Because it's nice when a blog post features a picture, especially if it suits the text ever so slightly.
I am writing this in between fielding calls for work and composing a book chapter that is due in two weeks’ time, and I am writing it because I just remembered that sweet, sweet moment last week when a blog post formed in my mind – I always enjoy that sensation so much – but I didn’t have the time to sit down and string it together cogently. Now is not the time either, and I may actually say it straight away: this blog post has no content unto itself as it is a post about blogging. ‘Entirely self-referential and decadent’, you may think, but perhaps I can manage to contribute something after all.
The ‘great idea’ that I wanted to develop and discuss here last week would have come made its way into the world under the heading ‘Sociology is Cruel’. Yes, it is, and I had understood as much just then. Sociologists are often entirely unfeeling creatures who, believing that they possess superior skills of insight in social matters that no one else has, will conclude all manner of abstract and sometimes condemnatory things about people’s class consciousnesses (or singular? not sure), their gender awareness, role acceptance/compliance/conflict etc. and so on. All this cold-hearted talk dissects people’s lives and reveals what the people themselves fail to understand, i.e. that they are insufficiently critical or progressive-thinking or just plain reflective. People just live. shock-horror!, but they don’t think about that. The capitalist system/Man uses that to its/his advantage so people suffer/become exploited. The idealist or just melioratively inspired sociologist, rather than crying out emphatically in pain about humankind’s misery (I am wilfully exaggerating BTW – this profession is only half as dramatic as I make it out) at times tends to blame the ordinary person him/herself, often in the form of presenting a cold-hearted dissection of how things ‘really’ are. Summa summarum sociology can be said to be a cruel discipline.
That was roughly the argument that I wanted to make. I guess if I had’ve written the post I would’ve referred to hopeful and kind sociologies such as Peter Berger’s and Hans Joas’ (both Catholics – strange huh) so as not to let the entire piece become too much of a lament. I am a sociologist myself after all and there has to be hope for all of us.
The reason I didn’t write the post is that whilst I was still in the phase of pondering the matter and formulating ideas I happened to run into another sociologist. I must have thought something like ‘hm, let’s try this idea out on my peer and see what he says’; in any case, I shared my preliminary thoughts on how sociology was cruel. And you know what happened? My colleague instantly knew where I was coming from, what I meant to convey with those three simple words ‘sociology is cruel’, and I knew that he knew what I meant when he explained the bits of the sociological business that he always finds hard to deal with himself. We sat there reflecting and contemplating together and it was good. I have to say that this short face-to-face conversation has done heaps more for me on this simple matter than any amount of blogging could ever do, and this is not the first time it has happened. Not only did I feel connected and understood, I also received new input straight away in the form of an immediate response to what I had said and so could develop my ideas further. In the end, I simply didn’t need to write the blog post any more. My desire to share had already been quenched super successfully.
This makes me question the point of blogging. Can we only ever write publicly about things that don’t really matter? Because when it matters we want to discuss it face-to-face? Or do we blog when we don’t have the opportunity to have close contact with like-minded individuals? I know that people blog for all sorts of reason and I also know that I was most active on this here blog when I felt most alienated from the environment that I was ensconsed in at the time. The situation couldn’t be more different now, and I am happy it has changed, but because it has changed blogging is now a hugely ambivalent practice for me. Others may feel the same way – you, dearest reader, may feel that way in fact! If you do, how do you deal with it?
There would be fewer blogs, if there were more pub talk or tea breaks. Come to think of it, there would be less of Facebook, too. I suppose there a lots of good things about both, but sadly there now seems to be few opportunities for old-fashioned, face-to-face discussion and argument. I am always surprised how reluctant people are to share ideas and feelings. Is this a cultural thing? Is my decade-old memory of American social habits constructed or out-of-date? Or is it generational? But I think your experience just bears out the superiority of human interaction over social media – and just makes it more baffling why people seem so reluctant to mix, risk opening up, and share thoughts. These days I even find myself far more likely to text rather than just call, or e-mail instead of walk to a colleague’s office, all for fear of putting the other person out, interrupting their whatever, and pressuring them for spontaneous interaction. Oddly enough, even in the US, I find myself most at ease with elderly Americans, who seem far more chatty, genuine, and interested in, well, anything, than I do with even younger Americans. Maybe I should start a blog about that…
‘Tis ironic, isn’t it, to muse about the relative superfluousness of blogging on a blog
that is what usually keeps me from sharing such thoughts publicly. It’s all too ambivalent for language, that rational animal. I think you understand well where one of my problems lies: it’s in how we interact with people. So would we have fewer blogs if people were more connected with one another? I think so, and yes, the same would go for Facebook. Real meaningful conversation is very satisfying, it’s simple like that, and a real response is much more rewarding than a thumbs-up. But considering the amount of virtual construction of ourselves that we do – academia.edu isn’t an exception there either and we are all asked to have at least one of these things, right? – perhaps us younger generations are slowly loosing our competence with face-to-face interaction. It’s so much harder after all to construe a social persona in real-life interaction, and so insecurities that one perhaps has when talking to people for real simply perpetuate themselves. Also, it’s much harder to be in control of the interaction when you’re actually face to face; you can’t control the way the other person eats, talks, looks or plays with their hair…Lastly, we spend so much time in solitude just sitting by the computer silently, it’s just such a hassle sometimes to tolerate other people! These may be reasons apart from cultural (as in: national cultures) ones why young people are harder to interact with than older folk. Perhaps, I don’t know.
And yes, I think you should start a blog!
Do you mean Peter L. Berger? Or is there another Peter Berger?