The Blog Of Dysfunction

Blogging is injurious! It is injurious both to individuals as well as to society. It is a destructive weapon. A True representative of “Disruptive Technologies” contrived in the twenty-first century.

Since the time man existed on this planet, he has desired personal and social stability. One cannot find fault with that. After all who wants to live on a planet when what is a cup of coffee today, is called a bottle of hair oil tomorrow, or who is one’s wife today ends up as one’s sister tomorrow. Imagine the world where one in is a PhD today, and considered not fit even for the nursery tomorrow. Certainly, I would not relish a world where I eat on the dining table today, and from the trash-can tomorrow. We need stability — and a good amount of that.

For many millennia the leaders of the human society [found in the world of religion, politics, social movements, academia, and even families] have known the need for stability and have tried to create it everywhere. There are two basic methods to do so: event-based and intelligence-based methods. In the first one, those “conformists” who control society try to keep the events surrounding humans as fixed as possible. In the second, the “thinkers” who control society give tools of thinking to individuals empowering them to constantly assess the situation and develop strategies to cope with them. Some examples would make it clear.

Church Service needs to have some kind of (obvious or understood) order, lest it become chaotic. Therefore almost every church has a (written or unwritten) order of service. For example, in our church they usually sing two songs in the beginning, and then they pray. However, those who started it all do not find anything wrong with one song and two prayer. All what they want is order. However, soon the conformists impose “two songs and the prayer” as a rigid rule. This is the only way they can keep order in society.

Unfortunately, the majority of “boundary keepers” in the society are conformists and not thinkers. Consequently, do not read novels, do not grow your nails, do not get a hair cut on Sundays, and so many don’ts soon become the norm for them. Each society, church, family, and denomination accumulates an unbearable baggage of do nots very soon. People simply struggle under the weight, but they cannot cast it away lest the social or religious group cast them away. Worse, this conformism soon blunts the thinking of almost everyone in the particular sub-group, so that “conformism for stability” soon becomes the most powerful instrument of intellectual castration. Every moment the intelligence of another person is rendered impotent. So great is the social pressure. Greater than the peer pressure.

Enter blogs, and the minority that has escaped being neutered through social pressure get an avenue to shout wide and loud. Soon a lot of like-minded persons begin to congregate around the more interesting blogs and they become yet more powerful due to the captive audience. Worse, they way watching (or reading) what is forbidden causes one’s “innocence” to be lost, the impotence-causing innocence of a lot of fence sitters is shattered. And worse than that, a lot of people who never realized that there is something like independent and intelligent thinking are awakened for the first time. (My comments here apply only to socially benevolent and benign blogging. The rest will be the discussed in another post, if they do not by that time rise up to stifle my voice).

Awakening is good. It is healthy. It is like the person’s experience who during an evening walk for the first time discovers the beauties of nature and also realizes that he should become a nature-painter. Awakening brings the best out of us. It opens they way of fulfillment one did not know existed. Blogs do play a role in that direct. But then the “conformism for stability” crowd is not happy because blogs teach people to think. Once they think, they cannot be suppressed. Thus for conformists, and for those who wish to remain in that rut, Blogging is injurious.

For the rest of us it is a tool of liberation and empowerment.

Do you blog?

Guest Posting By: Dr. Johnson C. Philip
http://www.ApologeticsWiki.Com