Wednesday, August 12, 2009

On blogs

I blog. I read blogs. I think blogging is an important and amazingly personal way to connect with incredibly smart people around the world that one would otherwise have not been exposed to.

Every great intellectual movement of the past has involved a relatively small, diverse group of individuals putting together ideas and collaborating with one another. Consider in America the transcendentalists; Emmerson, Thoreau, etc., who knew and spoke with one another. Or in Paris, the philosophical circles of existentialism headed by Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. We have always relied on one another for support-- for other heads on which to bounce our ideas. I personally view blogging and reading blogs as the modernist equivalent (at least in capacity) to such collaborations. Blogs are, when they are at their best, discussions about concepts and ideas. They are a way to pass on news, to report from one's window the world outside that may not be available to others elsewhere.

Thanks to blogging, I have a better understanding of history and it's implications in modernity. Thanks to blogging, I am able to access some of the smartest and most informative political and legal opinions in the nation. Thanks to blogging, I am able to learn about international issues in Africa and elsewhere. Thanks to blogging, I get tough grammatical questions answered. Blogging is a support system for feminism. And sometimes, it's just plain fun.

I don't think it's a waste of time. I don't think it's frivolous.

1 comment:

Ryan Yang said...

I minored in e-commerce in college, there was no "blog" then. Years later, I heard the word mentioned, by then I had been neglecting the Internet for several years. Blog, I thought, is just another fad. Something someone dreamed up and made popular on the internet; it, too, will burst like all internet bubbles. But it didn't. I took me awhile to grasp the concept of a blog. Why blog when you can write a diary, was another one of my objection. So I kept on writing in my private journal.

Then it hits me: a blog is a public journal. It is a way to express one's idea, share information, in the fashion that one chooses. I no longer need to join a "forum" to discuss a topic. All my thoughts can be organized neatly into chronological order on my own blog. That's why it exists, I finally understood.

I now blog, mostly about my internal world of thoughts. No one is reading my blog but me since I have not tried to announce its existence to anyone. Yet, I feel incredibly fortunate to discover your blog. I would have never run into some of the incredibly interesting links that you listed here. Thank you for blogging, when can we read more?