MORE ON “THE IC AND THE BLOGOSPHERE” AND THE BLOGGER’S DILEMMA

The noted blogger Shrinkwrapped was kind enough to contact me the other day after my blogosphere-related posts to let me know that had written several of his own ( more on that in a bit). Shrinkwrapped is a psychoanalyst by profession which opened up some intriguing analytical possibilities.

Long time readers here know that this blog periodically deals with matters of intelligence, both the cloak and dagger kind as well as issues of cognition. I approach these subjects from the analytical perspective of historical methodology as well as the experience gained from years of working as an educator, particularly with gifted children. Shrinkwrapped’s Freudian background is interesting to me partly because OSS psychoanalysts like Dr. Walter C. Langer – author of the classic psychological profile of Adolf Hitler – were some of the pioneers of the exceptionally difficult art of predictive intelligence analysis ( any fool can write a news summary; accurately assessing probable reactions of a key decision maker to hypothetical events is hard – even Hitler did not make his decisions in a social vacumn).

Shrinkwrapped offers up “The Blogger’s Dilemma Part I. ” and “Part II.” which I would like to excerpt and then offer a few comments, though I strongly encourage you to read them in their entirety. First, “Blogger’s Dilemma Part I“

“Once a Blogger has an audience the desire to keep or expand his/her audience begins to influence their blogging in ways that often lead to problems. For example, recognizing that our behavior is the compromise of multiple, primarily unconscious, determinants suggests we should maintain our modesty about our conclusions, yet a Blog that surrounds all of its arguments with qualifiers is likely to be a rather dull read. (I read enough “sophisticated” Psychoanalytic literature to know that the best way to lose the reader’s attention is to eschew declarative sentences.) Simple and sharp delineations are favored; furthermore, oversimplified terms, like “liberal” and “neo-conservative”, loaded as they are with the great weight of our projections, become bandied about with reckless abandon and are then over-interpreted by readers and writers alike. Yet without such terms, the act of writing a Blog post would require redefining specifics at every occasion. Aside from being unwieldy, it would also rather quickly grow exhausting for all. “

I think Shrinkwrapped is correct. To an extent, I’ve eschewed writing inflammatory posts about politics because of the loaded simplification the commonly used terms imply, often make it difficult to have a civil dialogue. I’m sure that costs me a considerable amount of potential traffic but I don’t much care. The trade-off is that I get to spend my limited amount of blogging time on esoteric subjects that I find more interesting and I’ve made some outstanding connections with thinkers I greatly respect, a few of which in the case of Dave Schuler and Lexington Green have evolved into real world friendships. Call it the “Jimmy Stewart/It’s A Wonderful Life Strategy of Blogging” – I’m the richest man in town. ;o)

and

“Democracy works essentially by summing the irrationalities of its citizenry in ways which tend to cancel out the most extreme manifestations. When it works well, both parties move to the center and try to appeal to the broad, more rational middle. This depends on a number of important factors, one of which is relatively unbiased information.

In my humble opinion, the Blogosphere has the potential to assist in both the process of “summing our irrationalities” and increasing the availability of unbiased information (derived from summing the biased information that is all we can ever have access to.) “

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