I decided that my first blog entry should be a simple overview of why I am bothering to blog at all.
There are certainly reasons—or fears, rather—not to blog. There are already millions of redundant blogs, no one will read my blog, I'm out of touch with the blogger generation, my material is too intellectual or too personal, other social media platforms are more appropriate, etc., etc.
But in the end, I talked myself out of talking myself out of creating a blog. Sure, I may not have anything terribly novel or important to say, but we're all different and unique, and we can all learn something by spending a few minutes listening to an individual—any individual—unlike ourselves. We all deserve a turn at the mic. The real question, not just for me but for anybody, isn't why start a blog, but why not?
Since the timing is right, let's chalk it up to a 2020 New Year's Resolution. Here is blog entry 1 on day 1 of the year.
What is the blog for? The bottom line for me is that I have spent most of my life in my head, carefully guarding my thoughts from criticism and scrutiny. Eventually, this became overwhelming and unsustainable. I look forward to using my blog to craft essays on important matters that others can relate to and learn from. I look forward to feeling more open and transparent. A blog is a handy outlet because it is simultaneously aimed at no one in particular and at everyone. I can dialogue with people indirectly or raise tough issues that I might not be comfortable bringing up in person.
What will my content be about? The blog will obviously reflect my interests and background. I plan to craft essays about education, culture, religion, politics, books, and of course the comical and mundane events that give life its color.
I hope to use my blog to connect with others and give voice to certain parts of the collective human experience. I hope to deal with some of the major issues I have confronted in my three decades of existence. Articulating those issues will be the primary work developed through the blogging process. I am most inspired to wonder, to inquire, and to write when I am dealing with a deep and perplexing conflict or conundrum. Perhaps I can mention a couple that are pressing on my mind currently.
The first is the conflict between religious modes of living and secular modes of living. The United States continues to be a religious country in the midst of increasing modernization and secularization. Furthermore, American religion is unusually pluralistic. The relationships between religion and other aspects of life, such as geography, government, science, industry, culture, and family, are deep and complex. I have reflected extensively on my own religious upbringing as a Utah Mormon and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It has been intellectually, emotionally, and religiously exhausting (and rewarding) to inquire deeply into my religious identity. While I no longer believe in a spiritual or supernatural realm, I find that the major questions with which customary religions deal do not dissipate after suspension of faith. The search for purpose, meaning, and belonging is a shared human quest. My religious struggles will be an obvious wellspring of many future blog posts.
The second conundrum is the crisis of Western liberalism, which I use as an umbrella term to embrace the great diversity of ideas found in the last few centuries of Western political thought. The modern liberal nation-state is caught between two sympathies. On the one hand, liberal philosophy has engendered a great deal of progress in areas of human rights, economic development, political experimentation, and so on. On the other hand, liberal philosophy is embarrassed by its tacit sanction of crimes that include slavery and racial prejudice, displacement of the indigenous, genocide, unbridled colonialism, environmentally unsustainable materialism, and consolidation of power and wealth by the few. No political party has satisfactorily resolved this deep historical conundrum, and politicians of all stripes regularly appear insensitive or hypocritical in myriad ways. My own academic field of expertise is mathematics education, which might seem very far removed from this conundrum, but it is not. It is hard to imagine any scientific, economic, or political domain being immune from this lack of historical congruence in Western history.
While these conundrums are not new—religious versus secular life and a progressive versus oppressive liberal heritage—my own life course has been profoundly and uniquely shaped by the exertion of these tensions. I expect that many of my blogs on topics of education, religion, culture, and politics will reflect my grappling with these two major conflicts. Whatever the specifics of each essay turn out to be, they will inevitably express variations on a theme undergirded by the central conflicts of my thought and experience.
In short, I am blogging to help me understand myself and my world. I am talking with myself and inviting anyone to listen in. Who knows where the conversation will go next?