I want to try an iterative work flow for learning now that I see how to share mastodon posts to this hubzilla account.
Keeping track of important quotes while reading on-line seems easy, and appropriate on Mastodon. It's quick so you can keep reading but not worry about losing track of the sentences that caused a deep thought.
But if you don't elaborate on the deep thought later, it's hard to even remember about that post to mastodon. You have to go over your notes and various jottings. I tend to lose my notebooks and start new ones, then rediscover them... That's why it is nice to have valuable sentences in posts tagged with key people and key words...
But, no matter how painful it is. Eventually you have to write for yourself, put those valuable sentences and deep thoughts. Maybe on-line activity can be done well: it can support an iterative cycle of noting(quoting sources), commenting(on the sources) and then working the thoughts into a coherent form.
Re-sharing Mastodon quotes as Hubzilla posts can be the commenting stage... For the working (re-writing) the source and commenting thoughts into something coherent a few re-writes as wiki-pages should work. Having the automatic versioning on the Wiki-pages could be a great resource for learners of writing and literature. An I.A. Richards essay starts by quoting Edgar Allen Poe about how hard it is for people to describe their writing process. In
Understanding Poetry there is a rare early draft of a poem by Robert Frost or somebody. Robert Ciardi in
The way of the Peom talks about Robert Frost coming up with a poem ("the greatest lyric in the English Language"?) after a frustrating night working on a different, longer poem that never worked out. But Ciardi also says that Frost covered his tracks well. He didn't want anyone seeing his drafts and false-starts...
After the wiki-drafts, moving any essay that becomes worthy of re-reading, could be edited for a web page on hubzilla. There could be an entire writing program ready to be discovered in the Fediverse.
I.A. Richards re-worked The last sentence of Shelley's to be accurate:
Poetry is the unacknowledged legislation of the world.
The re-working takes unbearable responsibility off of the poets, and pressures off of the readers. If the work, poem, book, or movie, is good about one area, but the maker is awful in another area: we can still get something out of the work without guilt. Relatively recent revelations about the racism of Robert Frost, and the abusive sexuality of Woody Allen come to mind. In
The Future of Poetry Richards talks about Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Socrates, Coleridge, and others. How Amos is lucky that no one knows how he got along with a wife if he was married. Other makers (prophets, poets) are not so lucky. Or readers aren't to lucky with them because we have more to distract us from the worthy, decent areas of the work.
Then again, for decent writing it might be necessary to go offline, somewhere quiet and healthy, and work with paper, pencils, and pens. But before that, if we're going to be working online anyway, the iterative quoting and commenting might help us to become so familiar with the sources and thoughts that the writing will go well. Bertrand Russel in
History as an Art writes of the need to have sources fresh in the mind to avoid the distraction of verifying sources:
"What is strongly felt will express itself naturally in a rhythmical and varied form. For this reason, among others, a writer needs a certain freshness of feeling which is apt to be destroyed by fatigue and by the necessity of consulting authorities. I think though this is perhaps counsel of perfection that before an historian actually composes a chapter, he should have the material so familiarly in his mind that his pen never has to pause for verification of what he is saying." --- [1]
"But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to reasoners and mechanists, on another plea. It is admitted that the exercise of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged that that of reason is more useful...
It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the poetry of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest..
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5428/5428-h/5428-h.htm #mechanists #poetry #Shelley #industrialcivilization #
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