I.
Whether or not it is true that the Internets are places wherein false identities are projected, I do not think this is the cause of blog wars. I think the blog wars are caused by the fact that people do in fact speak in their true voices, and that this makes them sensitive. This is certainly true of me, and it is why I have not taken at all kindly to the accusations I received some months ago, that I was projecting a “false identity,” or to the invitations I sometimes receive now, to learn, with the help of other anonymous bloggers, to “become real” and to “feel.”
The Brainbiter has identified two types of bloggers: egoistic and altruistic, each of which reacts in specific ways to trolls and I would add, to arguments. While his hypothesis could perhaps use further development or comment (for instance, there may be perfectly good reasons why egoists like him and me might not want “rocks thrown” at their blogs), it is an interesting observation.
II.
Although this is a recreational blog, and although it is explicitly not an academic blog, it is a serious endeavor. In my first post, I asked readers to “say something” if it began to sound like an academic blog. I was thinking at the time that I did not want to talk too much about school. I did not imagine that people would instead object to as overly academic my writing style, or the distanced tone I take – in part to help preserve anonymity, but more importantly because the blog is a meditation exercise, in which I take distance from the chaotic and contingent day and gather me to myself once again.
Is it possible to write clearly and have emotions? To think and to feel? These are false dilemmas which twist the worthier battles of head and heart into mere grimaces of pain. Robert Frost said, and Rethabile reminds us, that [a] complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.
III.
The question has been raised, who is the “you” to whom I refer in this post? Am I speaking to one person in particular? I am not. “You” are those various individuals who have complained over the past few months about:
+ my style
+ my reserve
+ my Ph.D.
+ the intelligence and artistry some see in this blog
+ my lack of academic success
+ my excess of academic success
+ the unawareness of privilege I must have
And so on, ad infinitum. As I say, most of these questions and problems have already been addressed in some way in the blog. I will gladly respond to further queries. I could tell more stories, such as the story of how I paid for college. But this blog is intended to be a place of interesting tales, for a thousand nights and a night. Interesting tales to me are things just remembered, just discovered, or just understood.
I will not engage with you, however, if you insist on making a series of low assumptions, or if you decide to take a didactic tone. Why is it, anyway, that those who complain of didacticism are so often so very messianic themselves? Is it really ‘coldness’, ‘intellectualism,’ and ‘didacticism’ they wish to root out – or is it dignity?
IV.
Continuing, then, with the self-examination which has been requested of me, and to which, if you will notice, this entire blog has been dedicated since its inception (it is not a “soapbox”), I will announce that I do not take kindly to bullies. I have serious issues with bullies, and you can read all about them right here.
When I am a Bodhisattva, I may resist bullies peacefully. At present, if pressed to stay in an uncomfortable situation, I will fight back for three days and nights. I will do it as elegantly as possible. I will do it to the extent that I need to do it to recover my integrity, and not more. I will not not take revenge, I will speak directly to your face.
In case there have been any doubts, this post was not directed at anyone in particular, but to all of the grousers I have had over the past few months, on the issues listed above.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I’m not sure if my blog has a voice. I certainly do not have a particularly voice in mind. As far as the example of placing bloggers in either/or categories as Brainbiter has done, I don’t accept it. Why is either/or, black/white thinking so acceptable? Why is the tendency there to try and boil every thing down to an either/or?
I know, it is not all about me, but I will tell you anyway. LOL!
I blog if I feel like it.
I discuss whatever I feel like discussing.
I will not labour too much because it begins to feel like work.
I only talk to people I want to and stop when I no longer feel like talking to them. I know it sounds arrogant, but I talk to people I find worthy of my time. I am an economist at heart. I cannot bother anywhere I am not appreciated thus a form of payment I guess. I cannot bother anywhere that abuses me, I just cannot.
What else?
I comment where I think people actually read what I am saying, or at least showing an effort. Because I know I do not always express myself clearly because I am an economist, meaning, I do not proofread or write something that takes me longer than it takes to fall off my fingers. Often my brain is faster than my fingers and I do not connect the dots. However, for the people who I feel appreciated by, I will come back (eventually) and fill in the dots.
In way I guess that means I read people who do for me. But that is not completely true, actually not half true. I read other places but will not comment unless I really really feel like it. And to be honest, which it probably shows anyway, I am usually ignorant of who is in what blog wars. However, when I set my mind to it, I pick up the scent faster than a good hound dog. Yet most of the wars bore me. Especially the one sided ones that seem to have an unhealthy obsession with particular people.
CM – I saw your thread on the ‘BDSM Blogger’ (LOL!) and I’d agree with all of this and add:
1. It is fine to just mention or cite people without telling them, but if you want to ‘engage’ them in a discussion on your blog, you had better run it by them first. Blogging may not be work, but some professional rules of engagement do apply! Everyone hates to be blindsided.
(There are some bloggers I actually like who I have seen do this, albeit indirectly. Every time I see it, I know war is coming, whether or not they believe themselves to have issued a war cry. You seem to have discovered an excellent anonymization strategy to talk about issues, and yet avoid this.)
2. If you know a blogger in real time, as in, if you have ever seen them in person or talked to them by telephone, and you now have an issue with them, you should get on the horn before you blast them in your blog. Once again: blindsiding is a war cry, everyone knows this and is likely to take it as such, whether you yourself wish to issue a war cry or not. ‘I didn’t know’ is no excuse, especially for anyone who is above middle school age or who has ever held a job.
***Hmm, I wonder, will blogging start teaching people to grow up? Or will it just be a new tool to create deeper soap operas? But one can only control one’s own site.***
Some of these war cries have reached an obsessive level. I think I would have to ask myself, “Can I blog without thinking of ______________? “Can I produce an entry without talking about ______________? Can I comment somewhere without mentioning _______________? “Can I write an entry without referring to or linking to ______________ who is talking about _______________?
Fill in the blank with “Object of My Obsession.”
I feel sorry because I can see the “surrendering of one’s personal power” going on, which in turn turns into a group’s power if more than one participates in the surrendering. By focusing so obsessively on someone who does not affect their quality of life they are giving that someone power.
I don’t like bullies either. I am reminded of the early Jane Curtin Chevy Chase Saturday Night Live skits that started with Chevy saying “Jane you ignorant slut”, except that was humor and the stuff I have been reading on the blogs is pure egotisitical venom.
I also don’t see the either/or thinking particuarly fruitful, especially when both sides of the either or equation lead to the same conclusion: that a person is sick, neurotic, dysfunctional, in some way acting out their issues and projecting them forward.
I too aspire to buddhahood but in the meantime find it hard not to be hurt by personal attack. Robert Thurman, buddhist scholar, close friend of the Dalai Llama, says that if you wake up in the morning and find your worst enemy sitting at your kitchen table you should consider it a gift. I am not there yet. Thurman seems a bit volatile himself so I imagine he’s not there yet either. If I get up in the morning and find my worst enemies or just some disturbing bullies sitting at my kitchen table I would ask them to either mend their ways or leave my house. And if they didn’t leave willingly I would evict them.
Yes … although as you can tell this blog is also obsessed in a way. It was started as an exercise in removing from my shoulders the impediments to writing (as a woman) which have been documented by Joanna Russ (I have an entry about that somewhere, fairly recently).
That is, it started as a sort of experimental garden, anonymous, in which I would grow my voice out again, away from the spaces where I had learned to expect ‘silencing’.
What fascinates me is that when I started getting comments, the negative ones – from anonymous people, to an anonymous person – were essentially the same as those I had gotten, for instance, from my infamous Reeducator: I write too clearly, seem too composed, etc.
That is how I ended up talking about ‘reeducation’ in here – it was not my original intention to get so personal. But I suppose it was in a way as though my ‘worst enemy’ had in fact shown up at my kitchen table, so that I could see them and deal with them directly.
Robert Thurman, buddhist scholar, close friend of the Dalai Llama, says that if you wake up in the morning and find your worst enemy sitting at your kitchen table you should consider it a gift.
This would truly be a blessing, since I think the worst enemies are the ephemeral ones.
Perhaps the function of blogging is to bring everyone to our breakfast table, so that we can know their flaws concretely, like our own families.
“[T]he worst enemies are the ephemeral ones.”
This is very interesting.
And CM, by the way, I do think your blog has a voice. It would take me some thought to discover how I would classify it or describe it, but it is a very distinctive voice.
A friend refers to what I called war cries here as “blogosphere drive-bys.”