Why write a blog? I've been asking this question for a while and now that I have decided to start one, I believe is good to start by sharing my doubts and feelings on it.
It all started when some friend, bloggers also, suggested me to write a blog. My first reaction was to ask why; do I really need to share my thoughts with other people? Well, it's nice, it's enriching and empowering to have the feeling that people you don't know and (contrary to your friends) don’t have to listen to your opinions, would like to. On the other hand, do I really want to express my ideas in an unknown world, not knowing where my words will arrive? This is somehow frightening.
In the last days with all the protests in Tunisia, Egypt now and some time ago during the elections in Iran, voices were heard on the strength of the internet and bloggers in mobilizing people and generating protest. Do bloggers really have this power? If this is true, then I am right in being afraid, it's too much a responsibility. But then, I don't think that many people will read it. Moreover, though I believe in the power of the web, I do not think it is that powerful. I recommend you a very good article by Malcolm Gladwell published in The New Yorker on October 4th 2010 on that issue (article).
Anyhow, returning to my fears, the idea that my words will go to cyberspace and fly without control through the inputs and outputs of the web seems as a science fiction frightening thriller. Maybe this has to do with the fact that I am from the desert generation, I am not from the typewriter age but I was not born into the web world. Take into account that for me the fax machine is a mysterious magical invention. Putting a page into a machine and a copy of that page appears in the other part of the world only be making a phone call, is incredible.
I remember the first time I heard about this fax machine. I was nine or ten years old, and there was this Coca Cola album on the countries of the world. I record telling my father that in the details on Israel, instead of showing Jerusalem as its capital it said Tel Aviv. Please, let us not start with politics and political discussion right now, I will write about politics so there will be a chance. Let us return to the fax anecdote. I went with my father to his office, he spoke to the Israeli Ambassador in Uruguay, and we sent him the copy of the page by fax. When getting the new album, the correction was done, and Jerusalem appeared as capital. Apart from feeling that I had changed the world, I still remember that magical scene of the fax and my father's explanation on how does it works. What a paradox? My father explained me how the fax worked and he now does not know nor wants to know how to start a computer. Several years ago I had to walk hours in Montevideo's downtown to find him ink for his typewriter.
So there is a chance that my fears are simply technological fears? You must see 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Furthermore, I believe that words have power and one must be careful in using them. I am not talking about any magical power, I must say that I am quite skeptical on transcendental issues and I am much of a non believer or non religious though I have my beliefs. What I am saying is that ideas are powerful. When posting opinions you must be careful for several reasons. No matter how many people read this blog or any blog the ideas are there and they can have effects beyond your initial intentions. Moreover, once you wrote and post them they take a bit of a life of their own. In my adult years I have change opinion million of times; just thinking how fool I was ten or fifteen years ago by thinking in a specific way it sometimes even embarrassing. Knowing that ten years from now someone will be able to pull up a post in which I said something I regret is frightening. On the other hand, as someone said, only a donkey does not change opinions; though I sometimes believe donkeys do and there others who don't.
A further issue is my high auto critic. I always have this feeling that my thoughts are not good enough. I also give in too easily to more authoritative opinions. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I grew up in the last years of military dictatorship and also that my parents send me to a British old fashion school in which critical thinking and independent thought was far from their pedagogic agenda. I believe they didn't even have a pedagogic agenda.
Last is the issue of laziness. In a conference last month in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the workshop on political economy which I participated, I met a very nice Irish doctoral student, a blogger himself, who encourage all of us to write a blog. He said that is a good writing exercise which obliges you to sit down and jot down your thoughts by keeping the blog updated. Who has time for this? Can this initial enthusiasm be kept up? Well, I am writing my master thesis and, though I like very much what I am doing, any excuse to escape from it is well received. What better excuse than writing a blog. If a doctoral student has time, I don't have excuses.
After all these wariness and fear, as always my wife had the last saying. As a good kindergarten teacher she told me very patiently that she is fed up of having to listen to my thoughts on politics, sports, work, neoliberalism and other issues, and that she needs to share with me all her kindergarten stories so in a kind and sweet voice told me: "go and write a damn blog!!!"
So here I am with this first post. What is this blog about? Well, about everything and nothing. It is simply about what I feel like, something of a catharsis. You want to know what this blog is about, just read it and please comment.
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