About

MEA CULPA

“Blog”

It sounds horrific doesn’t it; like something that might have accidentally come out of your nose while trying to impress a sweet young thing with your wit at a cocktail party? Notwithstanding the questionable name, with time blogs might prove to be one of the more valuable features of the Internet. Need to repair your lawnmower? No doubt there are 50,000 experts out there blogging their brains out to show you how. Looking for like-minded Reformed Druid Tree-Frog Fetishists? The blogosphere is where you’ll find them. Ribbit! And news? Well, what with Rupert Murdoch and lesser known cogs in the big-energy / big-weapons / big-pharma / big-agri et al propaganda machine controlling virtually every conventional news medium there is, blogs might soon be the only place one will be able to turn for something resembling the truth about just how this planet is run.

Then, of course, there are several billion personal blogs. I regard personal blogs as being in questionable taste. How self-important or pretentious can one get? Why on earth would any stranger care what movie I saw last week and with whom I saw it or what my favorite color of anything is? Even I don’t care.

Why then would I engage in such dubious activity myself? It’s quite simple and forgivable, I hope. I have been an ex-pat Canadian for over twelve years. During most of my life in Canada my most relished activity (after carnal pleasures, naturally) was sitting with one or more good friends and talking about this and that. I do not mean the weather or the latest television offerings (though I do not necessarily exclude them); I mean subjects that were interesting, maddening, stimulating, unsolvable and might give rise to a good old fashioned argument. I loved it. I miss it terribly.

I have not made equivalent face-to-face friends in Asia and doubt that I will. Perhaps that sort of friendship is a product only of idle, optimistic youth and cannot be replicated later in life when reality takes hold and makes it difficult when meeting new people to get past the “What’s in it for me to know this guy, and what does this guy think is in it for him” or “Pleasant enough chap, but how long until he opens his mouth and reveals what a mindless, bigoted twit he actually is” stages. With age it becomes increasingly difficult to enjoy being in a stranger’s company and talking and listening because you like being in their company and talking and listening with no further need or expectation than that. Shared history matters. Acceptance of current disagreement about this or that, and more importantly the willingness to challenge those disagreements, is made tolerable by prior agreement about the other.

This wondrous thing called “digital technology” has somewhat mitigated the loss of chinwag chums, of course. E-mail and instant messaging make long distances almost meaningless in verbal communications. But, of course, the limitations of those media are the limitations of words themselves when the goal is understanding. Emails have no skin tone, no tell-tale eyebrows, no jitters or smiles. Nothing can replace sitting in physical proximity and seeing and feeling another’s thoughts. But one can try. As one such friend recently put it, the park bench on which we chat is a cyber one, but it is there nonetheless.

So, this particular bit of blogosphere bloviating is simply an attempt to bridge that physical divide a bit, albeit imperfectly. These posts may be seen, in large part, as my side of conversations I might have had with those distant friends. johnbennett.info is a cyber bench where those old chums can come and park their posteriors and listen to my ramblings now and then as their time permits and take me to task for my frequent follies, fallacies and lapses of taste should they care to. That’s it. Nothing more. Self-indulgent and pretentious? Mea culpa.

(Note: The painting in the header, for those who don’t recognize it, is Caravaggio’s
“The Incredulity of St. Thomas” – 1602/3)