Tuesday, December 27, 2005

The Philosophy of the Blog, Part Three: Escapism

I have been varyingly desperately searching for various justifications for this blog ever since I started it - fundamentally suspecting that there really are none. To me this has seemed like a pure vanity project, typical to its vain, pathetically egoistic age: these poor ramblings are either easily destroyed or then expressed infinitely better elsewhere. In actual complex, reasoned texts and thoughts that is. But now I think I have found something else than pure ego, if nothing especially flattering: my professional life is filled with total, brain numbing trivia - to come here and address the long views is to clear my mind, to breath ice cold, refreshing mountain air. To do this privately would seem somewhat pointless. Of course also the act of serious public writing is in itself often a joy, so far removed from the crude, functional texts I have to "create" at work. '

The way we live now: so much energy is spent in so meaningless things. So, to here I escape and address the long views, the permanent questions, the serious issues.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for updating a nice blog. Of course a blog usually has a different purpose than "serious" writing but the lines that separate different categories have become muzzled over the years. Your blog is somewhat different from many other blogs, showing that a blog can be what you want it to be. Deep thoughts can often come out of purely escapist purposes, accidentally, as it were. You have been building a blog pretty much based on three Ps: poetry, politics and philosophy. Your musings combine these topics in an innovative way. Most blogs don't give that much scope for reflection or for trying to draw the lines that connect the dots of a worldview.

Anonymous said...

My thinking is like a shallow breathing, barely enough to sustain but the most necessary bodily functions. I also brought this lackwitted and disjointed approch to my adventures in various blogger sites going through way too many of them. Why do people have this hightend self image about themselves?

It became clear very quickly that this shallowness is an over whelming disease that inflicts the most of us. Thus it was, and still is, a magnificent delight and a surprise to tumble on your site. Your language is, in my huble opinnion, like a mounting stream; cool, beautiful, refreshing and always leads us to some where. You did touch the impropablity doing it privately and I fully agree with you, but I would like to expand this just a little more. What is the importance that somebody reads your creations? Do the number of readers enter into it? Is the feed back necessary or just preferable?

I am looking forward reading you as long as your creative juices keep flowing.

Anonymous said...

Oh my, what a scatter brain I have become! The overwhelmingly most important item in your writing is its' authentisity, honesty and dare which I managed not to mention in the drivel above. You lay it out seemingly without a fear and thus expose yourself in a manner that makes this fellow lick his voyeuristic lips in anticipation.

stockholm slender said...

Thank you for your very nice words! I admit that I have had fairly hard time in justifying writing here at all. It would make sense to elaborate much more in addressing these often, hmm, large and complicated issues. But pressed by lack of time and intellectual resources I just brutally compress and often devote more attention to the language than content. (I should not only address the conclusions but reveal the actual structures of thought and argument, give examples, cite, link - the whole scholastic works.)

So, this has seemed an uncomfortably vain and egoistic project but I now think that basically it simply helps me in purifying my mind of the ridiculously puny work matters that have oppressed me quite of bit lately. Writing here focuses my thoughts back to the essential. (And, yes, poetry, history and philosophy are the long views that I have been always drawn to. Politics I suppose are a concequence of these ethically disastrous times we seem to be living in - I used to be completely uninterested in political parties and personalities.)

I think publicity is connected with writing: it gives an extra dimension to it, extra quality. Makes it more interesting, I guess. Of course, being a good liberal (in many but not all senses of the term), openness for debate and disagreement is essential.