Why I blog

Since blogging, it has changed the way I read articles. Now, I read more carefully and critically than before. I read them from the perspective of trying to understand the ‘why’ of the author and his/her arguments. There is the perceptive instant answers to ‘why’ question that I do not need to think too much about for example, why I disagree, why the argument is logically flawed etc. However, there are articles that you read and you feel that you do not agree with the arguments, but yet you don’t know ‘why’. Writing a blog has sharpened my attention to looking at the ‘why’.

I have just watched a short clip of Seth Godin and Tom Peters on blogging. They also talk about the benefits of blogging and the advantages for improving our thinking and articulation of thinking through blogging. Which reminded me of being told by teachers and others that writing a diary is a good way of improving one’s writing skills, this was before the blogging era, and I am sure any form of writing using any medium helps to maximise one’s thinking and writing skills. However, I now argue that writing blogs in a public domain is particularly advantageous.

Why?

I think the motivation for thinking critically comes from the fact that there just might be a reader, an-other. With this comes the realization of the unknown possibility of a stranger’s eye being cast upon the points that I am making, the intellectual fear factor (the variation of panopticon effect, I suppose) challenges me to think about ‘why’ carefully.

Currently I am thinking about the whole discussion about ‘free’ as there are some ‘why’ aspects of the discussion that I am troubled by.