The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging: Of words, innuendos and meaning

It’s out there!!!

I am not a blogger. As a person, I possess no desire to publish a web log of my interesting, or not-so-interesting thoughts.

Funnily enough, in reviewing some previous entries from past guest bloggers, this sentiment is shared. Some agonise over the limitations of the personal bio, which presents an existential conundrum – describe yourself in 50 words. Some wonder what to write, and spend hours mulling over 800 word essays. I am experiencing all these as I go along.

I have never worried about publishing what I write more than I have now – weirdly enough, web-publishing straddles that thin line between being completely inconsequential, and producing wide ripples that turn into tsunamis; or the difference between being a small drop in the ocean, or the butterfly that flapped its wings and caused a hurricane.

I am no butterfly. But I found myself requesting close friends to read my blog entry after my last post, and peppering my pleas with “Does it read ok?” (translate: I am insecure and desperately need your validation that I do not sound completely stupid, or pretentious).

People used to joke about the daily news – that what is front page news one day, finds itself in the trash the next. But at least daily newspapers leave that small, traceable carbon footprint on the face of the planet. It will resistently rot away in a dumpster somewhere, or have to be attentively placed in an incinerator and burnt to ash. Blogging is unbearably light. If the post is deleted, it is forever – it has no footprint. And yet, it has caused me great issues of anxiety because the possible audience is everyone. I blog, and therefore, I am (now online).

Blogging is an existential crisis.

It is at once defining yourself, in words to the worldwideweb; and yet completely decimating. To quote the video – when putting things into words and when making “meaning” explicit, it is now “out there“.

My musings are a long, slowdance around the mulberry bush – what I really wanted to talk about is meaning and significance of occurence. Both issues vital to the CE approach and Sensemaker® .

In the embedded video, Pinker describes the use of innuendo, metaphor and veiled meaning. And, the way knowledge transfer is dependent on, and can alter, relationship types – from relationships of dominance, to ones of community, to ones of reciprocity. The transfer of knowledge, and the way we express ourselves to make meaning, and communicate meaning goes through so many layers of calculation. Therein, lies the strengths of making use of an approach which recounts instances – when recounting something you heard, or experienced, you are relaying meaning of things as you see it. The additional layer of signifying things on indexes allows one to communicate layers of meaning that might be veiled or hidden because no one can inhabit all types of relationship at one single moment with another. Relationship types, although overlapping, often also exist in tension with one another. Metadata therefore, ironically allows for more layers of meaning to be added – whilst allowing for greater objectivity in analysis.

When adding meaning to an issue, you are not veiling meaning in a direct telling – it dialectically allows for objectivity to be achieved. Things that might seem inconsequential in direct telling could be veiled- or tacit-knowledge between people that do not stand out to another person. The use of indexes therefore allow for weaker signals to surface.

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Here, I will end abruptly.

But, on a side note, I highly recommend Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.