disclosure

i have been thinking lately of the paradox of the internet... of social media like facebook or twitter... of blogging... and the dangers of disclosure. i suppose that, in an idealistic world, it would be possible to represent oneself fully to the world, to truly express how one feels about this, or what one thinks about that, without potential repercussions. this is what makes the internet rich and interesting, after all... people truly expressing themselves with (true or false) representations... like the individual pixels comprising an ever-changing portrait of society.

but we do not live in an idealistic world. too much disclosure puts one at various levels of risk. there are the obvious risks, of course, the kind of risks we hear warnings about, of putting personal identifiers online, like our phone number or social security number or whatever. and then there are the less clear, difficult-to-avoid (or even predict) risks, such as expressing oneself and offending someone in the process. some of these sorts of risks can be classified in terms of political disclosures (expressing one's "common sense" views on political ideology, which, as it turns out, may not be so common, or at least, not universal) or religious affiliation. it's sad, but expressing views that one holds near and dear to one's heart oftentimes cannot be appreciated or even tolerated by others. and, if one does not want to "make waves," one begins to self-edit remarks, to prevent offending anyone. the result is either silence, or a monotonous sea of apolitical, areligious, unrevealing remarks... the richness of the internet has been reduced to a flat canvas of fear...

there is the argument that people should reserve their remarks to those who would agree with them. but this leads to the figurative "echo chamber," where people simply "preach to the choir." this leads to the fragmentation of society, the shattering of the common image. for the internet and society to truly be rich, all discourse should be present, from the unpleasant and disagreeable, to the strongly affirmed and agreeable. only then can we know each other, only then can we hope to be "heard" by a different ear...

***

i recall (from somewhere) the notion of the panopticon. the panopticon was intended to be an instrument of control. each individual lived in a separate isolated room, but one wall of the room was made of glass, and open to view of everyone else. although no one could communicate with immediate neighbors, it was still possible to see others, living lives in other windows. and thus, it was possible for the notion of always being seen, of a paranoia of sorts, to exert an insidious and invisible control of the behaviors of all individuals in all rooms... no one spoke out of turn or did anything untoward, simply out of fear (respect) of this nebulous other that was always present and always absent.

are we turning the internet, this ubiquitous instrument of representation and expression, into a panopticon? who needs a big brother when we have invented a whole slew of "others" who are ready to jump on and judge every slight that we commit, every mispoken thought?

***

in a discussion with my friend kendall and his girlfriend, i tried to articulate why it is that i blog. i had a difficult time of it. if indeed the blog is merely a journal of sorts, then why not keep it locked up and private? why do i write all of these personal, and potentially damning, thoughts, and broadcast them to who knows where? ...

why indeed... for anyone who ever has written (as a form of expression), you are aware that all writing is produced for an audience. even if that audience is not a distinct person or even group, there is a hidden reader guiding the shape and content of any given piece of writing, shaping it through the contours of his/her invisible ear. in a very real sense, every piece of writing invents a reader; it is almost as though every word shapes that (possibly fictitious) reader, through gauging what he/she can accept, what he/she will find challenging, what he/she will possibly turn away from...

the reason blogging is essentially a disclosure, a secret-sharing, is precisely because that is what writing is. writing's very purpose is to share secrets. and to keep writing "private" is to bottle up what was inherently intended to be sent to the winds, to be caught up by whomever happened to be stuck in the same storm.

writing, blogging, and, yes, any form of disclosure on the internet, is (secretly or not, consciously or not) exhibitionist. and what's wrong with that? people are constantly bottled up by circumstance and imperfection; we all need an outlet where we can share who we really are... what is so wrong with this?

it is for this reason that i blog on occasion. i want to share a piece of myself with the world, even if that piece is at times incoherent, ill-formed, whatever... i share of myself with full knowledge that i am a person in process. i don't pretend to be someone who has arrived, and has "thought everything out." far from it. and i'm sure i've shared damning secrets. in fact, i know i have. but if i listen too much to the "voice of reason" that tells me to tone it down, or to edit things for my own safety and protection, then i defeat the very purpose of my writing, of my blogging. to a great extent, this experiment, the driving force behind it, is this very "making-vulnerable" of my soul (in comfortable degrees, of course). it is to risk oneself beneath the eye of the world.

understand this: only if everyone commits this risk will the world be free of fear.

as one of my professors, mark taylor, pointed out, to eliminate the fear of wrongdoing, there must be "obligatory excess." or, as dylan put it, "everybody must get stoned."

i urge everyone to take a risk and express yourself to the world, in comfortable degrees. not everyone will agree with you, but who cares? in the end, no one will agree completely with anyone else, and we weren't meant to... in the end, everyone will (paradoxically) appreciate their sameness only after everyone appreciates their fundamental and irreducible difference. we are all together in the fact that we are all crazy and alone...