentence has extra words, they should be cut. The same goes for extra sentences in a paragraph and extra paragraphs in an article.

What is the difference between fiction and non-fiction?

Fictional and non-fictional narratives draw content from each other. Because human memories are imperfect, when we describe non-fictional events of the past, we cannot recall every detail precisely and accurately. We omit some details; other details we misrepresent. Our minds do not intentionally misrepresent these events– -- that is, we do not set out to lie --– but misrepresentation occurs. Recall the major geopolitical event of the 21st century, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. When the Boeing planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, gray smoke bellowed from the collision. Was the smoke gray? Possibly it was, but I did not know for sure. Yet, my account seemed very realistic, regardless of the validity of that detail. Why did it seem so? Because in our minds, when we read the word "smoke,"” we immediately think of the many other representations of smoke that we have previously seen, in movies, around campfires, on July 4th, and elsewhere.

Our memories blur reality. We remember smoke as an abstract object, and when we recall specific instances of that abstract concept (unless the instance was particularly memorable, such as green or red smoke), our mind interposes the abstraction on reality, creating memory. This is how non-fiction draws from fiction -- an event that occurred borrows details from other events creating a memory of an event that is not strictly accurate.

Fiction also draws from fiction. Some philosophers argue that our imaginations cannot create anything that is not already present in the world around us. A mind is, essentially, nothing more than the sum of its inputs. If that is true, then fiction can do nothing but re-process reality. More so, not only is fiction limited to reprocessing reality, but fiction is not even privileged enough to deal with reality as we see it. Writers of fiction work with those abstract concepts that our mind creates out of our many particular experiences. Thus, fiction is twice removed from reality, first, by our inability to precisely remember events and, second, by the re-processing of those events into an innumerable different combinations.

From here, two possibilities of originality arise. First, the re-processing of reality yields events that either do not exist, or could not possibly exist in our reality. Tolkien creates Hobbits, Asimov creates feeling, dreaming robots -- these do not exist in our reality. Rowling creates humans who can fly unaided by technology -- these cannot exist in our reality. But none of these creations is new. Men fight, robots fall in love, and Hobbits die. Rain, for example, falls in all three worlds. Sometimes the rain is red, at other times blue, yet at other times invisible and deadly. But the primary concept of rain is borrowed from our reality, not invented. This is just an imposition of our reality on our imagination, proving that our imagination is just the re-processing of our reality.

A second possibility of originality can exist if our mind is more than the sum of its inputs. Some philosophers argue that our mind can create something that does not exist in the world around it. Most things we create, however, resonate with reality. This is where argument stops and belief begins. I believe that fiction pushes at the boundaries of the real, and sometimes uses its narrative to represent reality in a different light, but never breaches the boundary of the real, simply because it is impossible to do so.

Some questions remain unanswered here. If we accept that fiction is a re-processed narrative of the external world, then how can we explain fictional narratives that predict science, like the Jules Verne's Nautilus? In that example, and many others like it, does science follow fiction, or did the science already exist for the fiction to follow. Does, in short, art imitate life, or life imitate art?


If fiction and non-fiction are hopelessly interwoven, what privileges one type of narrative over the other?

Something causes most readers to adopt a mindset when they are reading fiction that differs from the mindset they adopt when reading non-fiction. That something is a type of a social contract between the reader and the writer, an agreement about the nature narrative presented to one by the other. The social contract states that, on the one hand, the reader agrees to suspend disbelief when reading a fictional narrative and, on the other hand, the writer agrees to protect his non-fictional narrative from the encroachment of fiction. But all non-fiction suffers from misrepresentation (as I discussed in part 1), so the writer’s part of the contract is not a strict oath (as strict as a social contract can be), but rather a promise to battle fictitious accounts to the best of his or her ability.

Historians, the chroniclers of past events, are, therefore, the foremost warriors against fictitious narratives. Theirs is the task to separate fact from fiction and write down only fact for future generations to read and believe.

The interesting question arises when historians craft our understanding of our own past events. What happens when a historian breaks his or her oath? If caught, surely the perpetrator is punished. At most, he or she is banned from recording events; at the very least, the contract between the reader and that particular historian is broken.

But if the act goes uncaught, what is its effect on our understanding? Each uncaught misrepresentation of past events creates a writer bias. We have, therefore, two types of biases in non-fictional writing, intentional and unintentional misrepresentation of past events. Unintentional misrepresentation should not create much bias, because these errors, being natural, would be made on all sides of any given argument or all retellings of any event. (There is no reason to assume that various natural biases would not be normally distributed around the real version of any given event.)

Intentional bias creates a much larger problem if it goes uncaught. This bias is not cancelled out by offsetting natural bias, and there is no reason to assume that offsetting intentional bias always exists. This means that if a historian intentionally misrepresents events and this act is not corrected by further historians -- due to, among other things, lack of information -- then a permanently erroneous version of reality is recorded.

Next: What happens when history errs?

Here is the unedited version of the op-ed I published in The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

To sum up, students' math skills fall short
07/25/06
Atlanta Journal Consitution

President Bush once said, “Rarely is the question asked, ‘Is our children learning?’” Our state’s college math students would answer with a definitive no. And I know why.

I tutor mathematics at Georgia State University. Throughout the day, I help people of all ages with math of all types, from elementary algebra to advanced calculus. I have worked with teenage students and with students in their forties who want to get a math degree or just exercise their brain. I have noticed that—whether young or old, whether full-time employees, full-time students or both—they share a single Achilles’ heel. They lack basic math skills.

When solving arithmetic, statistics or calculus problems, my tutees struggle with the additive, associative and commutative properties. They would understand derivation and integration—calculus is taught well at Georgia State—but would stumble through the basics, such as simplifying equations or complex fractions. The problem is not with our colleges or our high schools, but with our elementary and middle schools. The source of our state’s math woes lies somewhere between second and fifth grades.

My experience lacks a wide perspective. After all, Georgia State is only one university and the group of people who take summer math classes might radically differ from the overall student population. Still, Georgia State is a large university in a large city. If not indicative of the country as a whole, it strongly represents the state of education in Georgia.

If our schools fail to teach basic math, how did I learn it? I was lucky in two ways: where and to whom I was born. I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and went to school there until fourth grade. My parents put my education above all else. In all subjects they knew, they drilled me extensively and expected only the highest grades. To alter an inspirational quote hung in my Holcomb Bridge Middle School homeroom, my parents told me that if I shoot for the moon and land among the starts, shoot again.

Perhaps my two accidents of birth can provide a solution to our fledgling mathematic education. No, I do not mean that we should send students to Russia. But for all the things that country did poorly, it excelled at mathematics education. I was methodically drilled on how to multiply, divide, reduce complex fractions and simplify equations. Our schools should learn from them.

The real path to education, however, starts at home. Learning from my parents, when I become a father I will also push my children to excel. There should be no middle ground here. If parents don’t set their children up to succeed, they set them up to fail.

Once parents step up to the plate, however, and once schools improve to better facilitate the learning process, then together we can put me out of a job.

Dear reader,

Welcome to my blog. I recently graduated from Dartmouth with a double major in government and economics. Now I work as a business strategy consultant.

This website started as a collection of my published articles and works in progress. Over time, it has evolved to cover my opinions on contemporary politics and business issues. I hope that you may find some my thoughts useful, or at least interesting.

Please feel free to contact me at mikebelinsky at gmail dot com.

Sincerely,

Michael