Why I don’t think blogging is stupid anymore
I never understood why people would write blogs, letters to everyone that (I presumed) no one read. Then I became an un-enrolled graduate student.
No. Actually there is much more to it then that. Why would one think blogging is stupid? One likely reason is that one has abandoned or has never held that good (read Aristotelian good) social discourse is actually possible and desirable. This is also what is at play in the current popular sport of making fun of Wikipedia. Take, for example, what Steven Colbert did when he encouraged his viewers to log onto Wikipedia and spread nonsense. The idea is that by showing how easily the obviously stupid can be imputed into a Wikipedia article the entire project will be shown to be silly. Attempts at social knowledge are naive. Private knowledge and the experts who cultivate it (and charge for it) are the only things we can trust.
Colbert thus attempted to stage something of the spectacle that occurred at the end of the recent American movie Little Miss Sunshine. The remnant of a family finally makes it to the obviously shallow beauty pageant and, upon realizing the entire thing is a meaningless celebration of pride, “heroically” decides not to leave but to mock the pageant, abandoning themselves to be misunderstood. If one does not hold to the possibility of good (and thus useful) social discourse such misunderstanding is not a problem since it is actually inevitable (insofar as it is presumed the only real understanding is self understanding. This is why the teenage boy is silent throughout the first part of the film. If social discourse that purports to accomplish the good is impossible the only responsible thing to do is shut up. Or, to take it all the way, stop existing).
This is irresponsible and it is un-Christian. It is irresponsible because we have all benefited from social discourse (insofar as all discourse is social discourse). Your employment, your hobbies, your computer, indeed your very person are all to some degree a result of social discourse (yes, sex is an instance of social discourse). To attempt to withdraw from this discourse and mock it is thus irresponsible (not to mention impossible). It is also un-Christian because it does not take people seriously. Christians are to take people seriously qua people because all people are created in the image of God.
This is not a retreat from the critique of nihilism but rather a move to a vantage point from which it becomes clear, as David B. Hart writes, that “Critique is never merely doubt, but always a vantage (and advantage); it is always already principled, already dependent upon firm metaphysical assumptions, already a transcendental surveillance that has determined in advance the limits of every story’s credibility” (The Beauty of the Infinite, p7).
I have thus decided to be more responsible and to be a better Christian by blogging.
