carpe decorum

Heh. It's interesting to see how much people are and are not willing to talk about in blogs/newsgroups/bulletin boards. And even whether there's a difference between the formats.

Personally, I like having a personality-free web log, and nearly personality-free pages, reserving personal comments to a private 'board. But that's partly because I know about data persistance.

---L.

Though even your research link pages and weblog have personality.

I go around about the purpose of my weblog. I want a place to chat and vent and point to links, but I also want to create a professional personna and give professional news and updates to those who visit my site.

To put it another way, not everyone who wonders what I'm writing now wants to have my politics shoved in their face first thing when they click on a link. :-)

This is how I wound up with two weblogs, for now, even though I was barely keeping up with one. I'm not sure if it's a satisfactory solution or not, but so far it's the best I've found.

But I'll only get so personal online. A weblog is a fully public place, and I find I'm always aware of that.
I wonder if I'd be more personal if I were posting under a handle/personna instead of as myself. Interesting to think that being impersonal about identity might free one up to be personal about everything else.

(Though I link to my personal blog from other people's blogs, because I figure I'm in personal mode there...)

The point about data persistence is a good one, and certainly this is a public space and it can be connected to me. I too am always aware the blog occurs in a public forum. But so too does a letter to the editor; hence my "why."

That said, I was interested in the "why" behind my choosing not to be more overt in my politics. The question is important because it hinges on two separate questions: one, is it because I see topics being well-covered elsewhere or two, is it because of some self-censorship?

If my reason really is the former, this is a reasonable choice of how to spend time. If the latter, then an exceedingly serious problem exists, which deserves further exploration. And that is what I am grappling with. Do I feel the need to censor what should be debated in the public sphere? If so, why? What are the forces or elements that reinforce my judgement of self-censorship as wise? And if the elements are not particularly political, but economic or social, what are the implications? In short, do I feel it is risky to expound my views? And if I answer the last question in the affirmative, do I want to live in a society that accepts this as the status quo?

I suspect the confluence of economics, social pressures and data persistence are all factors. Something to explore though.

Indeed. In my case, I talk online about politics almost as much as I do offline. In part a sense I haven't much worth saying, but because it's hard to make politics discussion instead of proselytizing (and religious training has reinforced my instinct that it's better to act than to preach). So less fear for me than reticence.

I tend to worry more about context than censorship: instead of "Is it a good idea to say that?" it's "Is it a good idea to say that here?"

When I started, there was a logical connection thingy going there, but it seems to have evaporated into the Friday afternoon.

---L.

I think current politics are particularly hard to talk about, too--things are _so_ polarized, that it's hard to feel like one is engaging in respectful debate rather than either preaching to the choir or lecturing the non-choir. The middle ground where things can be debated seems missing--instead there are two sets of opinions with minimal intersection. It's as much a challenge offline as on.

Like the abortion "debate," writ large?

---L.

Much like, only maybe more so--finding common ground seems even harder, frightening as that is. But maybe it's only as hard.