A head made out of straw

Back where I come from we have universities, seats of higher learning, where men and women sit around all day doing nothing but thinking great thoughts, and with no more brains than you have!

And that's what I'm going to do this morning, sit around thinking great thoughts, and with no more brains than you have, but with one thing you haven't got!

No, not a diploma.  You probably have a few of those.  I have four myself.  I'm proudest of the one I got when I graduated from eighth grade.  No, what I've got that you haven't got, is a head made out straw and the experience of having read this post by Neddie Jingo.

Ned's asking the most profound of questions a blogger can ask.

What in the world do you think you're up to and who do you think you're fooling anyway?

He doesn't phrase it quite like that.

Discuss among yourselves. In your discussions, please consider this month's Theme Statement: Blogging provides a comfortable illusion of activism. In fact, it is no such thing.

The Viscount attempts an answer that is thoughtful, honest, necessarily inconclusive and references rock and roll and bowling.

Ned follows up with a grumpier post about the general lassitude of the Left.

Read them both and you can join me in thinking great thoughts.

Meanwhile, Rana has been thinking greatly along similar lines.

Comments

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Is there actually anyone who thinks that blogging is activism in the first place? Don't most people just consider it "cheaper than therapy"?

Not that blogs can't make a difference, but if I want to clothe the homeless, I, well, go take clothes to the homeless. I always sort of thought people blogged about the stuff they couldn't change themselves very easily, or at all.

[sfmike]

Digby at his Hullabaloo site had a long post about something similar, and there was one paragraph that jumped out at me:

"I realize that he is long out of fashion and probably politically incorrect to evoke in these conservative times, but I think that bloggers can be, at our best, the heirs to IF Stone, who famously said that the Washington Post was an exciting paper to read because "you would never know on what page you would find a page one story." Like Stone, we are always looking for the page one story that's buried on page 15. Our capacity to use collective energy to scour newpapers and other publications for the small details that can lead to a bigger story is one of the innovations of blogging. We are using the modern investigative tools at our disposal to follow up on the "shirt tail hanging out" as he used to call it --- the little detail that leads one to delve more deeply into the story and get to the larger truth. Technology, of course, is key --- but so is the aggregate energy of thousands of individuals putting it to work."

I feel like I'm part of that aggregate energy, and so are you. And I LOVE finding the page one story hidden on page 15.

[Rana]

I'm not an activist; I'm just hyper and occasionally cranky and don't know when to shut up. *grin*

Thanks for the link, btw.

[NeddieJingo]

Huh! To judge from the huffy commentary, it looks like I've been disinvited to next year's Burning Man festival.

Dang.

Spanks for the clink, Lancelot.

[The Viscount LaCarte]

Posted this over at Blue Girl's, on the same subject...

We have carved out our own piece of the web. I think because it is hyperspace, we start to think of it as somehow *different* than reality but at the end of the day it is just another aspect of reality.

Think of the telephone. Some of us have actually formed realtionships with people we've never met over the phone. I know I have. And before that, pen-pals. The 'net is just a very convenient way of communicating and connecting with people regardless of geographic location. Some bloggers are famous, most are like us.

[Although some of the players here at least have a shot at the big time - VLC 23-Sep-05]

I get together to play music with friends periodically. Sometimes we will play a small party, 20-30 people. We don't consider a "rank", you know? We don't compare ourselves to say, Paul McCartney (and EVERYONE else) and say, oh, we'll we're ranked at 16,897,988. Sure, we think it would be nice to be famous, but it isn't our expectation.

Thanks for the link Lance.