Summary: Gumption, Tensions, and the Purpose of the Essay
The Childhood Story
One of the earliest formative experiences I can remember occurred at school. The class was asked to create a collage. I already knew what I wanted to make. The image existed clearly in my imagination. The problem was not imagination, creativity or willingness. The scissors would not cut. The teacher promised a replacement pair but none appeared. Other children guarded their own scissors. The collage remained unrealised.
What stayed with me was not disappointment. It was the experience of capability encountering constraint.
The Root Question
The deeper question was never: Why couldn’t I make the collage? It became: Why was I unable to make something I was already capable of imagining?
The capability was present. The conditions were not.
Gumption
My mother described the experience as something that had been: “sucking my gumption.” This phrase remains powerful. It describes situations where:
- people have ideas;
- people have capability;
- people have willingness;
- but something in the environment frustrates action.
The question becomes: What’s sucking the gumption?
From Classrooms to Society
Years later I recognised similar patterns elsewhere:
- shop stewards;
- activists;
- communities;
- organisations;
- citizens.
In each case people often possess:
- intelligence;
- imagination;
- commitment;
- agency.
Yet something prevents those capabilities becoming action. The issue is not always the person. Often it is the field around them.
Structures of Influence
Rather than talking immediately about ontology or theory, a more accessible phrase is:
Structures of influence. – These are the conditions that shape behaviour and possibility.
Examples include:
- culture;
- institutions;
- assumptions;
- habits;
- expectations;
- relationships;
- power structures.
People experience these influences whether or not they can name them. Like gravity, they do not need to be fully explained in order to be recognised.
The Essayist’s Interest
The essayist is not primarily interested in action. Nor merely in ideas. The essayist becomes interested in: What is preventing people becoming what they are already capable of becoming? The tension is the point of entry. The essay follows the tension into the field from which it arises.
Attention Before Action
Before action there is attention.
Before advocacy there is attention.
Before change there is attention.
People must first notice:
- the tension;
- the constraint;
- the possibility;
- the structure of influence.
Recasting Tensions
The essay does not necessarily solve a tension.
Instead it often recasts it.
Example:
Initial framing:
Left vs Right
Deeper framing:
A public capable of acting vs a public waiting to be acted upon
The tension remains.
But the field becomes visible.
The Role of the Essay
The essay is not trying to change the reader’s mind directly. The essay creates a field of attention. Within that field:
- the reader’s own experience;
- the reader’s own values;
- the reader’s own observations;
may cause a re-evaluation.
The reader grants permission by continuing to read.
The process is invitational.
Bearings
The purpose of the essay is not resolution.
It is orientation.
A useful formulation:
The essay is helping writer and reader understand the disposition from which a tension arises and acquire bearings within it.
The tension remains.
The field remains.
The writer and reader are better able to navigate it.
A Possible Root Statement
The collage was already there.
The question was never imagination.
The question was always the field.
Or even:
What is preventing people from becoming what they are already capable of becoming?
That may be one of the deepest roots of my essayism, activism and publication architecture. 📓