Three weeks have passed since I last posted on here. In the world of cybernautics this is long time.... roughly equivalent three dog years, or at least 5 months of the humanoid calendar.
The reason for this absence is primarily my incredibly busy real-life activities afford little time for leisure pursuits at this crucial juncture.
The combination of factors are far too complex to go into detail here, but I am running a number of parallel campaigns which are taking up a lot of my time combined with work and making a living. Its just the way things are, just like buses, life experiences have a tendency to all come at once and this is what is happening in my neck of the woods at the moment.
This is not actually a bad thing, all the components of these various activities, campaigns and workstreams have merged in a virtual maelstrom of headwaters which has me bobbing along and leaping from log raft to log raft, but heading in one general direction and not in the spin of the whirlpool or anything as nasty as that. It does eat up time though and that is the main reson for not posting for some time, but not the only one.
Another reason is that with the final passing of Multiply, the dynamism of blogging on a social network platform has largely gone. Blogger is a much less interactive site which has attracted a number of Multiply/Y360 veterans to maintain their cyber-presence, but the urgency (or at least currency) has I think somehow gone out of it.
When there were a number of options for posting stuff on Multiply (although never enough for my liking at the time) it was possible to have a comment here, a video there and an essay somewhere else. On Blogger it is more an either/or situation, an altogether more sedate experience and one that at some points can for me at least, become quite soporific. Multiply was made for cyber-trainers whereas Blogger is more at home in cyber-slippers I think.
Typing of Either/Or just then made my thoughts divert in a flash to that celebrated Danish existentialist thinker/theologian/philosopher Soren Kierkegaard whose eponymously named book I read about 30 years ago.
He said:-
“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power,
but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever
young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility
never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so
intoxicating, as possibility!”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
It is thus the act of engaging possibility that Kierkegaard mentions here that keeps me blogging but also trying out other possibilities in life that has had me restructure my relationship with society and reposition myself in accordance with the Zeitgiest if we are going to continue along this northwest European approach to phenomenology and the social construction of reality here?
Well maybe another time, but for now I just wanted to touch base on the Total Truth Channel and say that the world remains in flux and turmoil but things are happening all over the place and not all of them are bad! Shock Horror, Cringe...............Sorry, but it just had to be said that in the sea of pure poison in which we all metaphorically swim there are islands of progress with crisp green shoots of changes that are yet to come.
On that happy note I will leave you for the timebeing, it takes a lot of work as well, the joy of labour so to speak. Sometimes it actually is quite joyful but most of the time its effort.
HAPPY OSTARA/EOSTRE/EASTER TO ALL
May all your possibilities be intoxicating, who could wish for more than that?
I noticed you've been away and wondered where you were, but I was also away from the internet for a while, for me it was a combination of no internet connection, being in hospital and prior to that too busy at work. Now I'm happily retired and I'm sorry cos I know you can't retire yet. I don't know what your 'good causes' are but I'm pretty sure you're out there sowing the seeds of hope on evey available island in this 'sea of poison' in which we all flounder.
ReplyDeleteMaybe one day you could share the highs and lows of your battles.
Thanks Loretta for your comment. As I have recently mentioned elsewhere, things are incredibly hectic at the moment with a a mix from taking legal action against a local authority, changing my way of working and establishing a community interest company (CIC) to take this work forward, at the same time changing my place of work and the conditions of my engagement with organisation I contract with. On top of all that, the stuff I do as treasurer of the Friends of our park group, a steering group member on the the Big Local community regeneration project... and helping to organise a day of events in the park in April.... and a children's outdoor arts festival in August. I am also on the local Clinical Commissioning Group (patient reference group) which will be more or less taking over the NHS in England next week.... All this is set against a backdrop of protests (I was at the Stop the Bedroom Tax demo in my town most of yesterday afternoon for example) and fending off attacks from councillors and political oponents of one stripe or another... my days a pretty full at the moment. I will try to keep up here as best I can though, thanks again for visiting and leaving your message I hope all is well with you, I'll visit your site in a bit to keep up with the news. :-)
DeleteI agree with Kierkegaard about the delightful possibilities of possibility, AA, although as Mark Twain said about wealth: "I don't approve of millionaires, although it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
ReplyDeleteIt's good to have you back on the boards again, although its quite understandable that work and more direct expressions of action have drawn you away from the current state of the blogosphere. There is something about Multiply that usually evoked a greater sense of excitement than what I've found on the sedate Blogger site or the den of reactionary boobs one can easily find on lurking on the more dynamic "Blogster". (Dynamic is not necessarily a good thing on a site if the members are often stuck in a Barry Goldwater/ John Birch Society pre-1966 America.
Multiply offered a chance to post a number of quick takes and videos. The thing about Blogger is that nothing less than an essay seems right and while a lot of people apparently look at my site (I'm "popular" in Russia, for instance, which is fine.... if Putin' posse doesn't get jealous and mistake me for a Yeltsin oligarch in exile, or if the Homeland Security boys in America think my grammatical errors are some kind of code to a Middle Eastern political cell. )
Truth is, it's rather dull and staid here. I suppose I take some of the blame itself. But the momentum still needs to get going here. Anyway, I return your Ostara/Eostre/Easter greetings.
Thanks Doug. I am glad your popularity has now spread to Russia, I am sure none of the powers that be misconstrue your motives in either Russia or the US... both of which countries have a reputation for a live-and-let-live attitudes toward freedom of speech and personal liberty. So fear not Doug, I very much doubt you are being watched by either the CIA or the FSB any more than MI5 would take any interest whatsoever in my own views. Provided we don't convert to Islam I think we should be in the clear Doug, although no doubt there was a time when Saddam Hussain thought very much the same thing.
DeleteIf you can't josh around a bit before noon today of all days... when can you ? That's my question Doug.
As Kierkegaard said its all about possibilities isn't it? I know what you are saying about feeling obliged to produce essays on Blogger because it just seems most appropriate to the format. I have tried to get away from that a bit on my satelite Blogger site The Incredible Magic Theatre which at best can only be described as a partial success.
The closure of Multiply has taken the wind out of the sails of the blogosphere for a certain group of holistic geopolitical bloggers in particular, who enjoyed falling out with each other on various Multiply sites and opening and closing a multiplicity of Multiply clubs.
You know... I even miss the raging florid trolls flaming me, they could be a lot of fun for a while, until they became boring and had to be switched off, but I do miss them all the same....well a bit.
Hope you are having a great Easter Doug all the best to you and yours.
As I was saying before I left off with a sentence fragment, people look at blogs but my topics engage only the interest of a few.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should start a celebrity breast augmentation site here and see where it leads. ;-)
At last a club I could join Doug, celebrity breast augmentation is a neglected topic on Blogger in my experience... so grab the bull by the horns Doug (well, so to speak) and throw open the secrets of that fascinating world of celebrity cleavages that is guaranteed to grab the attention of literally millions.
DeleteIf you want to start on a surge may I suggest Kate Middleton as an early topic, but standby for a crashed website Doug, the appetite for this stuff is insatiable... as I'm sure you know all too well.
I haven't been on here much either, but have been thinking about you Aaran. It sounds very nice to me that you are engaging yourself in such worthwhile activities. Myself, I have been here and there and preparing for eye surgery. My driver's license expired and doc says I'm legally blind until I have surgery. So that is in the works and I can't wait until I can claim my independence again. Be good and it that's difficult be good at it hee hee.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments She, I'm sorry to hear of your eye problems and I hope they are sorted out soon. I wish you a very speedy return to independence She my thoughts are with you and wishing you well. I'll catch up with your progress on your blog, take care AA
Delete"but it just had to be said that in the sea of pure poison in which we all metaphorically swim there are islands of progress with crisp green shoots of changes that are yet to come." Really? You sound so optimistic I am thinking perhaps you have found true love? hehehe.
ReplyDeleteI myself have had a major evaluation and have deleted my other blogpages, retaining only Blogger. But I don't own any slippers and fear of consumerism makes me loath to buy any. Blogging is currently minimal though, we are enjoying a long hot summer here, (26C today). I have been wearing sleeveless dresses in March even! Unheard of in recent years. (hoping you Northern hemisphere types don't throw stuff at me I've seen pictures of your snow).
I too am missing Multiply *sad face*
Hi Iri, good to hear from you thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments. Things are a bit quiet here on Blogger and I think we all miss Multiply, but at least you are outside in the sunshine while we shiver in the cold.
DeleteI was always optimistic and I still am. I'm insanely tied up in a lot of stuff in the real world all of which demand huge chunks of time, there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything, so Blogger has been a bit neglected. I don't think I'd have neglected Multiply quite as much though. No sleeveless dresses around here where temperatures have hovered around zero for pretty well the last month, so make the best of it and soak up some Vitamin D before Winter comes *happy face*...
I'll catch up with you on you blog soon Iri, in the meantime what can I say....stay cool?.....but, enjoy the sun anyway ;-D