On Ideas

Missed two days of the groove, and I think the post I did last Friday on The Other Blog doesn't really count. I feel like I should punish myself somehow. Or I could stop being a baby about this and get back on the run. Let's do the latter!

If there's one thing I'm paranoid about this blog, it's coming across as an arrogant jerk. If there's a second thing (and there is), it's saying inane things. I want(ed) this blog to be a way of codifying and tempering my ideas on change, not a way of parroting pointless platitudes. Yes, it might be important to think outside the box. Everybody knows this. If I wanted to talk about using lateral thinking as a means of empowerment, I'd need to try to find something new and interesting to say about it. Otherwise I could replaced by a monkey copying over random pages from "Six easy steps to a better you" and nobody would notice a thing.

On the other hand, thinking of new and innovative things to say is hard. The good ones are already taken. The bad ones are also already taken. Trying to come up with a new things to say is a brutally difficult skill to develop. I dearly hope that someday I'll be good enough to come up with innovative ideas whenever I need to. Sort of a pipe dream. Until then, I have to hope that I can force whatever ideas I do have into something remotely interesting. That's another important skill to have, but it comes a little easier than the first one.

Or I could think outside the box!!!

My two mosts successful posts were The Fallacy of Reason and On Elitism. Other posts of mine got more hits, but those were the ones that got the most responses. They were the ones that sparked the most interesting discussions. They were also the two pieces that I wrote in response to other people. In both cases somebody said something that horrified me and I vomited a stream of words to get the taste out of my brain. I dunno if this is dependent on hating the other person's position. Maybe it's really just the feeling that my ideas are directly relevant to a person (despite neither person reading this blog). But maybe it's because I think faster when I feel threatened. Having good ideas is a way of fighting back (despite neither person reading this blog).

I think it also has to some extent be personal. The discussion has to involve you, or the attack must threaten you. The only revelation I had from Atlas Shrugged was "Rand is a blithering idiot". But throw an individual into the mix and it gets more fun. The person is addressing you, and you have a responsibility to respond.

I'm already seeing this as incredibly inane. "Talk to people!" Yeah, that's new. The extra tacked on bit is "Talk to people you vehemently disagree with!" I think as long as you can enter a discussion knowing "I will vehemently disagree with them and probably feel threatened" it should be okay.