So why blog anyway?

For quite a while I resisted the idea of blogging. I would rarely read anyone else’s  blog. There are so many bloggers out there these days: whose blogs do you choose to follow? Friends, family? People with a common interest? So I would occasionally stumble upon a blog, by someone, somewhere, in the course of searching for other things. And occasionally it might be somewhat interesting, but rarely memorable. So why would anyone be interested in anything I have to say… about anything? In fact, no one may be interested. And I wonder if most bloggers are not just largely talking to themselves (with perhaps a handful of friends occasionally looking on). Still, perhaps it is a useful thinking/writing exercise.

Of course, the second problem when deciding to blog is: What to talk about? People around me think that I am reasonably knowledgeable about a variety of things. I don’t particularly feel it myself. I am rarely au fait with the latest news, music, movies or trends. And although I love reading, I am also rarely up to date with the latest sensation. There are so many great books from the past to catch up with, that I scarcely have time to read whatever happens to be the “next big thing”.

Ok, then. Perhaps I could give my opinions on issues (however, this does require me to be somewhat current). But I am fairly slow to form decisive opinions. And the older I become, the more I see grey, rather than black and white. I am suspicious of anyone who comes down too decisively on one side or the other. This does not necessarily inhibit decisive action. It just means that, the more grey there is, the more my decision to act is fraught with risk. The risk of making the wrong decision, of taking the wrong side. No outcome will be fully satisfactory; so I must learn to live with dissatisfaction, with the knowledge that every victory is also shadowed by defeat, that any good I accomplish in this world is shadowed by a modicum of evil (pain, suffering, loss).

If you choose to visit this site, what you are most likely to see are thoughts in process rather than definitive conclusions. What I say in one blog may be completely contradicted by what I say in the next. And perhaps, in the third, some kind of synthesis might appear. (Anyone out there familiar with the Hegelian dialectic?)  No guarantees, though. You may find rambling philosophical discourses… Or a single thought. You may find angry rantings if something has pissed me off. You may see flashes of poetry; and even, occasionally, something that looks like an insight.

Then again, in all probability, no one will read my blogs anyway.