apologia pro bozo suo
Sep. 6th, 2005 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
substituteThere are limits to discourse, and specifically limits to what issues one may discuss among friends. I exceeded those limits and re-learned a lesson.
It's a polarizing time. The issues that come up daily aren't abstract or distant. I'd like to just stop talking about important things and instead tell stories, share interesting and amusing facts, snap photos. It isn't likely that I could keep that promise, though, because events keep making me sit up and yell, even though I know it's almost entirely foolish.
Because I'm not writing for the front page of the New York Times, or even for the little weekly paper I used to help edit. It's just a livejournal, and the stuff I put here is not of much consequence. The checks I write and organizations I work with and support are my only impact.
In the past few months I have had difficult times with several good friends that could have been avoided if I'd been a better editor of myself. Whether I am right or wrong about the great issues of our time, I don't think the conflict with others is worth whatever tiny effect one livejournal has on events. I'd be flattering myself nearly into psychosis to think otherwise.
So I'll do my best to make this space if not issue-free at least less contentious. I apologize to those I've annoyed or inflamed to no good end.
It's a polarizing time. The issues that come up daily aren't abstract or distant. I'd like to just stop talking about important things and instead tell stories, share interesting and amusing facts, snap photos. It isn't likely that I could keep that promise, though, because events keep making me sit up and yell, even though I know it's almost entirely foolish.
Because I'm not writing for the front page of the New York Times, or even for the little weekly paper I used to help edit. It's just a livejournal, and the stuff I put here is not of much consequence. The checks I write and organizations I work with and support are my only impact.
In the past few months I have had difficult times with several good friends that could have been avoided if I'd been a better editor of myself. Whether I am right or wrong about the great issues of our time, I don't think the conflict with others is worth whatever tiny effect one livejournal has on events. I'd be flattering myself nearly into psychosis to think otherwise.
So I'll do my best to make this space if not issue-free at least less contentious. I apologize to those I've annoyed or inflamed to no good end.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
"only livejournal"
Date: 2005-09-06 08:20 am (UTC)I rely for my news almost entirely on...livejournal (and Yahoo headlines - "MIT Scientists Build Robotic Snail!"). On the people whose journals I've found to be...cogent, relentless, concerned... I think I've made it through the last week, in no small part, on the journals of you,
The problem with being a source in a venue like this is that you can't know how many people you're reaching, so you don't know how seriously to take yourself. But...figuring out how seriously to take oneself at anything, anywhere, is one of those lifelong ethical wrassles, up there with "What do I do when my significant other gets drunk and starts making out with my best friend?" Having a reasonable sense of humility is good. Concluding that one can't really be helping other people out there is...not a reasonable sense of humility.
I sympathize with your desire not to inflame your friends. Sure. On the other hand, I need you, man. As you are.