Saturday Morn

 

Abstract Expressionism / William Scott/ Five Pears

I spent years over at Blogger.  For a while there in the long ago I was kinda-sorta in the “not-quite-in crowd” with a hundred-some-odd followers and was answering replies every day.  

Then I started noticing that the replies were affecting my writing.  When I wrote about certain subjects in certain ways, I would get more positive responses.  When I wrote about the same subjects from a different point of view I would get trolled at an alarming rate.  There are a bunch of responses over there that never saw the light of day as they were straight ad-hominem attacks because I took the time to step into the wrong set of shoes for a brief walk.

Then I caught myself changing the way I expressed what I was thinking in order to elicit the most positive responses.  It was at that point I figured out that I wasn’t writing what I truly was thinking, I was writing what I thought would make people like me.

At the end, I folded up and quit blogger and tried to find a different site.  I tried Wordpress on for size, but I never liked the interface.  Then when JMG came over here to Dreamwidth, I decided to give it a go.  I actually kinda liked the kludgey interface and the off-beat clientele. Plus the fact, the comments are usually civilized and fun.  

All of this is leading up to the following.  This is still just an odd form of diary.  I tend to write things down here as a way to work through what I am thinking about that day and to attempt to arrange things into a coherent whole.  I fail sometimes and folks find my views on a specific subject offensively incorrect.

But that is the whole point of this process.  I do not for a moment think that I have access to the entire data set.  All of the opinions that have been expressed in this venue are simply that: Opinions.  Even worse, they are opinions arrived at using "facts" presented in the conflicting and incomplete narratives spun by an industry and a government that are intent on doing what they think will work best for them.  What works best for them is not at all the same thing as what is best for us.

No one has the whole story.  Everyone is being told something in a manner that advances someone else’s interests.  Hell, even Qanon gets things right sometimes.

You have to decide just how important this shit is to you.  I consider it roughly equivalent to going swimming in the ocean and then complaining about the water temperature.  Complaining and arguing over national politics and the character of individuals you have never met seems silly in the light of the simple fact that the “information" that allows us to form our opinions have been distilled by these other parties in order to advance that other parties agenda seems to me a bit of a waste of time.