This Blog in History
Do bloggers have a responsibility to history every day that they write?
We look back on our own past as a stirring in the dirt for what remains. We find the Acropolis, the Forum, and Petra. We find the biographies of Plutarch, the histories of Josephus, the philosophies of Marcus Aurelius. We find diaries and bank statements. All of it forms our history. When the spirit is gone, all we have left are the signs of life.
Think 1000 years into the future. The heroes of today, if there are any, will be to them what Emperor Otto III is to us. But what do we know about the average person of that day? What do we know of the daily life of the Medieval ages? We know they loved baths, that they made soap, that they usually did their laundry by stream-side, that few people got their haircut and that shaving was rare, that they cared about their children enough to die protecting them from rape, and that, in the cities, they rarely went a day without standing drenched in the horrifying smell of death, torture, and disease.
But don’t you think there was more to it? Weren’t there also concerns of politics, of religion, of class, and of community? I speak not just of those individuals whose words we read today, words that have survived only because of the power of teleology, but also of the conversations, thoughts, and prayers of those whose words and works are forever lost to us. Even Plato had a friend who never wrote.
What if Plato had been a blogger? Perhaps we would find that his allegory of the cave was actually inspired by one his buddies posts from some time back? What if it was actually a blockquote? Imagine tracking the conversation between Plato and his friend, watching how the idea develops from, at first, just a quick metaphor in the context of another discussion and then into a full blown allegory in its own right. What if Plato had blogged every day and wrote The Republic on the side, not publishing it until later? Wouldn’t there be some value in those posts, not simply because they would be Plato’s, but because they might help us understand more about his milieu, which, in turn, becomes the milieu of his concepts?
This is not to suggest that a blogger of today is working on a modern Republic of the future, but it is to ask if the future’s understanding of such a thing wouldn’t be greatly enhanced by reading the thoughts of the average person? If such was true, then it would mean that today’s blogger has a responsibility to accurately portray his or her or the others‘ thoughts. This is different from talking about the day’s events, though not necessarily so. A diary of events has its historic value, but even more so is the internal experience of those events. Further, there is also tremendous value to be found in thoughts completely abstracted from reality, whether they come in the form of poetry, fiction, painting, photography, science, or theory, etc.; this, of course, extends all the way to the time-based abstractions, such as recorded and streaming music, video, and animation. The responsibility is not to portray those thoughts in any specific form, but to portray them accurately. The key, however, is that the thought be of that day.
Imagine all the great artists as bloggers. What if we had Michalangelo’s blog entry from September 13, 1501? What if we knew how he felt that day, that day when he first put his tool to the marble? Was it the culmination of a great period of his life, or would that culmination not come until 1504, when he finally finished the piece? What did he think about on the following day? Did he worry about it anymore, or had he already moved on to the next idea? Did he dream the night before about David shooting his slingshot at him, or of himself shooting a slingshot at Da Vinci?
All of that would be valuable. But wouldn’t it also be valuable to look at the blog posts of his fellow Florentines on the day that his David was first displayed in Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazza Vecchio? Or even better, on the next day, after the buzz of its unveiling had calmed down a little? If we knew that, wouldn’t we have a better understanding of the David?
The effect of such an understanding is enormous. There is the distinct possibility that the David would lose all of its meaning. But the loss of meaning would not come at a price. For the meaning would disperse, not emptying the David, but filling the others, rising everyone up to where they can be appreciated en masse, the way we appreciate the ocean.
In learning about that day, we’d learn that one of his Florentine neighbors had beautiful thoughts about her daughter’s first steps, that a shopkeeper had a tremendously inspiring run-in with an old friend, that a priest had a crisis of confidence, that a young man failed his parents, that a politician kept his word, and that an old woman wrote a a dynamic poem about her experience of the day — perhaps she wrote posted a new line every hour on the hour.
None of that denies the beauty of the David; rather, it adds to it. All of the others may find the origin of their meaning having some relation to the David, but in the end, wouldn’t the David’s meaning only come from its relation to all the others?
The responsibility of the blogger to history is not to record it, or even to create it. The first is the responsibility of journalism; the latter, the arts. While blog posts can come in either of these forms, and serve either of these responsibilities, the responsibility of the blogger to history is to accurately portray his or hers or the others’ thoughts. This is what history will want from us.
Imagine the researcher of the distant future. How incredibly valuable the blogosphere will be to him or her or the others. For in it, the researcher shall find a snapshot of the day’s thoughts as they made themselves manifest across the globe. No longer is history written by those who only participate in wars and politics and the arts and the sciences. While they too have their voice, they merely make up a small portion of the 27.2 million other voices.
Our responsibility as bloggers is not to serve the traditional voices of our history, voices that are strong enough on their own, but to serve our own voices. To speak as ourselves.
This may seem self-serving, but it is not. For we are in the service of the future. We are in service to that future that will, like us, be searching for meaning. That is who we write for. It is not for us. But for them. In this, we do not report on nor do we create history. Instead, we become it.