Three Reasons to Write a Blog

(For one thing, I could now write without worrying about my horrible handwriting.)

This is my first blog. Ever. I have long been planning to start one, but I did not. I chose this topic mainly to convince myself to just do it. Even so, may this in some way help you too.

Most fear writing due to its permanence. But what is in permanence that screams for fright? It is the eternal exposition of one's incompetence. This fear has petrified me for some time. Today, I choose to overcome it.

I am starting to write my thoughts out despite my awareness that my future self will be ashamed at a lot of the things that I will write. This is because of at least three benefits of writing a blog that outweighs that feeling of cringe. 

#1: It clarifies thinking. 

Although clarity in thought does not entail clarity in writing, clarity in writing is a sign for clarity in thought. But why is clarity in thought even important? 

For one thing, we make decisions all the time. Each decisions springs from a proposition that you believe to be true. Each proposition, in turn, is composed of at least two concepts, conjoined by a copula which reveals a relation between the two concepts either of affirmation or negation. Concepts, therefore, are the foundation upon which actions are built. 

Just as the sturdiness of the foundation of a house is inherited by the entire building, so is the clarity in the concepts in one's mind inherited by the entire web of thought and action we build on it. And hazy, vague, and imprecise action is incapable of solving hyper-specific problems present from the dawn of time until the end of history.

And this is why although conceptual analysis is mainly a philosophical tool, it is an indispensable tool for all disciplines. For instance, I am currently a fourth year student taking the Bachelor of Secondary Education, major in Social Studies program at Holy Name University. We are working on a thesis entitled "Historical Thinking Skills and Fake News Susceptibility of Learners." The fields in which this study could mainly be classified are educational research and social research. Even so, I argue that to be able to empirically test whether our independent and dependent variables have a significant inverse correlation, we first need to have a clear grasp of each concept. The problem is precisely the absence of a clear definition of such variables in the literature. Therefore, we had to import the philosophical tool of conceptual analysis in order to gain clarity of each terminus of the relation that we are set out to investigate. 

In fact, conceptual clarity about the variables is necessary way way earlier, that is, at the stage of the formation of a hypothesis. This is because hypotheses are propositions which could turn out to either be true or false. As such, they, as said above, inherit the clarity or ambiguity of the concepts that compose them. And having a vague hypothesis is a scary feature for a study to have. One of my nightmares (Well, not really).

Having identified one benefit of writing in general, let us now turn to one benefit of writing for the public, and not just for oneself like some diary.

#2: It invites feedback.

We hate being judged, at least when the judgement is (1) directed at someone we care about especially ourselves, and is (2) negative.

But growth is possible if and only if we are willing to accept and to process others' criticism of our work. And growth, it seems, is self-evidently valuable given the horrors of stagnation (If this is not self-evident to you, I hope to convince you of how terrible stagnation is in a future post).

The psychologist Jordan Peterson cites Carl Jung to have said that "the fool is the precursor to the savior." There are only so many things that we can automatically perform with mastery. To be an expert at anything, one must be willing to undergo the stage of being a beginner. And being a beginner is not fun. Some of those who have already mastered the skill you are training for are malevolent enough to mock you, and will perhaps call you a fool. But, as the Buddhists remind us, "life is suffering." Just bear with it. Voluntarily bearing suffering is the only alternative to the horrors of stagnation. 

Peter Kreeft, in his witty book entitled Socrates Meets Kant, cites the following criticism of Plato by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. There, Kant writes:

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the senses, as setting too narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured out beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of the pure understanding. He did not observe that with all his efforts he made no advance, meeting no resistance that might, as it were, serve as a support on which he could take a stand. (A5 B9)

The senses provide feedback to our spontaneously wandering thought. Reality as perceived through the senses either falsifies or verifies the predictions produced by the mind. Without such contact with reality, even when the mind multiplies his work, such effort is all useless at least for Kant. This is because in such case, there is no way for us to know when to change our thinking to map it better on to reality.

There is a little complication when the feedback comes not just from impersonal reality, but from, wait for it, people. This is because although people sometimes tell the truth, they sometimes do not. They sometimes lie, or they are sometimes just honestly mistaken. This is why feedback from people must always be taken with a grain of salt (The contrast is only in terms of frequency. Illusion can sometimes come from senses, but people lie or are mistaken almost all the time).

Still, the point stands. Writing invites feedback, which one could in turn use to grow. Perhaps, just perhaps, such maturity equips us to be, following Peterson's Jung, a savior, whatever that means.

Having established a second benefit of writing, let us turn to a final one.

#3: It creates accountability. 

Since grade school, we have been told that whatever we put online will stay there forever. Even hitting "delete" buttons only, they say, hide to some people that which we intend to delete and does not actually eradicate it. I am therefore conscious that the ideas and opinions that I put here will be immortalized. 

How does the awareness of the inerasability (does such word exist?) of the content I put here foster accountability? In at least two ways.

First, I think, although this might change, that I will pursue the life of an academic. It will certainly be bad to my career if I will lie or commit mistakes all over. 

Some say that "walay aso makumkom" (No smoke could be trapped within our hands). Popular wisdom only becomes popular when there is some element of truth rings true for shared truth-oriented human nature. Consequently, this moves me to practice the habit of not only of accuracy, precision, or rigor, but also also of integrity. 

Second, former Dean and currently professor at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary, Fr. Jose Conrado "Dongdong" Estafia, Ph.D., once told us in class that had he been gay, he would have pursued doctorates abroad on nailpolishing. His point was that we must not waste our potentials.

"You have a lot of potential" is a compliment when you are young. But the older you grow, hearing it becomes more and more frightening. This is because, as Thomists are keen to note, act and potency are mutually exclusive. Potency is the principle of limitation to act, as the Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J., has said. In other words, the more potential you have, the more limited your current level of existence still is. When you are young, you still have time to actualize your potentials. But when you become a "forty-year old infant," to borrow an expression from Peterson, you no longer have much time and opportunity to do that. And that is frightening. 

In other words, the second reason why writing a blog fosters accountability is by forcing me to read and read and read so I would have something to write about. Now, I already do read quite a lot. Still, I know that I do not read yet as much as I could. There are still too many gaps in my knowledge. Having a definite schedule in writing my blog, therefore, could move me to fill in those gaps—those limitations in my grasp of that which we all seek—the plenitude of being.

(I hope that writing blogs is not just a phase in my life. I'm afraid I'm writing this just to distract myself from a recent break-up. Well, only time will tell.)