Blogs Are Worthless, Which Is Why We Write Them

It's been a long time since I've posted something here and frankly, it is because I think that blogs are rarely read. So writing here is somewhat of a waste.  Blogs I think are somewhat of a therapy artifice, used to make authors feel better as they scream into the silent, apathetic universe. Why does an author need to be heard? Well, I think it happens not because of some great purpose or some unique message needing to be heard, though most authors would like to think they matter. I think it happens as a result of the intersection of instincts: needing to socialize; too shy, introverted or autistic to socialize; and the inherent compulsive, instinctual directive that directs every human to share knowledge, even if they don't want to. I mean the ultimate way to give the universe "the finger" is to learn something unique and valuable and then keep it to yourself. There is a certain instinctual smugness in that we all contain the instinct "all we know is all there is to know." Without that instinct, no one could make a decision. However, some people claim that they know nothing about a subject. While it might be scientifically admirable and a kind of faux humbleness, what that really says is I don't want to be held responsible for knowing something. I definitely don't want to be held responsible for being wrong. You can see how shyness could definitely be facilitated by this. In the past few decades, this sort of feeling has been institutionalized by the phrase "I'm just saying." 

Part of what's happening too is that our limited mind is trying to come to grips with the sheer number of people in the world. Our mind was never designed to have so many people being "adjacent," something social media helps project. Social media though also gives a false sense of who is in the world. Like who isn't on social media? Well, a lot of people, mostly the successful ones. A successful person doesn't have time to peck away to people with randomly triggered rage who mostly just want to talk without listening anyway. One mark of the hopeless is to try to promote something through social media. If you want to give something away to someone who is unlikely to buy much of anything nor be in a position to share their experience, then social media is for you. Social media and gaming, in particular, is for giving a person a false sense of purpose.

What happened before social media, before social media was around to give a sense of purpose? A factory job or an engineering job producing something tangible, is what happened. The factory gave a person purpose. You became as expert by rising in a company.   Your expertise was compared by comparing your company against its numerous competitors. Numerous competitors. When the competitors go away, your expertise becomes de facto, in other words, you just become a cog in a mindless machine. No one truly knows how much you know and how much is the fame of royalty. 

And so if you are a cog in a large, monopolistic corporate machine, you come home and do your cog jobs, and then you head to social media to feel valuable. Your children had better be friggin smart and independent, a combination that doesn't always go together. Or if you come home from you success laden job, well the grandparents had better have been reading to your children. Or perhaps you will read, but it can't be that crap from the school book club (store in disguise). It's got to be something worthwhile, something monumental that will teach your kid the things that you are too tired to teach, a prompt for the life lessons you should be giving. 

My purpose is simply to be that book. And if I am not, then I will simply shoot the finger at the universe.