These Blogs O' Mine (If They Coud See Me Now)

Within the course of writing the blog I discovered that I was really attempting at the beginning to write a series of journal entries. I simply disregarded the audience as a whole and was merely trying to write what I felt would be reflective of my attitude to a particular piece or idea. It was almost like I was using the blog as a way for me to look in the mirror of my consciousness and attack or challenge the ideas that I had about environmental affairs. Especially in the first post, I was acting as a skeptic towards the severity of environmental issues and attempted not to buy into the “bleeding heart” pathos of certain environmental groups.

However, I discovered that as the writing progressed and I began to get feedback from readers, that, lo and behold, I was not alone on the Internets. The suggestions and ideas that I received from people, even if they were not inspired to reflect on what I had written and simply regarded my post as a place to fulfill a part of the assignment, began to encourage me to open up a little and start a dialogue. Instead of merely writing down diary-like entries, I wanted to write in a way that would force the reader to think just a little bit. My reflection on the conclusion of Lost Mountain became one of my strongest pieces because I stopped merely putting up and challenging conventional environmental attitudes and started to really see nature in more of a symbiotic light.

My weaknesses, however, are reflected in my stubborn hardheadedness towards certain that do not jive with me. My inability to understand the significance of what strip-mining does to the wilderness still evades, even though I have such sympathy for the people who lived at the foot of those mountains. George Carlin said, I paraphrase, “Mother Nature will kill us long before we kill Her” and that is a sentiment I live by day to day. I believe I could have been more open to protecting the environment for its own sake, but to be honest, I did not and still do not have the time. I found that the post that were the most uninspiring were the ones in which I did not dwell to deeply on the readings that we read, but instead I merely read them with the same glossed-over preconceived mind of a person who is bored. Not to say that I did not read every single one and attempt to reflect hard on them, but sometimes I just could not relate to what any of the writings were saying to me.

A strength and weakness that I also had was my inability to ever choose a side outright. Throughout this process, I simply told myself to be torn between both sides and not try to come out supporting one or the other, which unfortunately serve to alienate the audience I was attempting to capture. If I really think about it, as my writing progressed and I began to think of attracting an audience, such as either Dr. Rouzie or my peers or another outside interest, I realized that middle-of-road was only going to bore and frustrate readers who enjoyed some of my blogs, but had to disagree with others. This became my Achilles' Heel that I never really got over because I could not bring myself to fully support the environmental movement or completely go against it. I feel a failing that I had was not being radical enough in my thinking and playing it conservative in order to keep down passionate debate.

Which is funny in its own right because I think that I attempted to challenge the other bloggers in much more prolific way. This was best reflected in the comments that I made to other bloggers because I do not believe I ever simply wrote a “Hey great post! Loved It!” I tried as hard as I could to play Devil's Advocate and challenge their conventional wisdom about the issues we investigated. In a way, I was doing what I had been doing to myself in the earlier posts and that was trying to create polemics in which the other blogger would have to rationalize their worldview in more succinct and comprehensible way. It really helped me challenge my thoughts about things because playing the side I did not agree with started making me think in that way. Sometimes the logic train would take me to places I never imagined I could go and overall, that was beneficial to my learning.

All in all the blog postings helped me to synthesize and reflect on the readings that we had, however, they sometimes only brought out the more emotional side and less of the rational side of myself. Which has its ups and downs, depending on how you look at it. Being emotionally charged leads to great rhetoric and philosophical musing, but it cannot ever be good starting place for rational discourse on very serious issues. As soon as the emotions make their way into a debate, then all sides stop listening and begin yelling, “I can't hear you!” However, at the end of the day, the blogs served as nice cathartic place where I could lay down my thoughts and opinions for all the world to see and hope that someone somewhere could appreciate the ideas that I was having at the moment.