blogs, ego

Why write this?  Why not just think it and be satisfied?

There is a bit of egotism that goes along with keeping a blog.  I suppose it is true of a diary as well.  We have to believe that somehow what we think and write, is important, that it matters to others, or else we could just have these thoughts and let them go.
I think that with a blog we place even more potential, than with a diary, on the possibility that what we think is important.  A blog can be read by almost unlimited numbers of people, potentially.  Our potential readers, those whom we might influence, are as yet not even known to us.

So it must take some kind of ego, to write things down in a manner that allows for that kind of readership.

Why not just have a conversation with a friend, a family member, the person sitting next to you at the bar?

On a blog our thoughts and words can linger in cyber space and are free to be accessed from just about anywhere people might be.

To have such far reaching access to our thoughts and words must indicate some great importance in them.  Either that or some great importance we feel about ourselves, or hope for ourselves.

The real time social media forums like MugBook, or Twatter take this a step further.  In those forums, it seems that we feel that most of our experiences in life are so very important to the rest of the world that they must be made available immediately.

I could justify my use of this blog by saying that it is more convenient than typing or writing in a journal that is seen only by me, or individuals I actively choose.  I could say that I prefer typing on a keyboard to writing in a diary because it is neater and more easily corrected and faster.  Some of that might even be true, but it doesn't change the possibility that I believe that what I think and say is of some importance to the rest of the world, enough so that I should give my opinion, or share my story with out being asked to.

I don't know how much of the earth's resources are used up to allow me to keep this blog, or for all of use to keep all blogs and social media connections.  Like most things regarding our use and abuse of this life support system we call earth, it is not something that can be isolated for observation and still really give us a meaningful understanding.

Layers and layers of connectivity describe anything that we do.  We can't not have an affect on the world.  We can however affect the world in a way that is not destructive to the world itself.  I don't believe that any of us do this really and in this way we differ vastly and most significantly from most other forms of life.

Some might say that I should feel not guilt over keeping this blog, after all it is such a small bit of energy that allows it to exist.  Depends how you look at it, I think.  There is this computer and all the base materials that it was made from that had to come from someplace and then be refined, shipped, formed into parts, assembled by machines or humans in plants that need to be energized, and then it had to be packaged and that packaging had to come from somewhere and be processed and shipped, and then the computer had to be shipped and marketed and I had to drive to pick it up, or it had to be delivered.  That doesn't even get it plugged in and turned on.  Once it's on electricity has to power it.  We can chase down the origin and continued source of the things we use until we have the giant web of connectivity that allows us what we think of as simple things until all the lines of the web would fill up any void, and space between them.  That is what it takes to have and do simple harmless little things like keep a blog.

I don't think the things I write here are as important as needing to take all that.  I don't know what is.