the blogosphere's fourth wall

WARNING, DO NOT READ WHILE OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY; MAY CAUSE INTENSE DROWSINESS.  (NO JOKE, THIS IS NOT ONE OF MY 'EASY READING' SERIES, FEEL FREE TO SKIP.)

here is my question:  why do people sit here and type like this?  more to the point, why do i?  just what is the purpose of a blog, and does it serve to alleviate suffering - my own or others' - or rather to proliferate it?  this question is at the center of buddha dharma, and i believe is central to many, if not all, religious and spiritual traditions.  the buddhist wording has appeal for me because of its global yet empiric nature:  does this activity bring me suffering (clinging or aversion) right now?  in the buddhist view, pain (and hardship, loss, illness, aging, death, etc.) are all givens, but suffering arises with our aversion to it.  that is, the added stories we are so ready to supply:  'why me?'  'this always happens to me!'  'so and so is just plain evil...'  'life is so unfair...'  etc.  this is just to clarify that in buddhism, life's pain is given, but suffering is optional.  and my question remains, do blogs increase or minimize such suffering?

and why do i post to this blog?  now that i have a phenomenally fast growing number of followers, what do i seek to gain?  or offer?  is this just narcissism?

i heard a show on npr yesterday  - either on speaking of faith or bob edward's weekend - part of an interview with an author/researcher whose basic premise had to do with the inherent goodness in people, and that as babies we start off with an overarching capacity and need for empathy; and if that basic nature is mirrored and returned by the caregivers in a child's world, it will blossom and grow.  if not, well, you all know the state we are in.

like a baby, do we continue to seek empathy and return it where we can, even at the far ends of the world wide web?  i suspect that may be part of the desire to 'network socially' - blogs, facebooks, email.  i apprehend there may be less wholesome ends as well.  such as vanity (i'm so droll).  pride (aren't i the clever one?).  communal approbation (wasn't i justified?).  bravado.  there are probably many other suspects.  it seems to me that the former - that is, the desire to empathize - could lead beyond suffering, while the latter would surely go the other direction.

a recent issue of the new yorker had an article about the emergence of memoir as a genre, with st. augustine or somebody?  (that's just like the new yorker, or is it only me? - while reading it i feel so learned and erudite, then as soon as i hit the next week's talk of the town, it's pretty much gone to mush up in my brain.)  and the history of memoir ever since, becoming quite popular in recent decades, in spite of several infamous cases of outright falsehoods masquarading as true life story.  and even with ostensibly true autobiography, the tendency to mendacity or exxageration is rampant.  

according to the article, what we seek is a character arc with redemption.  whether factually true or not.  it may be the hardships of a native american woman whose parents were alcoholics, and who later became addicted to crack, got infected with aids, and eventually came to rise above, or somehow see the interconnectedness of all life, and was able to come through stronger, better, freer, whatever.  no matter that it turned out to have been written by a white english teacher at some northeastern college.  we seem to want to see others overcome, rise above, persevere in the face of adversity.

several weeks ago there was an article about what struck me as possibly the first blogger, after a fashion.  it was a frenchman in the 16th century i think, who would sit unfettered in his study and record his life as it happened, moment by moment.  i think his postings were published in a local or regional newspaper or journal.  apparently the man's name is a household word in france, though - big surprise - it escapes me now.  what is it that draws people to other people's life stories like moths to a flame?

and i admit that so far in the brief history of my blog, i've been drawn to share vignettes of that nature, that is, with a redemptive character arc, if only in a tiny way.  avoiding the less pleasant chapters of my life - ones without a clear arc to redemption - or at least relegating them to the privacy of a journal.  i think there is something universally appealing in such an approach to story telling.

and finally, this post, it reveals precious little about the author:  is its intention wholesome?  why pursue this line of inquiry?  self-justification?  in this case, i don't think that what i serve is the alleviation of mine or my 'followers' suffering.  perhaps quite the contrary.  if you've made it this far, you can at least feel some relief that the end is near.  which is just the sort of self-abnegation that i employed to lure some here from facebook.  

i think the jig is up, you knew it all along:  i'm just a primate, typing at the proverbial keyboard.  but oh, what a beautiful world it is!  bananas everywhere!