The "I" of the weblog.
I read a quote by Simone de Beauvoir that I loved while I was in college. She was discussing fiction and the role of fiction in expressing thoughts, and she said that literature was important because it gave the reader the opportunity to put aside her own "I" in favor of an unfamiliar "I." Seeing the world through this unique other's perspective, the reader gains new insight into the world.
There was another essay entitled "On Being a Bat" that I remember from a philosophy class. The author, long forgotten by me, discusses the impossibility of sharing another's mind. Even if you could visit another's head, you couldn't share their thoughts. They would become your own.
But literature, in whatever form it takes, does allow you to glimpse into another's thoughts.
True, you understand the narrator from your own set of beliefs, but, if the writing is sincere and moving, then you do begin to understand the other on a more intimate level.
I've been thinking about this in connection with the weblog. I wasn't even aware of these things until my friend Jack introduced me to them. And I was wary of having one. I felt that it was a little self-important to just blog your thoughts into cyberspace like the undigested chili that couldn't stay in your belly.
But I've been thinking more recently, having become attached to the process of blathering on about nothing important, that it is a therapeutic act for the writer, at least.
And it does give everyone the opportunity to open their heads to others. Even if I only reveal a tiny portion of the incessant noise that goes on up there and only one person reads it, that's at least one person who has shared my experience.
Of course, my own experience is relatively uninformative. But there are others out there just blogging their little hearts out who do have experiences that can change the reader. It's an interesting phenomenon.
Perhaps a relatively angst-ridden American teen sitting comfortably in her ergonomic office chair might stumble onto the inner-workings of a survivor of the Rwandan massacres. She puts aside her own "I" and replaces it with this other's "I," and she can no longer see the world through her eyes only.
That can't be a bad thing.
There was another essay entitled "On Being a Bat" that I remember from a philosophy class. The author, long forgotten by me, discusses the impossibility of sharing another's mind. Even if you could visit another's head, you couldn't share their thoughts. They would become your own.
But literature, in whatever form it takes, does allow you to glimpse into another's thoughts.
True, you understand the narrator from your own set of beliefs, but, if the writing is sincere and moving, then you do begin to understand the other on a more intimate level.
I've been thinking about this in connection with the weblog. I wasn't even aware of these things until my friend Jack introduced me to them. And I was wary of having one. I felt that it was a little self-important to just blog your thoughts into cyberspace like the undigested chili that couldn't stay in your belly.
But I've been thinking more recently, having become attached to the process of blathering on about nothing important, that it is a therapeutic act for the writer, at least.
And it does give everyone the opportunity to open their heads to others. Even if I only reveal a tiny portion of the incessant noise that goes on up there and only one person reads it, that's at least one person who has shared my experience.
Of course, my own experience is relatively uninformative. But there are others out there just blogging their little hearts out who do have experiences that can change the reader. It's an interesting phenomenon.
Perhaps a relatively angst-ridden American teen sitting comfortably in her ergonomic office chair might stumble onto the inner-workings of a survivor of the Rwandan massacres. She puts aside her own "I" and replaces it with this other's "I," and she can no longer see the world through her eyes only.
That can't be a bad thing.
posted by Autumn at 11:29 AM
1 Comments:
i often think of how my life would have been different if i had had blogs as a teen and i think, always, it would have been so much better to have different experiences to be linked to, i probably would have been a lot more intorspective, a lot less of the wandering lost in the woods and cutting up my skin and a lot more being engrossed in the stories of others, connecting
it is really cool.
i often see abandined blogs and online dairies, onbes that were really relevant to a person at one time but have since become dimmed with cyber cobwebs, that is nice too, sort of a measure of growth.
Post a Comment
<< Home