{"id":7517,"date":"2013-06-05T18:26:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T22:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=7517"},"modified":"2013-06-05T18:26:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T22:26:46","slug":"the-besetting-sin-of-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2013\/06\/the-besetting-sin-of-bloggers.html","title":{"rendered":"The Besetting Sin of Bloggers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday, Mark Shea posted a mea culpa<\/a>\u00a0about the way he\u2019s interacted with some of his ideological sparring partners. \u00a0And, for me, there was one part that really hit home:<\/p>\n

[M]y attitude toward Public Figures is much the same.\u00a0 I tend not to see them as human beings, but as sort of semi-fictional characters.\u00a0 People who don\u2019t fully exist but who are In the News and therefore symbols or representatives of ideas.<\/p>\n

The upshot is this: Irony of ironies, a friend asked me today if I had contacted Lila Rose.\u00a0 I said that I had contacted her organization\u2013recently.\u00a0 He said, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you contact her at the start of the contretemps?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 I had no answer.\u00a0 It had never occurred to me\u2026 [A]s the conversation moved along, I was basically thinking on the fly and in public\u00a0and as opposition to the change of mind increased, it never occurred to me to contact Lila Rose because, well, my argument was primarily with people talking\u00a0about<\/em>\u00a0her and she was a public figure acting publicly like, say, a movie star or politician or philanthopist in the headlines.\u00a0 And so, instead of doing what Matthew 18 says and going privately and speaking in love, I simply treated her as though she wasn\u2019t so much a person as a thing\u2013a Figure in the Headlines and therefore a\u00a0means to an end wherein I made some points about things I wanted to say to third parties I wanted to convince.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve had to junk some post drafts when I noticed that I was really stretching a pull-quote in order to have a concrete, high-profile example of the point of view I wanted to argue with. \u00a0They weren\u2019t actually the avatar of a position, just a handy place to stick a crowbar. \u00a0I\u2019ve surely got some posts that snuck past that filter, where I didn\u2019t pause to make sure I was checking for the most charitable reading, not the one that was most useful to me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bad habit I think I mostly picked up in college. \u00a0In weekly papers and at debates, I could use texts as a jumping off point for a slightly unrelated idea. \u00a0I can start with something everyone in the room is familiar with, and then use it as an entry point or contrast to the point I want to make, without saying much about the intentions of the author. \u00a0It\u2019s the kind of thing I do when I\u2019m discussing Sondhiem as a\u00a0lens<\/em> on marriage<\/a>, without talking about Sondheim\u2019s views of marriage.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a lot easier to make that separation when the author is dead (either physically or just in the postmodern sense). \u00a0I don\u2019t need to worry about a dialogue; the text\/actions are just a handy, concrete way for me to tussle with an interesting idea. \u00a0But when writing online, and publicly, it\u2019s important to be clear if I\u2019m imputing a view or motivation to the author or just talking about a connection that came to\u00a0my<\/em> mind.<\/p>\n

I find it easiest to make this distinction clear when I\u2019m writing about fiction or theatre. \u00a0I\u2019d love to hear from commenters or fellow bloggers about good ways to make it clear that someone else\u2019s writing sparked an idea that\u2019s now several steps removed from the original thing you read. \u00a0And do call me out if you think I\u2019ve left this too ambiguous in future posts.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I think Mark has a great insight about consciously looking for ways to connect with the author, instead of treating a text or action as though it was as parentless as Aphrodite. \u00a0Once I finished reading Mark\u2019s post, I opened up my email, and sent William Irvine a message to ask if he was concerned about an endurance-treadmill replacing the hedonic one for Stoics<\/a>, and whether he had any patches for the problem.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Mark Shea posted a mea culpa\u00a0about the way he\u2019s interacted with some of his ideological sparring partners. \u00a0And, for me, there was one part that really hit home: [M]y attitude toward Public Figures is much the same.\u00a0 I tend not to see them as human beings, but as sort of semi-fictional characters.\u00a0 People who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":7521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-debatetactics"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Besetting Sin of Bloggers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday, Mark Shea posted a mea culpa\u00a0about the way he's interacted with some of his ideological sparring partners. \u00a0And, for me, there was one part\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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