Blog Blog

I have been giving some thought lately to the intrinsic value of blogging. I have intended and attempted from the beginning to avoid turning my blog into an open diary--a verbal regurgitation of every happening, concern, stress, passion, and piss of my day. I have also steered clear of becoming a daily news pundit. Each of these blog structures serve great purposes, but they didn't seem to suit my purpose.

I have questioned therefore, whether this blog serves any purpose at all. Is it simply vanity? Is it great charity? Is it a way to stay in touch with others? Or is it a way to lecture others? Should it aspire to greater circulation? Am I too revealing for such a public forum?

I think through a serendipitous encounter with a throw-away line from a throw-away pundit on some throw-away cable news program, I may have found my answer. The moment was fleeting, I may not be quoting exactly, and I missed the attribution, but the thrust of the comment cut through. The speaker was referring to a newspaper columnist frustrated by a press strike somewhere and some years ago. The basis of the comment was, "how do I know what I believe if I can't read what I think?"

What at first struck me as rather silly, suddenly struck me as rather profound. Perhaps the process of thinking, and the discipline of writing are integrally linked. Perhaps our college professors knew what they were doing with all those papers and essays. In fact, there seems to be something about the function of the human mind that works things out most clearly when forced to commit them coherently to print. From this viewpoint, "daydreaming" is rather ineffectual, and the person staring into space, lost in his own thoughts may be missing the point. Only in slowing down and committing thoughts to print, and critically, to exposing them--no matter how theoretically--to a broad audience of potential critics, can he truly develop thoughts that get reformed into beliefs.

It also seems that a printed form of our thoughts encapsulates them and protects them from that all-too-human tendency to re-create our own memories. Committing words to print forces the creation of a track record (every corporate citizen knows this as CYA) that can be referenced. Putting the words down literally makes them real. We may change our opinions, alter our conclusion based on new evidence, or stand-by our old credos, but we must be much more honest about our own present views when we have recorded our old ones.

Therefore, I think this blog does have intrinsic value... I'll let you know for sure once I've read it.