An Open Letter, To No-One In Particular

Blogs are strange to me; I can't decide if they're a supreme expression of democratic expression, letting the voiceless masses voice their opinion in an unlimited forum of self expression, or if they're just one more manifestation of modernity's shameless egoism; widening the gap between haves and have-nots; deluding the powerless bourgeoisie masses into believing that they matter, that their voice is heard and thought valuable, placating them as they slide from their once firm, upper-middle class fastness into inevitable economic oblivion.

As an idealist, I really and firmly hope that the former is more true, that all this wankery is achieving something, something more than the smug-faced pissing contest that blogging so often seems to me. All the while, the realist (read: cynic) in me can't help but smirk at the display, so many peacocks strutting about with their plumage on display - no matter how shabby, or torn up it may be. It makes me think that people are missing something, that there's a vital piece of information that escapes them. So, listen, dear reader, and I will tell you a secret. You are dead meat.

No. No, don't misunderstand. that's not some juvenile threat, I'm not looking to inflict violence on you, it's just a statement of fact: rich or poor, well-read or illiterate, international jet-setter or pale, withdrawn home-body, you are all composed of the same slowly decaying organic matter; a mass of dying cells; a fragile bag of gelatin swaddled around a framework of calcium twigs. Dead meat. Dust.

I don't say this in an attempt to put you down, or to bruise your self-esteem (no matter how much bruising it may deserve), but rather, in an attempt to point out the simple, basic flaw in the cult of self that Blogging seems to sustain itself with. No ONE person matters even in the slightest. While I do subscribe to the 'Great Person' idea of history, I understand that even great people don't emerge from a vacuum. I also understand that anyone busy becoming a great person is likely not wasting their time whining into a series of tubes. No, in the grand scheme of things individuals acting alone don't matter in the slightest. It's the contribution of the individual to the greater good that matters. The help you give, the support you lend, the effect you have on society that matters. Remember your Donne, hm? It's become a trite little saying, tossed off without meaning, but when put into its context in Meditation XVII, it has real power. Listen:

"The church is ... universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume ... [n]o man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

TL;DR version? Your worth springs from your connection to things outside you - to be alive is to be involved in mankind.

So, please, before you post, ask yourself a question or two. What have you accomplished by posting? Have you added something worthwhile to the world? Have you done anything, besides inflate your own ego, and bang the drum of your narcissism? Does anyone care?
Be honest. Remember, just because you can afford to have opinions, an education, a computer, and an internet connection, does not make you special. It does not make you unique. It just makes you a selfish little bag of skin, raging against the that which upholds and sustains it.

That's all.

Momento mori.