Uneasy Rhetoric

Vu d’ici posts “10 reasons why blogging is good for you,” and acknowledges that, while blogging is a very public (and mildly if not sometimes very exhibitionistic) act, it is also personal and introspective.

Her first reason, letting the world know about you, gets to the exhibitionist part. However, three of her reasons get directly to the personal: getting to know yourself, deepening our understanding of human nature, and a hope for blogging to make us better people.

Granted, those are all a bit touchy-feely, but they present one of the main reasons I’ve been drawn to blogging. As someone with a wide variety of interests and a broad knowledge of trivial topics with little depth in any one subject, I have often found it difficult to make and defend arguments. It is always more comfortable for me to step into the other person’s shoes in order to avoid confrontation. I have never apologized for being a liberal or an intellectual (for example) but I have also not adequately defended those positions. Blogging allows me to take steps to change that. I can work out my opinions and express them in a forum that is very much my own but that nevertheless has a potential public audience.

Do I think blogging will make me or any of my readers better people? Probably not. But if it gives me a little clarity and a little confidence in this uncertain and uneasy world, then I’m okay with it.

(found via ni vu ni connu, who cites reason number seven, “You never know what you might find” and comments that the list is “A perfect does of honesty, realism, and utopia”)