Thursday, April 1, 2010
Blogs Are Useful to the Extent They Provide Information, Hope and Suggestions for Concrete Action
Yesterday, I asked whether blogs are useful or a waste of time.
Perhaps blogs are useful to the extent that they:
(1) Convey information not available from the mainstream media;
(2) Give hope that things can improve;
and
(3) Suggest concrete ways to improve things.
Conveying Information Not Available from the MSM
This one is easy, since the MSM censors virtually all information critical of the powers-that-be.
Of course, a website is only as good as:
(1) It's information is scrupulously attempts fact-checked to maintain accuracy, and speculation is labeled as such;
and
(2) It conveys or aggregates hard-hitting or useful information in a timely manner.
Because the MSM does a horrible job of "connecting the dots", blogs provide a valuable service if they tie together seemingly disconnected facts to show a pattern or put events in a historical context. Obviously, the pattern and historical context have to be accurate; if they are just Glenn Beck style free-association, they are worse than worthless.
Give Hope
While false hope - the kind peddled by Obama - is interfering with our ability to turn things around, real hope is a necessity.
People who are wholly cynical and don't think anything can change won't lift a finger to change things ... thus ensuring that nothing will change.
So blogs have to point out the bleak facts, but then remind people that - if enough of us get angry and demand change - things can change. See this and this.
Suggesting Concrete Actions
Disclosing truth and giving people some hope won't go very far if people aren't given concrete suggestions about actions to take which might actually change things. Nothing will change if people are informed and hopeful, but then don't actually do anything to change things.
A blog is most useful if it suggests specific actions. Whether it's moving our money from giant banks, promoting protests, sit-ins or strikes, refusing to pay debts incurred for unlawful purposes, or some other concrete action which can actually change things for the better if enough people do it, a blog should be more than just a passive scribe documenting facts.
There might be much more effective actions than the ones listed above. There are hopefully much smarter strategists than me concerning how to affect social change.
Of course, blogs which call for unlawful acts which will be unsuccessful or just discredit all those who question the actions of the powers-that-be are counterproductive.
As usual, I am just trying to start the conversation ... not provide the definitive answer. Hopefully, someone has a better framework or a better idea, and this will get the ball rolling.Obviously, some blogs will stress one of the three useful attributes more than others. For example, a blog written by a whistleblower is useful if it provides otherwise unknown information, and a site focused on organizing protests is useful for helping to inspre people to take action. Most people read several blogs or websites, and can get the 3 attributes from the various websites they read. But the 3-attribute framework provides a useful model.
And websites which convey practical knowledge about investing in periods of financial chaos or producing our own energy and food could be very valuable in the future ... if we can't turn things around, we may need to learn how to provide for ourselves without the benefit of our current institutions or organizations.
5 comments:
→ Thank you for contributing to the conversation by commenting. We try to read all of the comments (but don't always have the time).
→ If you write a long comment, please use paragraph breaks. Otherwise, no one will read it. Many people still won't read it, so shorter is usually better (but it's your choice).
→ The following types of comments will be deleted if we happen to see them:
-- Comments that criticize any class of people as a whole, especially when based on an attribute they don't have control over
-- Comments that explicitly call for violence
→ Because we do not read all of the comments, I am not responsible for any unlawful or distasteful comments.
Posts
The information supplied to me by the blogs I visit often will never be supplied by MSM. If MSM was my only source I wouldn't know much. For instance , when is the last time you heard MSM talk on the
ReplyDeleteAussie school. like never.
Great blog post, a breath a fresh air, well written.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you conceal your identity, no bio, no background...? Great content from a mysterious source...
Against the backdrop of an infinitely complex reality -conjuring, peddling or purveying "hope" in piling-up more information faster and from more varied sources, (even if these new sources are just as deluded as the old) -is only going to delude individuals into thinking some scientific solution can remedy the problems -science has given to us-.
ReplyDeleteWithout a clear moral sense to steer the way, there is no reliable solution any individual can put his weight against.
Everyone is altruistically enamored with science, but with no reasonable justification for this BELIEF.
The clearest moral sense I -as an individual- can muster informs me, science and the endlessly repetitive obfuscation of the problems science causes -are immoral-.
The immorality of this age is certainly far greater than anything in the past, -for humanity NOW can (and very well might by choice -or- accident) close the door to the future for the entire human species -of the future-.
You know it. I know it. Everyone knows this.
The ongoing debasement of human reality is similarly horrific, if we measure it from the perspective of a five year old, and what are the problems successive generations of five-year-olds have had given to THEIR precious quality of life since we were five years old.
Being five is no less important than being twenty-five as far as human beings go.
We can all envision a graph of this phenomenon of the debasement of human life in just our own lifetime.
The blogs are merely providing more scientific (largely political) obfuscation, while the scientific dangers and the detriments continue to debase both humanity and humanity's future -pushing the whole human world toward the likely imminent catastrophe of a scientific suicide by an ever greater number of likely scientific means.
If there is a suggestion for concrete action that can give us the moral footing that actually has the chance to realign our future onto a more amenable path, then say it, blogger.
Time closes in on us.
Such a correction will not and cannot be a scientific path.
Science is blind to morality.
Science is even blind to our humanity.
And I will never be convinced of the efficacy of the argument that the scientific-bureaucratic approach of bloggerdom is better than any previous scientific-bureaucratic approach of the past -all of which have collectively brought us to this juncture at a relatively unimpeded pace.
Again, I long for the safe and secure jungle, where I know humanity once had a sure future.
There is no future for a scientific humanity without first comprehending the moral knowledge necessary to constrain science.
I see no such constraint arising from this new scientific-bureaucracy of bloggerdom.
The mean path here is not toward truth. The mean path here is a path leading only to an ever greater obfuscation of the truth.
And do not equate being anti-science with being cynical. I am very positive. I see people finally waking up from a long moral decline brought on by all the bright shiny objects of scientific invention that have tempted humanity away from the path toward human truth.
Human truth is nothing at all like scientific truth. Scientific truth is something that would pretend to still exist, -even if scientific truth destroyed humanity.
Fat chance, Einstein.
This is a completely worth while interview to read regarding this subject.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alternet.org/media/146128/are_americans_too_broken_by_corporate_power_to_resist?page=entire
And Jeremy Scahill just put out a good thing regarding this subject of journalism too...
http://www.alternet.org/media/146162?page=entire
Thanks for this awesome post of self-reflection.
The blog poll entitled and questioning, "Is Blogging Useful or a Waste of Time?" is an alarming example of the massive delusions that far too commonly take place all the time.
ReplyDeleteHow so?
Some will read the results of the poll and determine for themselves -in typically deluded fashion-, "Ah yes. It is true. (-add a mindlessly vicarious mental pat on the back-) Blogs do -do some good."
Huh?
Do they? Is this a cogent analysis of a poll, any poll? -this poll?
Again, let's just see.
Usually our human Cracker-Jacks-box minds will look at a subsequent poll asking the same question at a later date, and -find- a trend.
The resulting trend (most often just a small statistical shift) is then given to the delusional human mind -much more importance than the original poll.
Listen up, Punch & Judy.
There is no NECESSARY mean truth path to any average no matter how it is derived concerning individual human perceptions about anything. This is only a sure measure of the "social psyche", -which -does-not-and-cannot- exist.
There is the delusion.
This is extremely important to understand when considering your own personal view about the infinitely complex world around us, -for- that static infinite complexity is then personally somehow and momentarily somehow portrayed -falsely- as being less complex by our delusions about it.
-There are truths-. These are not empirically derived, and cannot be empirically derived.
I can disprove all those truths -one at a time- with utter surety.
The only truths we can arrive upon with any semblance of surety are Categorical Truths, which are endlessly and methodically tested for their categorical truth -against- every other supposed categorical truth.
And -THE ONLY- Categorical Truths that can be arrived at by humans, -concern human truths.
One of those human truths is, not only are statistics always too easily compiled to be less than misleading, -so too are polls.