I’m not sure if every blogger in the end reaches that stage of thinking they don’t have a lot more to say. I’d imagine most do, but if they’re any good, they’re wrong. Perhaps the mistake many of us make is to stick with the blogosphere as the only available medium.
The events of the last ten years – but especially the last ten weeks – have made many of us reassess what life is about, and I am no exception to that.
One obvious (but distracting) dimension of online commentary is the unquenchable thirst for news out there. It’s great to use one’s own ingenuity to wind up knowing something that hardly anyone else does: on the standard Slogtest parameter (sex) it’s better than most copulation one has experienced….and lasts a lot longer when it comes to self esteem.
News viralisation via social media has, however, become an obsession for too many people. ‘Click-bait’ is a good term for it…and clicks have turned into pretty much the only criterion of successful communication.
Of late, I have of course been hugely disillusioned by the full-throttle advance of Dorsey, Zuckerberg et al into the sort of heartless neo-Nazi censorship that reduces one’s daily readership by 75%. One thing I have learned is that these slithering bottom-feeders have (at my last count) some seventeen ways of cutting out your larynx without anaesthetic, and one consistent answer to the accusation when caught: “We never do it”.
In a way, a lot of what they engage in is actually overkill….and may well in the end have a boomerang effect on them. That’s to say, the Leftlib ideologues and assorted State lackeys have a internal data-repellent system whose function is to blot out all evidence that they might be wrong.
And this is really my central point tonight: you can expose data to show a Covidiot that C19 is simply another cull mutation virus (of little or no significance) until the last cows abducted following alien close encounters come home…..come what may, the ideologues will carry on gibbering their catechism.
It’s akin to attacking a robot-driven Sherman tank with doves.
It’s not hard to explain who (and what) I am. I believe in people not systemics. I believe in emotional intelligence not AI. I believe in the empirical testing of philosophy’s social insights as the best way to maximise individual human fulfilment. I believe future actuality is hardly ever predicted by computer models. I believe in the inquisitively open mind rather than the closed ranks of crowds.
I am a grandfather, a writer, a philosopher, a persuader, a humorist, a musician, a standup, a footballer, a pacifist and a gardener…with diminishing skills the further down the list you get. I’m fascinated by physics, the human brain, etymology, biography and wild animals.
That’s it. But I’m not a jobbing hack. And at times, one gets the feeling of being too close to that self-definition.
There are many ways to self-defend against tyrants. We should all play to our strengths; and we should all acknowledge better and broader methods when we find them.
This involves experimentation, mistakes, failure and potential ridicule. So be it.
At this point, I’d like to thank (in no particular order of time or merit) Amy, Emmo, Clive, Eleni, Christopher, Fuong, Marian, Tertu, Nigel, Janet, Gerard, Mike, Rita, Carole, Arlene, Johnny, Geoff, JB, Judie, Joni, Lumley, Val, Linda, Eckhart, George and RC for helping me avoid the detours and stay on the best road with the nicest views.
The Slog 