Paradoxically, Andrew Sullivan’s Why I blog, supposedly a testimonial for blogging as a “new and quintessentially postmodern idiom” which “heralds a golden era for journalism, has been written and published in, well, the old-fashioned polished form. As traditional a piece as it is, the article is “mannered writing” – to appropriate, if inappropriately, BrianB’s jargon – therefore, it is reflexive, meditative, reflective, and artfully woven and leavened from the putative transitoriness of its “postmodern” cousin – the blog. FV Bloggers, quite expectedly, lend themselves to serve as “spur” or “portal” to the eternalization of Sullivan’s exaltation for the new literary form.
Sullivan’s thematic analogue: “Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.”
So far so good, although this is how the parallelism could also be seen contextually: Blogging is to no-holds-barred street-fighting as traditional literary form to the sweet science of prizefighting. There ought to be no enmity between these two forms of thought expressions, as Sullivan has correctly pointed out; one complements the other. I agree.
Anyway, in street-fighting, anyone from among the crowd can simply holler up for recognition to take on the standing fighter who just put out of commission the last contender. In prizefighting, you have to be in the league of pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao to have the chance of challenging boxing’s Golden Boy. Similarly, whereas any blogger has a chance to spar with mlq3, the blogger, that same freedom is denied him to bicker with Manolo L. Quezon III, the prolific Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) columnist.
The attempt by Sullivan to explain the genesis (or ontology) of blogging is also vague and shallow; he saw the ancient mariner’s log and a private diary as its precursors. This one has proved to be a peeve (because wasn’t Sullivan obviously aware of the connection of modern-day blogging to the dialogues of Plato, and he also called Montaigne a blogger, didn’t he?) and propelled me to react accordingly as a blogger (without of course being pressed for a deadline and hopefully without being too messy and imperfect too, because in the following I will attempt as it is my habit to blog on it in the frame of a traditional writer, perhaps something akin to Benigno’s suggestion: When you write, do it right).
Let me state my theses at this point: 1) Blogging is more than a form of thought expression or “literary liberation”; pursued as a social act, it becomes a resistance to a state of domination that has sucked up critical opposition, and 2) In the political sense, blogging is also democracy in action.
I’ve once tackled the second proposition, denying in effect the so-called postmodern dimension of blogging as seen by Andrew Sullivan, in this repost:
Blogging may be defined as an ancient liberty in a time warp.
But first, it may be well to know that there are two ancient liberties that are equated with democracy: 1) the liberty to rule and be ruled in turn, and 2) the liberty to live as one chooses. The first is also the liberty of an individual to share with others the right to run the government (political equality) and the second is the liberty to be free from the interference by such government and others (negative liberty or, sometimes, the “freedom from interference”).
In Athens during Aristotle’s times, there was no distinction between public and private sphere or between state and society where each citizen found ultimate fulfillment in public debate and politics. Direct and active participation in self-government (both legislative and judicial) was the end goal of citizenship.
Athenian democracy, now known as direct democracy, was where most Athenians served as a public official at least once during their life time; hence, to conceive of a form of representative government as practiced today was problematic for them. However, there was one essential condition for direct democracy to function well: the citizens must have enough free time to engage in public talk and participate in public administration. The convenience of slave economy (and the exclusion of women) freed up time for ancient citizens to carry those duties.
In the absence of a constitutional framework, demagoguery in Athens unfortunately allowed the occurrence of democratic tyranny (tyranny of the majority) which, for one, endangered negative liberty (the liberty to live as one chooses). Plato, the quintessential elitist, thought that strict political equality – accorded to those who were neither experienced nor knowledgeable about public affairs – sidelined the wise. The philosopher also believed that both notions of liberty (political equality and negative liberty) were inconsistent with the maintenance of order and stability. Plato’s worries were apparently resolved by the latter-day constitutional and representative democracy.
Moving fast-forward, blogging may essentially be classified into public and private electronic discourses (also exercised now by hybrid-citizens with increasing frequency). The public discourse is more closely related to political equality exercised in the realm of deliberative democracy and the private talk to negative liberty plied in the marketplace of ideas.
In a deliberative democracy, participants dialogue, reason out and then, transcending the initial conflict, DECIDE or VOTE to attain the common good; it is a counterweight to the old-fashioned policymaking. In the marketplace of ideas, participants, skirting the intervention of traditional media, disseminate ideas and information and directly compete for audience (readers, customers, critics, peers, leaders or policymakers) who BUY or TUNE OUT; it is a counterweight to the conventional media.
When blogging takes the form of free expression so exercised in the realm of deliberative democracy x x x, it occupies the highest rung in the hierarchy of democratic and constitutional values involving as it does the sharing of sovereign authority. This so-called public liberty ordinarily trumps negative liberty for the simple reason that the individual is less than the community.
Ancient blogging has however gone to the margins owing to the apparatuses of modernity/rationality enamored by the logic of efficiency. Fortunately for this unquenchable liberty, technological rationality, driven by the same premise of efficiency, has stoked its ember again as certain inane and vacuous facets of the affluent society have been unraveled.
Returning to my first thesis, I suppose it is commonsensically acknowledged there’s just so much domination in this complex and advanced society of ours that we may not be aware or refuse to be aware of. As result, we become in Gramscian terms conspirators of our unfreedom in a society that appears open and liberal but in fact shut to criticism that may rock the boat or pave the way to fundamental changes.
It has come as no surprise to me that in a debate with PDI’s John Nery awhile back, our DJB rapped the (Philippine) media in the following tone: When media ministers to private power, it loses its true office – basically that of telling as truthfully and ethically as possible what the emperor is wearing or not wearing. Not blind spots but self-imposed “blinders” have “gagged and compromised” the media in such a way as to render it as “not so free as it pretends to be.”
I guess that’s how the irrepressible DJB has abandoned his stint as op-ed writer in a mainstream media outfit and decided to focus on blogging instead, precisely to negate power, inter alia. Now, blogger-turned-columnist Bong Austero has somehow taken the opposite course. Mainstreamed (and bourgeoisized?), Austero who had urged his horde to “move on,” ended up as a co-opted soul.
As a general proposition, it affects us as singular individuals when we choose to be social actors. The self is formed, according to philosopher George Herbert Mead, when the individual gets immersed in interactive and dynamic social process. I had Mead in mind (as well as Marx and Tocqueville) when I blogged about what could possibly be one of FV’s teloi as well as the non-economic motivation of blogging, exposing in the process the disconnect of Benignoism (for those who are new to FV, Benignoism is a rigid libertarian conservatism which demands that individuals should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps even when they are bootless, or shoeless, shirtless and toothless). Here’s what I posted:
. . . not all human relations can be captured by what appears to be the totalizing effects of commodification.
One recent case close to heart has been the solidaric production – set off for the greater part of it by tingog.com – exactingly brought to bear on supposedly mainstreamer and elitist Malu Fernandez’s infamous acerbic wit against our heroic OFWs [Overseas Filipino Workers]. None, I’m certain, has expected a “wage labor” quid pro quo for being part of that uncommodified production. The solidarity, as many of us know, has been driven by some ad hoc commonality of purpose (the adhocracy of preserving the dignity of OFWs), the efforts being essentially pro bono or as the whole blogging production stands today (with the rarest of exceptions) remunerated only by way of some form of “socialized wage” – comparable to the creators’ direct enjoyment of having satisfied another’s or each other’s needs.
If this could be seen as part of Marck Ronald Rimorin’s “localized solutions outside of a metanarrative-like” one to our “grand problems,” is FilipinoVoices ready to form a consensus at least on this one score – that one of our teloi (end goals), in the face of some grueling vetting, exchanges and debates, is creation based on the commonality of such goals while in the process always zealous in preserving our individualities?
In a byteshell, blogging as a social process is thus about empowerment to act not only upon commonplace, albeit serious, issues but on grand problems of society that may impact its core institutions or do something about the obtaining caesura of critical opposition to the well-entrenched and encompassing structures, in different forms or chimeras, of a status quo that may have lost its reason for being (I really do hope in this regard that DJB, the blogger, would be as critical of the many daemons of Uncle Sam as he is of the Padre Damaso incarnates still well on the go in the Philippines today); if allowed full sway (just like when the lowercased “people power” rises to its uppercased state) blogging per se, in the form of Jurgen Habermas’ “communicative action,” may eventually force the powers that be to allow change towards a just and democratic social order sans a proletariat revolution.
Going back to Andrew Sullivan’s dictum, it is not I believe the spontaneity, the “immediacy and brevity,” the freewheeling-ness and directness of blogging that makes it different from traditional act of writing but the opportunity it offers to any run of the mill citizens in a mannered or ill-mannered form, acting in concert with other singularities, to challenge power and become formidable agents of change.
Popularity: 1% [?]
I observe that a few folks’ prime-reason to blog is to call attention to themselves, call attention to their bosom buddies (human or otherwise), or to flag the fallacious thinking and/or stupid actions of other people.
Then, there are those who want to preach (their version of weekly sermons) or simply want to share a “good event” (feedback on movies or on an interesting book or article). And on a few occasions, some folks take time to call attention to the problems of people they do not even know (in order to request charity-action from those in a position to do so).
Different folks, different strokes.
How about comparing blogging with the “karaoke” singing?
That machine really “democratizes” doesn’t it?
Now, everybody can dish out a piece to an audience who in turn has to bear with the singer and the song.
The blogger had for his starting point the supposition that he finds it a paradox for Andrew Sullivan to have written that work, “Why I blog” in the way of what Abe calls “mannered writing”.
If we pay a cursory look at the biography of known pioneer of blogging, this should explain the paradox, if that be fair a word to Andrew but I don’t think so. He has gone the length in US history as advocate who always leave historical footsteps.
Abe wants to counter the thesis of Andrew that blogging is one of spontaneity to one that challenges power to become formidable agents of change.
I was waiting to see the fine line in what Abe has to say in criticism of Andrew and failed to see any. What I saw is his seemingly inherent tendency to succumb to that mentality called “mutual admiration society” by making special mention of ‘who’s who’ in FV.
Abe underestimates Andrew in that he thinks Andrew should read the Dialogues of Plato. That I think is being too dishonest. Unless his major field of specialization is philosophy, I don’t think Abe reads that anyway.
I blog because I have message to transmit and I can say it in blogging without the need for some authority to approve it before it goes to print. If I depend on TV, radio, newspapers, etc. I doubt very much if my message will get published. But the blogging freedom that I enjoy must reckon with the same freedom that the public exercise in paying attention to my blog. That’s probably the reason why I have so much freedom in blogging because the chances of my getting noticed by the public is also very slim. In other words, at the end of the day, I would still have to reckon with a higher authority, the public, and with it follows the professional and ethical standards.
Abe
There is no rule that says blogging is second-class writing. Au contraire, mon ami. So what if “Why I blog” was so well written an explanation of precisely the author’s motivations? The Atlantic Monthly is a discriminating literary publication. It knows the really good stuff when it sees it, mannered or not. Andrew came from the MSM, as I did, we have not left it. Only transcended or escaped its limits. Let others be pencil pushers, vetted, cautious, safe, while we push the envelope. Xtreme sports with a keyboard raising tidal waves.
Which is also why I do not believe there is any RIGHT way to WRITE. That’s just the usual Benignotistic put-down of everybody else in a perverse and self-defeating attempt to attract attention to himself with droll scrolls of logical fiddlesticks and jumping-jack-gifs.
The best writing in any age, ancient or modern, always contains the following characteristic–it is always strange or even “wrong”. At first. Then it becomes a classic, and pedants think that is the right way to write.
This quality of strangeness, freshness, originality, is neither “right” nor “wrong”–for arts like writing, music, painting are not bound by those categories.
But I confess. Damaso is my main demon. I will hunt him down and kill him with my bare hands. I will look him in the eye as the light of the Father of Lies in his eyes palls to oblivion forever. He controls every sermon in every pulpit, every catechism class, every illegal Mass in a government building. He commands respect and contributions from rich widows and superstitious taipans. He is alive and well, contrary to the carefully cultivated myth that he died when they shot Rizal in the back. Actually he hid out in a Jesuit safehouse. And it was not only Maria Clara he fathered, but many others before and since with triply twisted moral and mental DNA. They control schools, churches, NGOs, foundations, newspapers, tv and radio stations, and many luminary numeraries.
American demons are being dealt with by those in the belly of the beast. I am here, near the Crack of Doom. You are there in the Shire, where despite the news, irenic oases of progress and mental health exist. We are in Mordor, in the shadow of death. Where lies are so real, they drive around with wang wangs on in dark-tinted Teutonic sedans. And they look like people, walk and talk just like people, but they are just Lies masquerading as people.
Someone has to anthologize this along with Rom’s A Brief History of Media. I only agree with very few points above but it’s a worthy opinion. Bloggers who want a higher purpose and to improve this craft should read these two.
Oh, mannered writing is stilted (unnatural, contrived) language, where form defeats meaning. or something like that, but close enough.
Hmmm…
Rather than complicate things further, I blog because it’s fun. Something tells me that fun is the best reason why many of us blog, Abe. That’s something that I feel escapes a lot of people. It is fun; whether it’s talking about issues, talking about how one’s day went, or translating lyrics… blogging is fun.
Without fun and some degree of happiness, blogging cannot empower.
has anyone said yet that one blogs so as to be heard? :D
Haha, yes. Fun, wot?
It can be a kind of wicked fun, really. Because ordinary, unknown citizens are not supposed to have the power to twit the buffalo’s nose without feeling his hot breath on their face. It is not innocent fun either, not even when blogs are about puppies and the dominant color is a Barbie doll pink. And most especially not when, as in FV, bloggers are engaging with the biggest newspapers and tv stations in certain conversations as if they were paying the same price for their tickets. Sometimes they even seem to prevail in such conversations. E.g., The Mom Blogger just blew a hole in the MSM’s superiority complex with her point on Cheche’s show about how the blogosphere uses interactivity and connectedness. Comment threads, links, search, digital archives have so empowered individuals that the role of editors and publishers is being transformed and bears no resemblance to the hierarchical virtual datu system we observe in tradiitional media organizations.
I blog because there is freedom in blogging. But when I say freedom, I made sure to myself that it had a certain limitation also. Kapag nagbitiw ako ng salita, may “bayag” akong tindigan ito kahit saan kami makarating. In blogging, I can share my thoughts and feelings para makaiwas sa high blood. Bukod dito, I can reach anyone in this world and tell them, Hey, Im here despite the fact na nasa kabundukan ako ng Sierra Madre.
Up n,
My repost did classify blogging into public and private electronic discourses. And I thought I’ve been clear about the relation I made between public electronic discourse and blogging as a social process on the one hand, and the relation between private electronic discourse and private talk on the other.
I’m not sure if the reference in the post to the pre-modern Athenian society where “there was no distinction between public and private sphere” might have confused you . . . as well as probably kantero.
karlpopper,
It’s possible I was myself playing at “mannered writing” by invoking paradox in my opening line (or forcing alliteration in “reflexive, meditative, reflective”). The fact of the matter is that I’ve been regaled more by Andrew Sullivan’s superior style and craftsmanship than the message he set out to convey . . . perhaps because of the way he proceeded to underplay the very essence and vital significance to democracy of public discourse through blogging. Considering Sullivan’s conservative bent (conservative in the sense of ideological interest in conserving time-tested beliefs such as American economic liberalism) that would be understandable.
There’s a wedge between my postulation and Sullivan’s and you are quite right by expecting the line to be fine.
The freedom or “literary liberation” Sullivan has attached to blogging has more to do with “free-form,” “immediacy,” instant publication and in your face directness of the ensuing exchange as compared to the polished and guarded traditional media. But I consider that liberatory aspect as rather confined to method and form and cognate with negative liberty (freedom from – from the editor, the publisher, the proofreader, the fact-checker, or from higher authority but the reading public as macapili put it).
On the other hand, I see blogging as substantively emancipatory or providing opportunity for active engagement and empowerment as well as for self-realization or the attainment of one’s best self (freedom to be – or to live and work wherever he wills, to pursue a career, to use his faculties to fullest potential, etc) and therefore akin to positive liberty.
Obviously, Sullivan did not write Why I blog in one sitting because he did correct himself in the middle of the piece by actually making reference to the dialogues of Plato or to the writings of pioneering essayist Montainge (indeed he called Montaigne “the quintessential blogger”) in explaining the development of blogging by other than being evolved from a ship’s log or private diary. You seemed to have missed that one, karl.
DJB,
First, I used “mannered” writing in the sense of the writing being polished, well-thought and purposive and not as BriaB puts it “stilted (unnatural, contrived).” And a literary piece like the un-bloglike Why I blog has I think a better chance of being a classic by having those qualities aside from “strangeness, freshness, originality” instead of one that only “bobs on the surface of the ocean (even if it) has its anchorage in (the deep) waters.”
Well, ami, you have my absolution of your confessed intention about all the Father Damasos still running roughshod over the Sisas and Basilios of today. Amen. But remember the controversy in 2003 involving USAID’s AGILE directing Philippine policies on economic and financial matters? I’d called AGILE’s backseat patriarchy on a message board as a friary in 21st century frock (It did rear its ugly parenting head again during the MOA-AD negotiation, didn’t it?).
The point is: Andrew Sullivan defended Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Yet he was brazen enough to endorse Kerry and then Obama because he thought Bush fucked up the war and flouted the Geneva Convention’s proscription on torture. But at the very last end of his presidency, Bush is still peddling neo-conservatism that has so far cost 4,000 American lives and 100,000 Iraqis (his farewell speech is available here in FV). You blogged about going for Obama. Now, should we be blogging soon about prosecuting Dubya for war crimes as much as little Glo’s little mischief?
Marocharim,
Passion and fun go together.
Un-bloglike? What exactly are the characteristics of blog-like and un-bloglike?
The only characteristic of blogging is anarchy. Anarchy makes the powers-that-be uncomfortable because they feed and thrive on control; control of minds especially. They will — will — control this medium. Count on it. The powers-that-be, the Damasos, the Princes, cannot afford not to.
Abe,
America is a big ship. She cannot turn on a dime. I voted for Barack Obama because we need a course correction. But I don’t think American values or American interests have changed. Besides in case you thought the election of Barack Obama means that the problems and enemies America faces were all made up by Bush and Cheney, you have to look again. We may disagree with Bush’s handling of the war and his many wrong decisions, but he did not create Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden and terrorism. They are still there and they sill want to kill pretty much all of us. That I believe and the election has not changed than or made it go away.
As in all othe major conflicts of America in the world (WW1&2, Korea) it will be a Democratic President that will fight this war too.
Hopefully he will win it and not make the mistakes of Bush and Cheney, who perhaps adopted the wrong strategy and tactics.
Only Bush is going away, not bin Laden.
But if you want to do war crimes on Bush right now, whose hand would you be strengthening?
Abe: I see that you have now been won over by the pro-GMA people and you consider the GMA-Garci phone call as “…little Glo’s little mischief”. Reason, in the end, wins over, I suppose.
Or maybe what has won you over is the supremacy of Constitutional processes to surge-the-gate mentality; that, plus you are mellowing with age. Do blog on to shed light on what has changed with you.
DJB,
Well-meaning Americans will probably agree with the observation that what makes them stand out as a great people is their deep and reverential understanding of “rule of law.” And although there’s an assortment of meanings assigned to it, I believe what’s appreciated or understood best by many Americans of rule of law is the one which provides that “no one is above the law.” This enduring American value is beyond the procedural steps of due process under the law or the Constitution which requires for example the exclusion of hearsays or the fruit of poisoned three (illegally obtained evidence). What it simply prescribes is that “if you do the crime you do the time” regardless of your status or station in life.
People of power, wealth, influence, or senators, congressmen, governors, executives and ceo’s of powerful corporation as any other in America are more often than not made to account for their criminal misconduct, whether petty or grave, by the judgment of their peers. Take away this conception of the rule of law, and you sell out its moral foundation to what is anathema to the very soul of the American way.
So, the proper question is what (not who) is strengthened when rule of law is made applicable to all? And the answer I believe is the moral ascendancy of the American system. Any other would be just another arrogation of American exceptionalism which contravenes the deeper meaning of rule of law even as it may provide its victims false ground to commit morally deviant behaviors.
Up n,
You can imply from the foregoing that GMA’s mischief is little only because Bush’s is a “big ship.” But if only Filipinos can religiously apply the same great system we borrowed from the Americans, their own greatness cannot possibly be far behind.
This could then be an opportunity for both the Americans and the Filipinos to live up to a prized moral tradition – respect for the rule of law.
Abe,
We are not that small of a ship either, being the 12th largest country in the world by population. But America is “big” not only in her own right, but because of her relationship with China, India, Europe, Russia, and the rest of the world. It is inconceivable now for example for America to think she can actually go it alone. If anything is destroying the extremest forms of American exceptionalism, it is the financial crisis, which forces Americans to face up to the fact that they are part of the world. That there is only jetliner of the world economy, and we are all in it. Even if some are in First Class, they can afford a crash just as much as those in the cargo hold.
Enlightened Self-interest is however my ambition for America in the era of Obama. That too is what Filipinos ought to develop.
What we have learned recently is that in both cases, ideology has gotten in the way of doing what really needs doing, and still does.
Dean,
One of the differences between ideology and values:
Values are faithfully applied to facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question. – Barack Obama