Here we are, another self-indulgent Sunday. Maybe I can abbreviate that to SIS.
First things first: progress is being made on a logo, albeit a bit later than I would have liked. I saw some concepts, and I really liked one of them, so that’s going to be played with and refined into some more variations for me to evaluate. I’m looking forward to that.
That’s all I wanted to say about that, so I’ll move right into the other topic for this post: POV creep. I don’t think I have ever been exactly shy about stating my opinions here, but recently I’ve taken to talking more about my own experiences, letting bits of my personal life into the writing. I’m not entirely sold on whether this is a good idea, but from a constructivist perspective, I think it makes sense to remind people that I am speaking of my own perspective and experiences, rather than stating absolute truths. My view of the world is mine, shaped by a lifetime of experiences and interactions. It doesn’t look quite like anyone else’s. Yours is unique, too. If you think about it, it’s a wonder any two people ever agree on anything, considering we all have our own distinct life histories and points of view. I suppose it speaks a lot to our ability to reason and use logic to navigate problems and situations. Strict rationalists tend to stop there, believing that logic is all you need. But empathy is also a requirement. Empathy allows you to trust that what another person is telling you is true, even when it doesn’t align with your own experience. I believe this is essential to developing a better understanding of the world around you (and the people in it), because focusing on logic can easily blind you to the biases built into it. “I have never seen this nor seen hard evidence that it occurs, therefore it does not happen.” Such a statement is often mistaken for logic, as well, even though it places personal experience above empirical data. Some may describe a lack of hard evidence without adding that they’ve never personally witnessed or experienced an event, but this is implied: of course we immediately believe in the things that happen to us directly! And in either case, it produces a bias for or against. If you’ve never seen something occur, you can easily believe it never does. But if it’s happened to you once (or multiple times), it’s easy to believe it’s commonplace. In the absence of evidence, one can speculate any arbitrary rate of occurrence. And even with evidence, what you can prove is only as good as the methods used to gather the data. This is why even evidence needs to be examined and questioned.
All evidence, too, is necessarily incomplete and limited. It is also filtered through our perceptions. I have talked more about this in a previous post so I won’t keep rambling on here.
The point is that, while it is commonplace in journalistic publications to eschew the “I”, to pretend there is no ego or personal perspective in a piece of writing, or that it is even possible to accomplish such a thing, I don’t want to give that impression at all. What I write is utterly a product of my subjective reality. You don’t have to agree with it. Your experiences certainly differ. I am also willing to discuss and argue various points, because I know I’m not right about everything (even to the extent one can be right about anything in the first place). Ultimately, I value empathy and human dignity. The former, everyone should have, and the latter, everyone is entitled to. From those two concepts flow much of my current worldview.
I am not yet sure if I will continue to speak on more personal topics, as I did about being poor or moving from the Midwest to the Northeast. I suppose I will try to muddle through as I have been, and possibly adjust based on what feedback I get, if any.
Apropos of nothing, this is also the 100th post on this blog! It’s lucky that it landed on a meta post so it doesn’t seem completely out of the blue and unrelated to the topic at hand. If you are still following the blog after this long, congratulations! There’s no prize in it for you, but thanks for sticking around.
Here’s to another week!
