Why We Blog..

No TV at home...so I've been watching TEDTalks:)..Here's a good talk by the creator of Live Journal about what blogging means to her...

A question of faith

I’m at a stage of my life where I have to restore conviction that there is someone one looking out for me .. and in the end things will be alright…..

I truly believe that faith can move mountains .This conviction has guided me through most of life ..but a couple of years ago I became sort of blasé about the whole thing.. there are something’s in life that you just cant change… or things just not meant to be, or so I thought …...

Anyway I’ve recovered some hope and have started reading Norman Vincent Peale books and such like to get back the power of Positive Thinking..

It's good to have purpose to cling to in trying times ..something that you know if all the mountains come crashing down will still exist… I alluded to a lack of purpose in an earlier post ..purpose can mean ambition , strong love for a person or for god ..


Faith is a powerful and beneficial concept , but it can be negative at times ; I got to thinking about this after watching an episode of Law and Order SVU.. the story was about a lady who commits murder because of her faith in a person who we find out in the end doesn’t exist ( this imaginary person was a work of con artists ) …So faith drew this seemingly well adjusted ,well educated woman to murder ….

But it was misplaced faith… we all know about cases of misplaced faith , from my real life experiences I can state the examples of people who turn their back on family and close friends at the insistence of jerk best friends and lovesofthierlife , only to realize at the end that they had given on up on the people who truly cared for them .And jerk lovers/best friends being the way that they are; disappear when it comes down to the crunch ….This is of course an example on a small personal scale on a larger scale it could involve people drawn into malicious cults ,terrorist groups etc etc…

What happens to people who don’t end up in prison, or don’t get blown up , or aren’t left friendless and desolate….because of strong faith and belief in an undeserving cause??? They lose the ability to believe in worthy causes i.e. themselves, love, God……

I was spurred to write this post after Reading about this game in Aswin’s Blog ..found out about the post via Sharath…
Aswin asks :

Can you imagine ever having such a cause or Ideology in your life that you are ready to die for ? Your cause could be Absolutely Anything. I don't mean just Religion, Idea, etc - Your cause could be as noble as 'Ending poverty', or it could be as personal as curing your loved one's illness, it could even be something fictional like bringing someone back to life(?) , it could be, like I said, Absolutely Anything.

He goes further and reduces the penalty from Death , to years in prison to giving up all your wealth , education , memory ..to find out how much a person would be willing to forsake and for what cause

Here’s my comment :

Hi Aswin , Got the link to this post via Sharath, very thought provoking!!!

I wouldn’t die for a cause, because I believe life is precious and I don’t like to encourage suicidal tendencies of any sort..

Would I die to save a loved one??… Maybe, that would be the only instance I would consider this option ..Die to save a hundred dying people ?? ( maybe if it unequivocally resulted in their survival)
Would I die for my Country , Religion ,State or Planet??

…A resounding NO!! I believe all these disputes are politically motivated and everyone’s life is more precious than giving in to the whims of manipulative powerful people.. it’s the same as the case of the Indian soldier who died in Iraq fighting for the US army ..He only recently migrated to the States… and was brought up in India ..God Bless his Soul, but it wasn’t his war to die fighting … Maybe in an Armageddon situation, a war against planets, I would consider joining an army. The job of the United Nations and Peaceniks like me is to ensure that no world wars occur.. the world is no longer as isolated and countries and people aren’t as disconnected as they once were..

I would however risk my all my money ,incur the wrath of my friends , possibly switch careers to stick to my personal beliefs i.e. : open mindedness, the war against bigots , individualism, family ties and self respect .
I would also contribute as much as I could to the elimination of poverty.
This is starting to look like a letter :)
Regards,
N

Theres more to Me and You!!!!

‘There’s more to me’ ..Well I did mean all of the lines in that poem.. I was getting more than a little tired of people assuming things about me , based on a few facts and not the whole..(which is more than the sum of the parts)..anyway Sharath has been kind enough to mention the poem in his blog.. here’s his entry followed by my comment….

Anything more to know ?
Natasha's blog which I frequent (frequently!) has a few nice words up there.

I know its a poem, maybe she doesnt ( or perhaps she does ) expect me to take it literally. But think about it - if you were to describe to person A all the attributes of another unknown person B that Natasha says are not the only attributes that matters, A will still have a really really good idea about the person that B is !! ( books, significant relationships, failures, where u grew up, good/bad habits, overriding passions, job etc. etc. )

Yes, I agree that there will still be lots of 'undescribables' about people - there is nothing like knowing a person for a length of time. But undescribable doesnt mean undeterminable - many of those undescribables will already be determined by all the attributes Natasha has covered.

Besides, the extent to which we intend to know a person depends on at what level, for what duration we deal with her/him. To be fair to Natasha, she is probably talking about intimate people in one's life, presumably what you need to know before you choose a spouse or so, in which case that would be more accurate.

My comment:

Interesting take Sharath!!! When I wrote those lines I meant precisely that people cannot make assumptions based on all those attributes listed …… I guess I was talking about the intangible stuff you mention later… all the above mentioned tangibles do play a part in influencing what you are inside.. but I believe that there is more to a person than man made categories, when I wrote this I was of a mindset that there are only certain parts of myself that I show to people ,or only certain attributes of myself that some people choose to see in me … this will not give an accurate representation of who I am … and this isn’t only for really deep life long relationships ..if acquaintances saw me as more than just the sum of these attributes. .I’d be grateful for it!!!!
Having said that , I have to admit that I may be guilty of analyzing people using only characteristics mentioned above .i.e guy/girl, black/white, etc etc

P.S. I made it a point to mention all the generalisations people make that i could think of :)

Hello Blog!

Ok , I’m going to my middle of semester frequency of posts….which is not a bad thing… I believe blogs shouldn’t be forgotten (no matter how busy you are)..like any other serious endeavour it needs constant attention .So don’t worry blog… I shall not neglect you..
I suffer from a serious lack of inspiration of late..and Sharath’s post got me thinking…. Personally I feel I’ve come down with a severe case of foot in the mouthitis.

Blogspot banned in India

Yes Indian government thank you for doing the needful, this is exactly what we
were wating for…who says they weren’t fast to act on terrorist attacks… NOW how will my sister and parents and friends in India read this blog??HOW will bloggers in India continue to blog..i for one hope it's a rumor or something... darn Government Dinosaurs, seems they follow the policy of if you can't beat repressive regimes ..Join Them

Monday, July 17, 2006
Report: Indian government blocking all Blogspot blogs
BoingBoing reader Jace says,
India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. Indian ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. SpectraNet, MTNL, Reliance, and as of Monday afternoon, Airtel. State-backed BSNL and VSNL have not started yet but likely will soon. The known list of blocked domains is *.blogspot.com, *.typepad.com and geocities.com/*.

Links
India Censors Blogspot
Sepia Mutiny
Rediff

Thanks Yo!!!

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again , Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read the blog and thanks to those who take the time to comment on it!

All the comments are more insightful and have significantly more depth than the author of this blog could possibly muster …

Cheers mates….

Why do people blog???

Actual Conversation I just had with my mother tonight :

Mom: Hey you know that family function I just went to in remote village in India , third cousin XYZ , she came and told me she reads your blog and that you write well.
Me: WHAT!!! Third cousin XYZ knows I maintain a blog ? she read my blog ? how ? why ? what …. Darn!!!!! ( don’t get me wrong third cousin XYZ is a cool gal, i’ve spoken to her a few times , but I’ve never kept in touch after leaving India and there wasn’t anyway she would know of my whereabouts let alone blog.... though I’m happy she read it and said nice things about it to my mom).
ME: So how did she know I have a blog ?
Mom: Your friend who’s her friend showed it to her.
Me: Oh!!! (I didn’t even think my friend read the blog , well now I know….)
Me: Yea ,Mummy I try to keep this blog impersonal , just write general stuff..
Mom : Yea , don’t give out personal info , like your name and stuff….
Me : (Thinking) Ooops!!!
Me: (also thinking): Ok not only have I scared away a sizeable number of people with my ideas, my relatives also know about it!!! …my poor parents …no no not poor parents …they have a daughter who maintains a decent blog . .they should be proud!!!

Incidentally, my parents can’t read this blog at home , some internet firewall problem . I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the stuff I put in , but I’m sure I would get some comments about keeping my opinions to myself , also I doubt if I would write about soul mates if I knew my dad was reading this!!

What Wikipedia says about personal blogs
In common speech, the term blog is often used to describe an online diary or journal, such as LiveJournal which was one of the earliest uses of blogs. The blog format allows inexperienced computer users to make diary entries with ease. People blog poems, prose, illicit thoughts, complaints, daily experiences, and more, often allowing others to contribute. In 2001, mainstream awareness of online diaries increased dramatically.
Online diaries are part of the daily lives of many teenagers and college students. Friends use blogs to communicate with each other, keeping each other up-to-date with events and thoughts in a non-intrusive manner. The appeal of this form of communication is that the recipient can read whenever it is convenient, and the writer does not need to remember who still needs to be updated with certain pieces of information - it is there, waiting, for whenever people wish to read it.

And I had a similar conversation with my friends earlier this evening . So what makes people blog… write about happenings in their life , how they view the world and everyday events, for everyone with an internet connection with a remote interest to see…
The way I see it . ....these are the reasons I blog ….
I didn’t join the blogging bandwagon for a long while , I felt I wouldn’t have anything remotely interesting to write , in retrospect I wish I had , would have been to nice to maintain a blog while I was in New Zealand, my earlier blog was a personal one I wasn’t too worried about that one . I honestly didn’t expect anyone apart from parents ,sibling and a few well meaning friends to read it ,served as a personal journal of sorts and yes I did go on occasional personal rants, mom used to read it , I wonder if she knew what I was talking about …

Cut to the new blog … the way I see it people have so much to say ..but you don’t find people who are willing to listen ..so you frame your thoughts as a journal entry just to send out to the universe , however as it happens the only people out there in the universe interested in reading the entry would be people somehow connected to you …so the stuff you are quite comfortable sending out to the universe gets read by folks you would probably think four times before saying the same thing to , sounds like a contradiction doesn’t it … .

I guess primarily I do it for myself , to brush up my writing skills, like a hobby I like doing , sometimes to write about something I’m honestly interested about that I would no way bring up in normal conversation ..(refer soul mate entry)!! If I get feedback its good because I know other like minded people exist and that I’m not the only one . Designing the layout ,links list, thinking up templates…. just the fact of owning your own bit of cyberspace is appealing ….


I also appreciate the comments, the fact that people read and give feedback on what I write is more than icing on the cake ...definitely keeps me writing ….

While I stick by pretty much all I write, I think without ever having spoken to me making character assessments based on what I have posted online is not the way to go … however if you have serious disagreements with what I post (can anyone have serious disagreements with the stuff I post??) then I agree, I probably would not get along well with you … the same way if you totally agree with the stuff I write ( can anyone totally agree with what I write ???) , unless I know you from some other place as well….. I don’t foresee us becoming best friends.


Maybe I’m blowing things out of proportion, I read the blogs my friends maintain …. For me reading their blog entry is just like having an online discussion … holds no more depth than that .. so I guess in retrospect I guess should feel glad that cousin XYZ took the time to read my few lines penned out for the universe, and thought it good enough to tell my mother about it …and anyway I shouldn’t worry about friends and relatives reading this blog ..What about the people I surely wouldn’t want to read stuff about me ? For all you bloggers and other online type people here are some safety hints:
Safety Hints for Bloggers

please no comments about the link, but it seemed like one of the better ones, the author says such things happen rarely, but yeah she tells us to be a bit careful while posting.....