The shades of grey in blogging

I've been participating in a discussion over the past couple of days at Treppenwitz about issues of blame and responsibility around terrorism. I'm not going to recap the conversation, you can go read it if you like. What I want to observe about it is just that it has made me think. Reading blogs, and participating in blog discussions, does that, and I like it.

It's unlikely that I am going to change my mind about the evils of (some) US foreign policy, but having considered discussion with someone who has a different perspective can, at the very least, remind me that there are shades of grey. Everything is not black and white. I don't generally bother reading RWDBs (Right Wing Death Blogs Beasts - self titled), because these are so extreme - so extremely different to me - that there seems little chance for finding common ground. But I like reading the more moderate bloggers - Treppenwitz, who I have just discovered, and Troppo Armadillo among others. I also like reading John Quiggin, who thinks along more similar lines to me, but has a whole lot of different information at his finger tips (what with being an economist and all). And of course I like reading the (mostly less politically oriented) blogs of people with whom I have other interests in common, like Tamar's and Nick's.

But one of the things they all have in common is that I learn things from them. I like that. And since I am still working on that essay, I am thinking a lot about the social impact of blogs.

David of Treppenwitz has a post recently about enzymes. About how reading his blog - the blog of a real live person living in Israel - can help people more readily "digest and internalize the real personal tragedies behind the news". This is another, related, social impact - benefit - of blogs. And it works. Not only does reading his story of the previous day, a story about being the bus bombings in Beer Sheva on August 31, personalise that particular tragedy for me, reading his reaction to it also helps me to understand a different view to my own. It helps me to understand how and why someone might talk about "the ugly swath of destruction that Islam has wrought throughout its history" and might say with true and understandable rage that "as far as I’m concerned, if you are a Muslim and you do not loudly and unequivocally condemn the unspeakable savagery of your coreligionists… you are as guilty as the animals who kidnap and behead random victims…"

In one of his responses to my comments on the first post I linked above, David says "I pray that you... sitting in the relative safety of Australia... will continue to enjoy the luxury of your current point of view." This sounds a little patronising at first. But actually I think it's a fair comment. That's not to say that I have changed the opinions I expressed on his blog. But it is true that I (so far) don't have to live through the horror that many people do. Who knows how I would feel and think if I did?

For now, I will have to go away and think about his latest response to my comments and figure out exactly what my answer is. Because right now I don't actually know.

Comments

[David]

First of all, I'm relieved that you did not find my comment patronizing. After posting it, I worried that you might take it the wrong way. The only time I have ever gotten 'snippy' with a commenter is on the rare occasion that someone attacks me (e.g. "...you people", or "... you right wing religious extremists"), rather than my ideas.

The funny thing is that I have always thought of myself as a bit of a centrist (just right of center on foreign political issues and just left of center on domestic social issues).

I am bothered with myself for having fallen into blogging about politics MUCH more often than ever before. Treppenwitz has always been a place where I write about everything BUT politics... I guess I've been reading too much news lately.

Here's wishing for a return to slow news days.

[Nick]

How nice it is, how nice, to suddenly come upon your own name (and blog) as you innocently read someone else's post...