Electronic Media & Me

Lately, I've been feeling like a defensive, embittered, insecure kind of person. I know that all you have to do is look through the archives of this blog to see the evidence of this, so why is it bothering me now, you ask? Frankly, because I don't like it. And I've been trying to get away from it. I stepped away from the blogosphere largely because I found myself embroiled in debates on web sites with unknown people who were bringing who knows what baggage from their own lives to bear on whatever issue was at hand. It was not contributing to my understanding of the issue or how other people think--which is primarily what I think I try to do when approaching these debates--and I was not contributing anything beyond fruitlessly defending my own perspective, since it was often painfully clear that I was not contributing to others' understanding of the issue or how other people think. After too many days of checking back again and again to see if anyone responded, I stepped away, and it was good. And I found Facebook, and it was a new kind of interaction, and allowed me to connect with people with whom I had lost touch for years or with family whom I never see, and it even allowed me (like the blog) to meet people whom I would not otherwise have met--all very good. It was and is still a significant time sink, but I put it down to "recreation" and "maintaining sanity" and let it go. But the nature of Facebook is that it allows you to record and publish a passing, sometimes half-formed thought. This is appealing because of my tendency to go on at length about things that I want to say, taking an hour or more and closing off discussion more often than not, whether because of my thoroughness or tediousness or whatever. But it also allows a kind of intellectual irresponsibility--the bumper sticker approach to the world of ideas. So I find myself hopping on the same kinds of debatable threads, trying to explain myself to those who disagree and often becoming frustrated by the feeling that I am being grossly misunderstood. And I wonder why--why I am being misunderstood, but more importantly, why it matters, and why, if it matters, and if I fear being misunderstood, I can't just step away. It makes it worse in a way that Facebook is not anonymous. So while on the blog, being misunderstood by someone who was writing under an assumed name and assuming a persona could be easily dismissed, the public, non-anonymous arguing on Facebook leaves me feeling a little empty and insecure. The electronic medium makes me feel comfortable enough to make observations (often with some attempt at witticism) that I would not make directly in person, but the fear of being misunderstood, ostracized because of viewpoints, or at least regarded as an oddity for thinking the way I do persists, accompanied by questions about the people who are debating me: Are they "friends"? If we disagree so strongly, why are they interested in what I have to say? What are they saying about my opinions on their end? Do I look like a freak for deviating from my intellectual coterie? How do personal opinions expressed behind the cover of keyboards and monitors affect professional relationships? Part of me wants badly not to care, and wonders what happened to the hard shell I used to possess, but part of me keeps wanting to press things--at least periodically--why? Perhaps in the hopes of being understood. I think we all need some validation from those around us--the more the merrier. And maybe I'm not looking for agreement so much as an acknowledgment that my way of thinking about things is a smart way of thinking about them after all. By voicing the opinions I do, I try to remove some of the stigma from those opinions--articulating why others who may be less well-educated might feel the way they do. Giving a stereotypical point of view a human face. However, I fear that what really happens is that the stigma is transferred to me, and I myself become subject to the stereotype. Some would say that I'm asking for it. Maybe I am. But what, then, is the alternative? To stay silent? Not to try to validate like-minded others and raise my opinions to intellectual status? That is what I did in the years before the blog and Facebook, and I may have been happier. It allowed me to find work-arounds that permitted me to write intellectually about things that *I* cared about, and so the "clamming up in public" may have been more productive. And perhaps the "intellectual work-around" is what I'm seeking in composition--the let's not talk in public about the specific things about which we vehemently disagree. Instead, let's hone our skills on more general, abstract ideas and leave politics to the dinner table. Let's talk about art & immortality instead, shall we?