Collective-Monkey-Mind.com

Posted on Mar 16th, 2008 by Marmalade

I was looking around Gaia the other day and came across something c4chaos had written about blogging.  I was interested as this is my first blog,.. but I suspect some people take their blogging more seriously than I.  C4chaos said, amongst many things, that blogging should be useful.  I can’t say I have such noble ambitions…. not to say I want to be unuseful.  All I’m hoping for is maybe to be interesting.  Or maybe I need to admit my ambitions.  I do like the idea of spreading knowledge through blogging.  In time, I hope somebody will read my humble blogs and just possibly learn something new.

I find it fascinating the hopes and expectations that fuel different people’s activities on the web, and how they express it.  For the most part, the web serves a non-perfunctorial, non-essential purpose.  Even the most useful blog or website isn’t exactly essential to life.  And most web denizens don’t actually make money(or at least not much) in all the time they spend staring at their respective screens.

There is so much desire and idealism and desparation being bandied about.  People start websites sharing their vision or their manifesto.  People look for friendship in chat rooms and community on discussion boards.  People check the comments and stats on their blogs hoping for aknowledgment, for approval.  People look for knowledge to give them understanding, porn to give them pleasure, entertainment to give them distraction.  I’ve spent many a hour jumping from one link to another.  The web is addictive if nothing else.

There is so much expectation grating against expectation… not to mention mindless compulsion.  So much of the personal gets lost that emotions show in such a raw fashion.  This is really obvious on discussion boards.  You see conflict and clanishness and everything else.  And it feels so fleeting.  Its so hard to really connect with people, and people you knew well disappear without an explanation.  Communities form and dissolve, but the motivation that brought all those people together surely doesn’t disappear.  If people were satisfied with their real-world relationships they’d probably never turn to discussion boards and networking sites… or else not keep returning to them again and again.

In observing the web, I can sense something in the world that wants to emerge.  But its so confused by and misdirected into a thousand distractionss, the vital energy for change leaking into the vast expanses of the world wide web.

What is this all add up to?  Anything?

(I know some of the standard answers, but I prefer the question itself.)

Should a blog, should the web be useful?  Why?  I suppose it was created with a purpose by the millitary, but what has it become?  Even as we speak, various companies and government institutions are vying for control of this burgeoning electronic territory.  Such an amorphous entity must be controlled.  Terrorists.  Hackers. Identity thiefs.  Oh my!  The fears are as magnified as the desires.

My blog is one among millions.  Just another voice filling up the collective monkey mind.

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Tagged with: blogging, internet, c4chaos