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A Blog Block?

jonasbn on 2003-06-21T13:06:14

I have thought a lot about one of the problems of blogging and journalling (I will refer to it as blogging from now on).

I read a few blogs/journals (I will refer to these as blogs for now on) and some of them offer great advice, when you use google and other search engines for some obscure combination of terms, often the results are blogs.

I usually avoid the politicial/religious discussions, which sometimes arise in relation to blog entries about such subjects. It is not that I do not have opinions on these things, but I do not find the blog forum the right forum to discuss these matters.

Even when meta-moderating here on use.perl I avoid these dicussions, since they are mostly based on matters of opinion can there for go on forever.

Saturday the 7th. I made a journal entry about my forthcoming trip to Cuba, simply to inform the readers of my journal (I think there is at least one) that I would not be updating my journal for the next week due to vacation.

A comment was writting to this entry indicating reservation about Cuba and I guess the social/political state in Cuba. I tried twice to write a reponse to this, both times I discarded the response.

But I have really thought much about it though and I wanted to explain to the commenter why I was going to Cuba, but it did not seeme possible for me to do this without getting into a political discussion even though the trip had no political agenda at all.

So now I have to decided to try to explain why I did not respond to the comment, I do not consider this entry a response merely an explanation.

During my Cuba trip (on which a lot of my friends participated) we had a lot of political dicussions and apart from being one of the best vacations I have ever had - it was certainly also the most political.

Since politics and religion are based on ideology and/or belief. I do not think that one is able to get anywhere with a discussion via a forum like a blog on issues like those. At the same time english is only my second language and I would not be able to argument in the same manner as I would in danish. I would probably just piss people of.

So my rule of thumb is to walk a way from such discussions, no matter how much I want to engage in these and to raise my opinion.

So these are the topics I am currently avoiding:

  • War in Iraq/Afghanistan
  • US foreign politics in general
  • Religion
  • Politics


    • These subjects are difficult to discuss even via fora better suited for discussion, so apart from avoiding the subjects in blogs and commenting in blogs. I also avoid these subjects in the following fora:

  • IRC
  • Email (unless I am writing with somebody very familiar to me)
  • NNTP
  • Diverse web-based fora


    • Maybe it is just me, but it has kept me from a lot of flames and I think I have pretty straightforward relations to people whom I interact with via the Internet.

    I get my share of discussion off the Internet. I sometimes read these dicussions, since they can be a great source for seeing things from a different point of view, but that is as far as I go.

    One thing that bothers me though is the Biedermeier like state of things, which I am supporting by not involving myself.

    Biedermeier?

    jordan on 2003-06-22T00:56:48

    • One thing that bothers me though is the Biedermeier like state of things,
      which I am supporting by not involving myself.

    I'm not familiar with this term "Biedermeier like". A quick google didn't clarify it for me.

    I hope it doesn't break your discussion rules, which I find very reasonable, to enlighten me on what this means.

    I have to agree. Blogs are a really bad forum for heated political and religious discussion. I try to refrain, but sometimes someone says something that I feel can't go unchallenged. That I cannot refrain is my flaw, not theirs...

    Re:Biedermeier?

    jonasbn on 2003-06-22T15:44:11

    I actually wanted to link to a definition, but I was unable to find a proper one, instead I found a lot of art listings etc.

    Here is a definition from a interior decoration site:

    Many assume that Biedermeier is the name of a celebrated cabinetmaker of the time, but the name is more commonly attributed to a satirical cartoon popular in early 19th century Europe. The cartoon characters of the Biedermeier family symbolized the rich indolent German bourgeois of the day. They were depicted as fat, overdressed, nouveau-riche comfortably surrounded with the new streamlined, highly polished furniture, then in vogue. "Bieder" in German means plain and "Meier" was one of the most common German surnames of the time.


    Here is a excerpt from Another article:

    The oppressive political climate of restricted public life of the German people encouraged a culture centered on the physical and psychological comforts of home. They focused inward and concentrated their attention on their domestic environment.


    The definition I learned of Biedermeier describes a society where nothing provocative or dangerous is used as expression. The paintings show small lakes in forests etc. everything is very harmonic and very idealistic, (but also boring).

    Re:Biedermeier?

    jordan on 2003-06-23T21:18:16

    I guess this explains why all my Google references seemed to be to furniture.

    In the US, they might call that Ozzie & Harriet-like, after the '50s TV show that showed an idealized family where there was never really any real conflict or problems.

    There's something about arguing over the Internet that's so unproductive. People who have spent time on Usenet know this. Perhaps without a give and take that includes human faces and body language that the 'opponent' becomes dehumanized and positions are polarized even more than they would with a face-to-face discussion.

    I don't know...

    Re:Biedermeier?

    jonasbn on 2003-06-24T07:40:29

    Thanks for the briefing on the american term, I am not sure Biedermeier is used as a common term any where (perhaps on the art schools of Vienna?), but I often use it - maybe I need to find another term.

    About your description of f2f dicussion vs. TCP/IP based discussion - I agree with what you outline.