… I don’t presume to know them all; “Truth on Record” is one.
(c) 2018, Davd
A respected correspondent, responding to a recent blog on this site, asked “what purpose does this particular blog serve?” Whatever his exact motivation, his specific question provided me with cause to address “the question in general”: Why blogs, and are they worth writing or just ego farts?
The apparent nautical origin of the word “blog” offered an anchor point of sorts, for a reflection on blogging and on its merits and value1.
“Blog” seems to be a contraction of “web log”, analogous to a ship’s log of events and conditions on the voyage[s]. When i filled in as a crewman on a log salvage tug, the captain kept a log of which i will recall one item: “Keel struck a rock the chart shows to be a fathom below it. No damage. Beware low low tides.”2
Why that event and the condition that caused it, were logged, seems obvious. What Captain Karl might have done the next time he sailed that passage at a very low tide, is read the chart to find which side of that rock to steer. (If he was towing a raft of logs, they would not go deep enough to hit the rock; only the tug would need to avoid it.) The logs of his recent voyages through the same passage would be reminders of its quirks and dangers.
My July blog developed from a morning reflection, resting after a big breakfast: Shrinkage of the bourgeoisie to a tiny minority is demographic nonsense when applied to genders. If the Marxist theory is plausible, then the application is invalid; and making that application, especially publicly (rather than while enjoying recreational drugs in private, where — even if it’s only coffee and tea — standards are lower) discredits those who utter such nonsense. If the Marxist theory is implausible, then the use of it should likewise discredit those who utter it; the utterance is still nonsense, just a different kind.
I don’t know if the Marxist theory of the vanishing bourgeoisie is plausible. I do not recall reading of it ever happening in an actual “nation state”. Either way, plausible or not, it should not be used as part of the foundation of a moral and political ideology if its application therein is nonsense.
A blog may legitimately have no definite purpose beyond encouraging reflection. Capt. Karl could legitimately have written, “Three speedboats, apparently clam pirates, headed together toward Ucluelet. Why together?” (This entry is fictional.)
Such an entry might later enable him to testify more credibly if those three speedboats coincided in time with the disappearance of someone of interest to the Law, or an important theft, or merely the presence of people in Ucluelet who had not got there by road.
Unlike a ship’s log or a diary, a blog is intentionally public; which need not entail wide readership. As of the end of last month, it has been possible to access that statement that “a Marxist class-analysis of gender relations” is demographic nonsense. Someone else might value being able to cite it and state “This is not my sole notion, this has also been said, even published, by a retired professor with 180+ blogs up.”
Putting the truth as best we know it, on record, has merit in and of itself. Imaginably, Karl’s log entry about a rock will be of use in correcting the chart he was reading. Imaginably, some man who has felt shame for being “one of those privileged men” [when in fact women are more privileged] will have an ah, so desu ka moment that is good for his mental health and his courage in stating his best estimate of the truth.
From philosophical and moral reflection, to chart correction, and more generally, indeed very generally — blogging, like keeping a ship’s log, is about putting the truth on record. Any fair-minded, honest use of the truth so published, is “OK”; and the [b]logger should not be shamed if he did not anticipate that use. I used to be a scientist; indeed, at a much lower work intensity, i still am. One of the great merits of science is that one [wo]man’s truth can be put to good use by another, which use the first man, who published it, need not have imagined.
In a word from the philosophy of science, science is crescive. It builds on itself. If some reader who had been fooled by the “Marxist analysis of gender relations”, reading that blog, concludes that the “Marxist analysis” is nonsense and then proceeds to something better, something more valid as an explanation; that becomes one good use of “Feminism’s False Foundation” … and … other readers can find other good uses for it, too.
No, I didn’t know what-all specific uses the blog would have3. My purpose was more general: Put some truth on record.
———- Notes: ————
1 … or values — because a blog can be valuable for more than one reason — but “values” can have a double meaning: “worths” in the plural; or philosophical biases.
2. Charts, iirc, give depths at mean lower low water, and depths in whole fathoms.
3. Publishing a cogent fact that has been widely unnoticed, like shining a light on a dusty rusty sword at the back of a cave that has yielded only pottery and wineskins until then, makes for thought and discussion. The discoverer of the sword may or may not be the best discussant.
About Davd
Davd (PhD, 1966) has been a professor, a single father keeping a small commercial herb garden so as to have flexible time for his sons, and editor of _Ecoforestry_. He is a practicing Christian, and in particular an advocate of ecoforestry, self-sufficiency horticulture, and men of all faiths living together "in peace and brotherhood" for the fellowship, the efficiency, and the goodwill that sharing work so often brings.
What Purposes That Blog?
… I don’t presume to know them all; “Truth on Record” is one.
(c) 2018, Davd
A respected correspondent, responding to a recent blog on this site, asked “what purpose does this particular blog serve?” Whatever his exact motivation, his specific question provided me with cause to address “the question in general”: Why blogs, and are they worth writing or just ego farts?
The apparent nautical origin of the word “blog” offered an anchor point of sorts, for a reflection on blogging and on its merits and value1.
“Blog” seems to be a contraction of “web log”, analogous to a ship’s log of events and conditions on the voyage[s]. When i filled in as a crewman on a log salvage tug, the captain kept a log of which i will recall one item: “Keel struck a rock the chart shows to be a fathom below it. No damage. Beware low low tides.”2
Why that event and the condition that caused it, were logged, seems obvious. What Captain Karl might have done the next time he sailed that passage at a very low tide, is read the chart to find which side of that rock to steer. (If he was towing a raft of logs, they would not go deep enough to hit the rock; only the tug would need to avoid it.) The logs of his recent voyages through the same passage would be reminders of its quirks and dangers.
My July blog developed from a morning reflection, resting after a big breakfast: Shrinkage of the bourgeoisie to a tiny minority is demographic nonsense when applied to genders. If the Marxist theory is plausible, then the application is invalid; and making that application, especially publicly (rather than while enjoying recreational drugs in private, where — even if it’s only coffee and tea — standards are lower) discredits those who utter such nonsense. If the Marxist theory is implausible, then the use of it should likewise discredit those who utter it; the utterance is still nonsense, just a different kind.
I don’t know if the Marxist theory of the vanishing bourgeoisie is plausible. I do not recall reading of it ever happening in an actual “nation state”. Either way, plausible or not, it should not be used as part of the foundation of a moral and political ideology if its application therein is nonsense.
A blog may legitimately have no definite purpose beyond encouraging reflection. Capt. Karl could legitimately have written, “Three speedboats, apparently clam pirates, headed together toward Ucluelet. Why together?” (This entry is fictional.)
Such an entry might later enable him to testify more credibly if those three speedboats coincided in time with the disappearance of someone of interest to the Law, or an important theft, or merely the presence of people in Ucluelet who had not got there by road.
Unlike a ship’s log or a diary, a blog is intentionally public; which need not entail wide readership. As of the end of last month, it has been possible to access that statement that “a Marxist class-analysis of gender relations” is demographic nonsense. Someone else might value being able to cite it and state “This is not my sole notion, this has also been said, even published, by a retired professor with 180+ blogs up.”
Putting the truth as best we know it, on record, has merit in and of itself. Imaginably, Karl’s log entry about a rock will be of use in correcting the chart he was reading. Imaginably, some man who has felt shame for being “one of those privileged men” [when in fact women are more privileged] will have an ah, so desu ka moment that is good for his mental health and his courage in stating his best estimate of the truth.
From philosophical and moral reflection, to chart correction, and more generally, indeed very generally — blogging, like keeping a ship’s log, is about putting the truth on record. Any fair-minded, honest use of the truth so published, is “OK”; and the [b]logger should not be shamed if he did not anticipate that use. I used to be a scientist; indeed, at a much lower work intensity, i still am. One of the great merits of science is that one [wo]man’s truth can be put to good use by another, which use the first man, who published it, need not have imagined.
In a word from the philosophy of science, science is crescive. It builds on itself. If some reader who had been fooled by the “Marxist analysis of gender relations”, reading that blog, concludes that the “Marxist analysis” is nonsense and then proceeds to something better, something more valid as an explanation; that becomes one good use of “Feminism’s False Foundation” … and … other readers can find other good uses for it, too.
No, I didn’t know what-all specific uses the blog would have3. My purpose was more general: Put some truth on record.
———- Notes: ————
1 … or values — because a blog can be valuable for more than one reason — but “values” can have a double meaning: “worths” in the plural; or philosophical biases.
2. Charts, iirc, give depths at mean lower low water, and depths in whole fathoms.
3. Publishing a cogent fact that has been widely unnoticed, like shining a light on a dusty rusty sword at the back of a cave that has yielded only pottery and wineskins until then, makes for thought and discussion. The discoverer of the sword may or may not be the best discussant.
About Davd
Davd (PhD, 1966) has been a professor, a single father keeping a small commercial herb garden so as to have flexible time for his sons, and editor of _Ecoforestry_. He is a practicing Christian, and in particular an advocate of ecoforestry, self-sufficiency horticulture, and men of all faiths living together "in peace and brotherhood" for the fellowship, the efficiency, and the goodwill that sharing work so often brings.