What’s The Point?
So, what’s the point? I often find this question wandering around in my brain at the strangest times. I think it is a slightly more world weary, perhaps mildly pessimistic and/or cynical version of the eager childlike question — “Why?” I think that it is also a question that is far more concious of limits. Particularly the limits of time. It is a question we start to ask as we get older. It is also a bit rhetorical in nature and the assumed answer is, “Well, there isn’t really a point then, is there?”
This weekend a blog which I find very inspiring turned one and we were treated to a nice walk down memory lane. I really admire this guy, because he has such a clear vision of what he set out to accomplish with his blog and he just does it extremely well. Throughout his discussion, he eventually came around to the role of community in blogging and talked about how things have really opened up in the blogosphere and how much is out there. And, consequently, how much mediocrity exists. Hmm, I thought. And I began to look around my own blog for the tell tale signs of mediocrity. Regime change begins at home, right?
So, lately I have been giving a lot of thought to the point of my blog. It started in the the throes of new knitting love. And don’t get me wrong, the knitting love is still there (more on that later, I promise), but as I knew it would, the new love has waned a bit and I feel decidedly less passionate about wool and sticks. Or at the very least, less need to talk about it. What is left in its place is the usual — writing, reading, education, movies, good television (yes, it does exist) and relationships. In essence what I am passionate about is stories. My stories, other people’s stories, true stories. These are the things I come back to again and again.
And as I examine the point of my blog, I am thinking about my own existence and how I have often said that I didn’t want life to be something that just happened to me. What I mean by that is not that I want to control the circumstances, because that is just foolish. Life, on some level, does just happen to you. I guess I more mean that I want to take an active role in meeting those circumstances and shaping the general direction they move me in. I want to help my own common themes emerge in a way that I feel satisfied with. So often it seems we are at the mercy of our own lives and emotions and we forget that we can learn the skills we need to bring about true change. An unhealthy pattern or a useless behavior is not a fact about us, it is merely an opportunity to learn something new. I misremember this sometimes. I imagine most people do. Stories help take us outside of ourselves and give us a glimpse into whole other universes. They are the catalyst for knowledge and change or even stagnation and ignorance. In the end, it seems that story is all we have.
So, I got to thinking about what it is that I do with this space here. Since the beginning, this question of What is the point? (or another variation — Why am I doing this?) has always been present. There are as many answers as there are blogs, but the basic few are — for myself, for a sense of community, for a little validation, because I have something to say. Because I want my story to matter. We all do. And here is the secret. It does. It matters to the writer, and that really should be enough, shouldn’t it? But isn’t it remarkable how knowing that other people read it adds new levels of legitimacy? This is enough food for thought to keep me busy for months.
September 8th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I’ve been trying to comment on this all day, and I haven’t been able to quite pin down my thoughts on it.
Are you familiar with Kenneth Burke’s Pentad methodology for rhetorical criticism?
September 8th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
Well, I wasn’t familiar with it before, but I sure intend to become familiar with it after spending quite some time reading about Burke’s ideas this afternoon. What a fascinating approach and right up my alley it would seem…
September 8th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
It’s scary how much it’s useful for. I agree with you on the importance of stories: I think we as people build just about everything out of stories, and understanding that urge is crucial to effective communication and persuasion.
Burke is one of the great badasses of communication theory. I probably ought to be better acquainted with him myself. Time to haul out the old textbooks!
September 8th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
Alright then, books have been officially requested from the library. What I find incredibly interesting in delving into Burke a bit is the intersection that happens so often between communication theory, literary criticism, linguistics and philosophy (and of course, psychology). I mean, I understand that ultimately all academic disciplines touch on each other, but there is just such a close connection between the stuff that makes language, the stories we tell, how we communicate and the way it affects our view of and approach to the world. Seems that Burke too found the interconnectedness of it all worthy of obsessing about. Hooray for that.
September 8th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
That’s actually why I studied communication in college. It’s my belief that (once upon a time, in a far and distant land) philosophy used to be the intersection–the meta-science, if you will, that let us draw conclusions between the different disciplines. Eventually, science outgrew the need for that. But for the soft sciences, we still need something that will bring them together–and comm can really act as that discipline. As you said, it’s a rich soup of statistics, economics, psychology, linguistics, and sociology.
On the other hand, it leaves you a little screwed in the job market, because nobody really understands what a degree in Intercultural Communication means.
September 10th, 2005 at 10:55 am
It has been such an insightful visit. I’ve been obsessing over the “someone ought to do something about our situation” e-mails I’ve received lately. After reading this dialogue, I think initiative has finally overtaken apathy.