Asked Ricardo, in the comments to a December 15, 2006 post of mine that asked, "What do you think is the single most important question about this blog?" — quoted in a December 16, 2006 post of mine, "How your mind looks on the web, part 2."
I found that this morning because in the context of writing the previous post — about Max Read's contention that the secret of blogging is logorrhea — I thought of the old slogan about blogging "How your mind looks on the web."
I had thought the single most important question about this blog was "If Althouse is a liberal -- as she claims -- then why is she almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives?" That's very interesting to me now, 17 years later, because it's still a live question.
But Ricardo, the commenter, said:
At some deep visceral core level, blogging (like most other creative endeavors) is about "actualization" (as Mazlow might say). Writers write because they can't not write. Painters paint because they can't not paint. Photographers photograph because they can't not photograph. Bloggers blog because they can't not blog. This is what they have to do in order to see the world through the right prism. This is how they learn the lessons they are meant to learn, find the answers they are meant to find, complete their mission in life that they are meant to complete. So the most important question here is not some surface issue, but the deeper issue of "Is this blog actualizing Althouse in the way that her heart and soul are crying out to be actualized?"
I said:
That makes me think back to that old slogan about blogging "How your mind looks on the web." I wrote about that back here, just 10 days into the life of blogging. (I was really into being terse and enigmatic back then.)
Terse! The opposite of logorrhea. I think I was trying to be terse because I presumed Instapundit was doing it right. Enigmatic? — where did I get that?
Why am I making a post out of Ricardo's comment? For one thing, it struck me to read the word "soul" right after doing the previous post with the quote from the conference....
Quote from the conference? Ah! The libertarians!
"Libertarians need to search their soul — if they have one."
I finally got to Ricardo's question:
Is this blog actualizing Althouse? Hmmm.... The opposite of "actualizing" might be virtualizing.
Speaking of transhumanism.
This blog has definitely done something to me. I'm afraid it has completely restructured my brain! Whether that's the real me or not... is just more material for another blog post.
Posts
32 comments:
Borrowing from Arnold Kling's SubStack this morning
For the WSJ, Gerard Baker writes about the Democrats and Republicans having switched places in many respects.
Liberals used to be passionate defenders of free speech; now progressives seek to shut down dissent wherever they find it. The left once regarded domestic intelligence agencies as a threat to democracy and individual freedom; now they embrace them as essential weapons against their domestic adversaries, whom they accuse of “misinformation” and “sedition.”
I view you as simply being on the trailing edge of that change. To mangle a line, standing athwart the Democrat drift to authoritarianism-lite and yelling "stop".
Here's the Wikipedia article on Maslow's concept of self-actualization.
Ricardo spelled the name with a z. The correct spelling is Maslow.
Women have so many problems. What's wrong with looking at a situation and coming up with the mot juste, as a motivation. It's discoveries. No actualization.
Maybe Althouse is a liberal and a lot of what passes for liberalism is actually illiberal: anti-free speech, treating people on the basis of race or sex ("immutable characteristics"), increasing the power of those with power, e.g. the CDC deciding how far apart people must remain.
"Speaking of transhumanism.
This blog has definitely done something to me. I'm afraid it has completely restructured my brain! Whether that's the real me or not... is just more material for another blog post."
Althouse.blogspot.com, from the Singularity Is Near to the Singularity Is Here!
"If Althouse is a liberal -- as she claims -- then why is she almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives?"
With the possible long-ago exception of Valenti, show me a post where you treated any Liberal as badly and unfairly as you treated Sandmann and Kavanaugh.
Althouse's Hierarchy of Needs:
Self-actualization!
Aesthetic
Cognitive
Esteem
Belonging
Safety
Psychological
Blogging
We have long equated "liberal" with the left. It is not necessarily true. An enlightenment liberal is anathema to the left. To be an enlightenment liberal you must think. To be a leftist you must be told.
The web combines the innate need to be heard with the innate need to point out wrong-thinking in others.
This leads to endless posts, infinite comment streams and very little self-actualization.
Maslow and his hierarchy. Now there's a blast from the past. Like Existentialism, the stuff of our professors when Althouse and I were in college, experienced second hand. When I saw Althouse self-actualization in the headline, I assumed Mead would come up (but that's the Freudian in me).
As for Althouse's viewpoint of cruel neutrality when it comes to "liberalism" (quaint term, that), the noticeable shift in her commenters toward the conservative suggests it is objectively true, self-described Progressives having no tolerance for dissent. Of course, we all like to work the ref, and boo her strikes and balls.
Ricardo was the commenter who inspired the oranges-in-a-bowl guessing game of 2009 — here. That was fun! People were so bad at visualizing the oranges in the depths of the bowl.
Gahrie, you are lying about me.
"The Menace of Europe"
Ha.
"why is she almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives?"
Althouse could just tell us, but, leaving aside that she does at times pick on conservatives too:
1. The liberals aren't actually "liberal," but progressives who have spurned most of the things Althouse liked about liberalism. She tries to hold them accountable for their wrong moves, some of them anyway.
2. "Liberals" are more important and more powerful: they dominate the culture, and they control the sources Althouse still relies on. If you are going to cast a critical eye on current events, "liberals" are a worthier target.
3. "Picking on liberals" is a better way to try and articulate actual liberalism. That may seem a hopeless task to many of us, but it is good that some people are giving it a shot.
4. Althouse has no interest in conservatives or conservatism. Libertarians make her cry, social conservatives are just alien to her, and populists care about issues, like the border or trade or sometimes deficits, that don't interest her.
5. There's no need to pick on conservatives: except in a few places, like Florida, they are culturally irrelevant, and on issues like feminism, abortion, and SSM they are so obviously wrong that arguing would be tiresome.
Gahrie, you are lying about me.
??????
Are you claiming that you didn't attack Sandmann and Kavanaugh?
If you are claiming that you have been as hostile to any Liberal as you were to them it should be easy to provide examples.
I think Ann needs to blog for whatever reason. That's her business. A blog needs to have an audience to be a blog. I don't think Ann likes her commentariat all that much. She has come right out and told us that on more than one occasion. Even throws a hissy fit now and then and silences us. But she needs an audience, and we're who comes here. I think she'd trade us in for a more lefty audience if she could, but if we leave, and they don't come, she risks losing her blog, which for whatever reason satisfies a need she has. So she pushes leftwing articles at us, and most of us won't pay to read them. She gets to have a blog, and we get to annoy her. It's a good deal.
If Ann was a prog, most of us would have been banned long ago. She does have a few lefty commenters but they display a certain lack of thought. So, she allows us normals to comment. We also have an alternate site in case of another hissy fit.
I'm not sure I want to be around when your heart and soul are being actualized in the way they are crying out to be.
I'd feel like a voyeur.
"If Althouse is a liberal -- as she claims -- then why is she almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives?"
It may have been a matter of expectations and disappointment. Although liberals are no longer liberals. They are lefties. Does anyone expect admirable, honorable behavior from lefties?
It's challenging to decide where to be, isn't it. There a lot of assholes on the right, but even those assholes seem to believe in God, country and Constitution along with the majority.
OTOH, the best explanation for the behavior of the left, i.e., open borders, mutilation of children, energy dependence, corruption of law enforcement, etc., is that they seek to destroy the Republic.
The country has become tribalized, but there's hard tribalism and soft tribalism. The hardest tribalists swallow their ideology whole and are in combat mode all the time. Soft tribalists feel an emotional tie with what was once their side, but don't buy into everything their old teammates say and do and believe.
Soft tribalists are capable of criticizing their own side. That's difficult for hard tribalists, whose chief criticism of their own team is that they aren't as committed to the side's ideology. Hard tribalists have one identity and give their all to it. Soft tribalists feel that they are not just members of one tribe but have ties to others. So they will vote with their tribe, but don't agree with everything the tribe wants.
So, for example, one may remember when one was wholly committed to the the tribal ideology, but also remember that one's parents and grandparents weren't that keen on it, and this could give one's views more complexity and ambivalence than more militant tribalists have. Maybe the difference is similar to William James's distinction between the "once born" and the "twice born."
I used to blog about archaeology nearly every day for years, but then I discovered typewriters and have become an inveterate letter-writer. It's like a compulsion.
Ann's a classical Democrat "liberal" but much of that Left has drifted into progressive authoritarianism, thus she critiques it.
Ok, let's do Kavanaugh. As I recall it, all the Prof did was suggest that we ponder the implications of appointing Justices who grow up in the same areas and attend the same schools. I thought that was an interesting topic. The overall response is maybe best described as a commentorium.
As I recall it, all the Prof did was suggest that we ponder the implications of appointing Justices who grow up in the same areas and attend the same schools. I thought that was an interesting topic. The overall response is maybe best described as a commentorium.
So you missed all the posts supporting the allegations that he was a rapist? Or just forgot them?
---"If Althouse is a liberal -- as she claims -- then why is she almost always picking on liberals and almost never on conservatives?" That's very interesting to me now, 17 years later, because it's still a live question. [AA]
It has been much harder to pick on "conservatives" than on "liberals" over the last 20+ years, because the latter are so plainly involved in so many destructive, anti-Constitutional, anti-liberty activities.
But the notion that you pick on liberals and don't pick on conservatives is cognitive dissonance, IMO. Your bias is liberal. You despise "right-wingers" and news sources that you consider "right-wing." You've said so repeatedly.
You almost immediately adopt the liberal line on any lightning-rod subject, such as Jan. 6, for example. You seemed to buy the "insurrection" ploy from the get-go. For all I know, you still do. Gahrie says it was so on Kavanaugh and Sandmann, and my money would be on him in this matter.
Since you brought it up. And called him a liar.
What Rusty said. Althouse is (was?) a classical liberal as I once was. Much different from what the left and Democratic party is today. Goldberg wrote LIBERAL FASCISM for a reason.
Actualization?
For the Prof (and some others, one might think) it's the Monetization of Rhetoric, and she's the best.
You know, even though I had googmaged the Prof and seen her red hair, it never occurred to me until recently to connect that with her temperament here.
Now it begins to make sense.
Love today’s free expression Althouse more than the old terse Althouse. Be happy. And next, write a novel.
"If Althouse is a liberal -- as she claims..."
I know you are, but what is Meade?
The majority of articles posted do exactly that: pick on the Conservatives.
Althouse seems to play devil’s advocate, but it gives way more weight to Liberals w/the highlighted posts.
Celebrate the diversity…
The majority of articles posted do exactly that: pick on the Conservatives.
Althouse seems to play devil’s advocate, but it gives way more weight to Liberals w/the highlighted posts.
Celebrate the diversity…
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