In my first day as a guest blogger on TMV, I hit a nerve and provoked a yawn.
The first post on political advertising prompted almost 20 comments.
The second post on blogger motivations prompted three – two of which really don’t count, as they were another TMV contributor and I trading “hello’s.�
I think I know why that second post crashed: It dealt with questions that the overwhelming majority of visitors to this site have already thought about and answered, a long time ago.
You’ve already made peace with this obsession of ours and thus have very little tolerance for neophytes like me (6 weeks and counting), who are revisiting old ground, who are still trying to come to terms with this commitment we’ve made.
I appreciate your impatience, I understand it, but I also hope you’ll allow me one more shot at the subject … and then, I promise, I’ll let it go.
* * *
When Austin Powers asked his fictional foe “Who throws a shoe?� … he was really asking “What the hell did you think you’d accomplish doing that?�
As I wrote yesterday, that’s pretty much the same query I get from my wife about blogging. In fact, it’s a query I’ve posed to myself several times in the last few weeks. In fact, most of my wife’s questions are questions I’m already thinking about, and vice versa. That tends to happen after 18 years of marriage.
And the answer?
It includes a few petty personal reasons (a since-childhood love of writing and so on), none of which are sufficient explanations. Instead, I think what ultimately drives me to blog is an almost chemical reaction between the following two midlife developments …
1. A new and totally annoying desire to be challenged – to stop sleepwalking through life, like I did through the first half of it, and start questioning some of the dogma that has defined my actions and reactions for more than 40 years
2. A book that I read two years ago and can’t, as hard as I try, get out of my brain: The Wisdom of Crowds, wherein author James Surowiecki has the audacity to argue and prove that, under the right conditions, the many are smarter than the few.
I know some people blog to find others who think just like they do, who prefer an echo-chamber of familiar voices to validate the noise inside their own heads. That’s not the case here. I intentionally blog and read blogs to find new voices and new points of view, because Surowiecki convinced me (damn him) that the only path to wisdom is through the heads of other people.
So if you ask me why I blog – why I throw shoes – my answer is simply this: You never know when those shoes might hit someone just right, or bounce back and hit you, and you both learn something in the process.
Or, as the sole commenter on yesterday’s second post put it, in a much shorter, more direct path to an answer than I’ve offered here …
“An informed electorate is essential to our democracy, and I wish more Americans were passionate about digging for facts and details. The MSM utterly fails to provide that, settling instead for soundbites, sensationalism and a race to the bottom in search of controversy, titillation and whatever tripe will appeal to the base instincts of viewers. We all probably spend too much time debating–sparring sometimes, about the news of the day. I know I do. That said, I have learned much about the opinions of great minds and small … and I think exposure to other viewpoints (is) important.â€?