I Sometimes Wonder

I sometimes wonder in this great age of instant and open communication in which everyone has the opportunity at hand to personally communicate instantly with all of the first world and most of the third world if people even understand how great the opportunity before them actually is. If the do, they don't often show it and they rarely take advantage of it.

We live in the information age. More information is at our finger tips every day than people learned in their entire lives just a few decades ago. Some of us don't take advantage of this at all, and way to many of us squander the opportunity by using FaceBook and Twitter and others of that ilk to inform others, who don't really give a damn, of what we had for breakfast this morning, our plans for the day, or what we've recently shopped for. I don't think most of these people have ever had a deep or significant thought.

I sometimes wonder why I take the time and energy to blog about anything of consequence or anything in the least bit challenging. Most people simply don't want to clutter their banal minds with consequential things. They much prefer to center their minds as well as their lives amidst the inconsequential.

As a blogger, I purposely try to challenge my readers. Hell, I even purposely try to make them angry just to get them to think about the consequential things in their lives. Most of the time I fail. Admittedly, I'm not the sharpest tack in the drawer. The failure could be totally due to my own short comings. And if it were not for the minority of readers who do comment on my writings to disagree with me or share with me how I have inspired them to take a new look at their lives and the real life situations they are struggling with, I'd definitely think it was all my fault.

In the recent blog, "People Are Funny" I thought I said some pretty critical things about people in general. I was sure I'd piss some people off; and if fact, I am positive I did. But I'd never know if from the less than deafening responses in the comment section. There was only one lone comment from another blogger whom I greatly respect. And guess what, I don't respect him because he agrees with me all the time or because I agree with him all the time. He has offered some fairly tough criticism of my work. He's also offered some welcome affirmation of my work. That says to me he's an honest man who calls em as he sees em! I like that. He challenges my thinking. Sometimes he even changes my thinking. I like that too. I like that a lot because in the end, I blog to challenge others and to be challenged by them. It's hard to do that  when readers offer little feedback.

Blogger.com is not a perfect blog host. There is much that could be improved, but for a free application, it is a wonderful host. It tells we bloggers how many people are looking at our blogs each hour, each day, each week and each month. It keeps tracks of every comment. What the stats Blogger keeps tell me is that my blog is read by an average of 1000 people a day, 30,000 people each month. It even tells me that the blog post "Frot and Frottage" is the most read blog I have ever written. Posted well over a year ago, it is still viewed by almost 7,000 viewers every month. But of the tens of thousands who have read that piece over the last year and a half, only 21 have chosen to comment. That's one in every 6000 people who have read a blog piece designed to challenge and confront, even piss off the average person.


We live in the most connected age the world has ever known. People care enough to search out information and opinion like "Frot And Frottage,"  but they either don't care enough to take the opportunity to discuss it or they are too afraid and unsure of themselves to discuss it, even anonymously. In a Democracy such as ours where free speech is a RIGHT of all citizens, this is scary.
Our founding Fathers spoke up and spoke out KNOWING it would cost them their fortunes and even their lives. Yet, we've become a nation that is loath to discuss ideas in any forum.

Far worse we form our own opinions and cling to them though they have never been exposed to critique from others. Thus do dim witted and uneducated house wives and ball-less husbands make the decision that they are smarter than their pediatricians and refuse to let their children be vaccinated against potentially disfiguring and deadly diseases along with way too many similar crazy decisions.

I challenge each of you to engage in the melee  of life that surrounds you. Speak up, speak out. Don't let me or anyone else speak for you. You speak for yourself. Challenge your brain. Boldly and openly mindedly consider and discuss those things you disagree with most. Expose your own opinions to criticism.

To those of you who do comment, who think and who do expose your closely held opinions to criticism, right on. Thank you and keep up the good work.


Jack Scott