To Link or Not To Link, That ‘Tis the Question

I’ve largely stayed out of the ongoing debate within the blogger community of the relative merits of providing links versus writing your own material because the subject doesn’t particularly interest me. Even though my interest in blogging was triggered by wood s lot, I’ve always focused on writing my own essays and providing links as best I could.

Partially that’s been determined by the content of my blog. I’m writing about self-discovery, and I am THE expert in that field. After all, I’m discovering MYSELF. Also, as a life-long reader and English teacher, I feel pretty confident discussing literature, even though I’m purposely not providing the kind of in-depth analysis required by some colleges.

It turns out that part of who I am, though, is someone who is concerned not just about himself but about others and about the evironment that we all have to grow out of.

It’s when I am interested in these areas outside my expertise, though, that I think direct linking makes the best sense. Now, I can rant about a topic as well as anyone I know. Unfortunately, although ranting may provide motivation to get involved, it doesn’t provide the information needed to make intelligent decisions. That requires information and opinions that can only be provided by experts in the field.

I have some very strong opinions about the environment, and I like to think that I know more about it than the average person. However, I know I don’t have the kind of expertise to make sound decisions here.

If I had all the time in the world, I would probably just write extensive research papers on these topics and break the papers down into manageable, or not-so-manageable, entries. The trouble is that I don’t have that kind of time. So I’m going to have to rely on a short summary essay and provide the kinds of links that can give an in-depth analysis.

Unfortunately, I’m not the wood s lot of links, so even this set of links, like my earlier attempts to discuss NAFTA’s Chapter 11, will probably be inadequate.

Still, it’s better than sitting around doing nothing and feeling bad about it and yourself. I’m not going to devote my life to saving the environment, but neither am I going to sit around quietly watching it be destroyed.

Thanks Bloggers

Here’s a fun adaptation of the Tao Te Ching via nutcote.

I’ve been enjoying the excellent daily links to artwork provided by Synergy, pure enjoyment.

Enjoyed Kerouac’s “Skid Row Wine”and I have been enjoying the site a lot more since he quit forcing poems into justified paragraphs (oops, Sorry, that’s the bad ex-teacher in me– must be the old yearbook advisor)

Thanks for the Ground to Air Signals rileydog. I’m going to need these now that hiking season is about to begin.

Apologies to visual darkness for the negative comment about his understanding of On the Road over at randomWalks. It’s okay, you’ll get over it, teachers have to have tough skins, right? Besides, PageCount said really good things about it.

Most of all, thanks to wood s lot for the folder containing 20 links to articles I still haven’t had time to finish. Sorry I only read 60 pages per hours and my blog entries are so long I don’t even need to go near the debate that Jonathon burningbird are having about the proper length of entries. (Let’s blame it on Diane since she’s touring Europe right now and won’t see this anyhow)

I Get by with a Little Help from my Friends

I was surprised by the number of emails and links I received on my recent blog about being true to yourself when blogging. But when I read Visible Darkness’ comments on that blog, I was reminded that there were several things left unsaid in that entry, though I’ve already said some of this in “Why I Blog.”

In particular, he, and others, reminded me that I probably didn’t give enough credit to those who visit my blog. The truth is that I was happy doing this page when I had four or five visitors a day, but I’m even happier doing it now that more people are reading it. And I do appreciate the emails I receive from visitors to my site because it’s nice to know others find something worthwhile in the site.

I especially appreciate the links from other sites that I admire and read daily. When I began writing this blog, a single link from wood s lot made it easier to write the next day’s entries because I felt he was helping to transform a small part of the web into the kind of place I always envisioned it should be and because I was happy to be a small part of that.

Visible Darkness and a friend also made me realize how easy it is to get pigeonholed. Most of the links I get are to my poetry entries, and I like that because poetry is one of the passions in my life and I want others to share that passion. I’ve also been writing a lot about poetry because I tend to have an addictive personality, and I’m on a poetry kick now that the famous Northwest rain clouds have set in.

But like Visible Darkness, I don’t want to get stereotyped as a literary site. Even my best friend didn’t remember that I started this blog because I was so upset about the war in Afghanistan. Literature is an important part of my life, but when it comes right down to it I’m an old-fashioned liberal who’s mostly concerned about the environment and the state of the world. In the long run, I expect all of these concerns will become a part of this blog.

One reason I started a blog rather than a website is because it allowed me the freedom to be me. I felt like I could talk about anything I wanted to talk about here and express my personal opinions, something I never felt comfortable doing in the classroom. It’s also something I didn’t think I could do in a traditional web site, like the one I had planned on doing on hiking in the Northwest.

I write here because it gives me a chance to be part of the larger world on my own terms. Like many of my fellow bloggers, I want to improve myself while helping to make the world a better place.

To Thine Own Self Be True

Synthesis the other day wrote:

“You can make aesthetic and critical judgments about politicians, current events, art, literature, and most everything else.

Why not people?

That’s the inevitable conclusion. If your life is a story, you can be judged. If it’s found to suck, well, let’s just say nobody will read your blog.”

I was so offended by that argument that, despite the fact I’ve been preoccupied with finishing up writing on Anne Sexton, the idea has been swirling in my head all week.

To complicate matters, this idea keeps bouncing off another current hot topic, self-esteem. And, of course, both of these made me recall Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance.”

If thirty years of teaching high school taught me anything, it taught me not to trust group opinions. Popularity in and of itself is not a proof of worth. The most popular students in high school had nothing, except popularity, over students who are hardly noticed, or who were even made fun of. Another obvious example is the media. Is a popular movie written for teenage boys really better art than a less popular play written by Samuel Beckett? Popularity is not proof of much but popularity.

Perhaps the most annoying part of the argument, though, is the implication that other people have the right to judge you as a person on the basis of your blog. I doubt that anyone has the right, or the ability, to judge another person’s life, particularly based on something as superficial as a blog. Society as a group is no more capable of judging the worth of a particular individual then they are of resisting the pressures of the mass media that make their lives a living hell by convincing them that material possessions can somehow fill the void in their lives. Emerson isn’t far from right when he says, “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.”

Maybe self-esteem is important in our society because it allows us to make our own decisions, allows us to stand up to those who would make us conform to their standards and impose their ideas of right and wrong on us, whether those standards are truly applicable to our lives or not. Everyone, parents, teachers, friends, class mates, claims to know what is best for us, but it is an illusion. In the end, no one can live your life but you, and no one, no matter how many blogs you blog, truly knows what you feel inside.

Though I’m less than certain there is a clear connection between a lack of self esteem and a need for praise from others, a lack of self-esteem seems to make some people, at least, seek affirmation from others instead of trusting themselves. I suspect that people like Anne Sexton craved attention to fill a void in their lives. Their lack of self-esteem makes it necessary to seek outside confirmation that they are “okay,” even though they can never truly be okay until they themselves believe they are okay.

Increasingly in our society people need to feel “popular” to be happy. Some seem to even feel a need to attain their “15 minutes of fame.” They will do anything to be noticed, to be “somebody.” If they produce a blog and are desperate enough, their blog might very well become “popular,” or at least get an amazing number of hits. Does that mean that their life “doesn’t suck?” Does this kind of popularity have any meaning at all, except, perhaps, to confirm that an amazing number of people have bad taste?

On the other hand, another person might produce a web page that appeals to a limited audience. As a result, the page gets only a limited number of hits, but it draws the people the blogger was looking for. Does that mean that his life “sucks?” As far as I am concerned, if the person has produced the page he wants to produce, it doesn’t require a certain number of hits to validate the worth of that page. As Emerson says, “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”