I quite dislike the word “blog”. Surely it’s a portmanteau of “blob” and “fog”, or “blub” and “bog”, or “ugly” and “blubber”. (Edit: I looked it up, and it’s short for “web-log”, which doesn’t make it any better.) It’s not fun to say, and “b” is my least favorite letter to type. Even the shape of the word is squat and ugly, with a lot of awkwardly asymmetrical round bits. So there’s really no reason I should write one, right?
Well… that would be true, except I feel like I can’t not write one.
I need to write, because it’s one of the only ways that I can understand myself and my world. And I need this understanding, because I desperately, desperately need and want to live a life of goodness. I want to be remembered as a wise person who loved greatly, and who maybe did a little bit to improve his world.
I know, I’m starting this thing out on shaky philosophical ground. No ontology, no tracing back my ideas to Plato, no citations of Sartre or Kierkegaard. Just the naked, a priori, unconditional assumption that I’d rather pursue “goodness” (whatever that is) at all costs.
It may be a poor philosophical starting point, but I’d actually argue it’s a decent neurological one. In Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind*, he argues that we humans actually make our decisions emotionally first of all, and only later do our brains catch up to provide “rational” evidence for our beliefs. Because our brains have been doing it for a long time and are ninja-fast at this post-hoc rationalization, most of us (myself included) never notice the bizarre neurological placement of the emotional cart before the “rational” horse. The result: many of our core “rational” beliefs are just intelligent-sounding facades hiding base emotional reactions.
In other words, if I had said I was writing this blog to “actualize my Platonic form of humanity in a neo-Kierkegaardian manner”, then Haidt would tell me I’m actually self-rationalizing my mostly emotional reaction to the prospect of dying forgotten and unmourned. (Okay, I added that last bit.)
I don’t know that I’m all that good at recognizing when my emotions short-circuit my brain, so I decided, upon reading Haidt’s book, to just own up to my irrationality. Instead of trying to compensate for my emotions, I say, “I’m pursuing self-knowledge, other-knowledge, and wisdom so that I can live a good life”, which is indeed as circular as it looks. (That’s not to say I’m complacent — just the opposite! Acknowledging that my foundation might not be The One Truth opens up the possibility of my foundations changing, which is a lot more effort!)
But acknowledging the circularity lets me chill out. After all, who doesn’t want to be remembered fondly as a wise, loving person? Does it matter that I don’t have absolute philosophical bedrock upon which to build my life’s meaning? Not as long as I get a move on with living it out!
That’s where it all begins for me. Not from ontological principles, not from Platonic ideals or metaphysics or even belief in a higher reality (or lack thereof). I simply want to love during my life, and do it well. Writing is how I functionalize that desire in my own mind. So, when I say I can’t not write, even despite the fact that I don’t like “blog”s, it’s because I feel like I am better when I do — and that feeling, according to Haidt, is enough of a reason.
*It’s quite a good book in its own right. The fact that I’m pretty much only paraphrasing his first chapter, which was enough to rock my world by itself, should speak to the book’s overall quality.