Why I kissed blogging goodbye

Note: This blog has been dangling online for a while now. So, to my loyal readers who may still be wondering "what happened" . . . now the truth can be told. And in true blog style it will be told here because I haven't managed to get it published anywhere else. ;-)

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How does a single voice survive in a culture dominated by weapons of mass distraction? One option is to grab the latest techno-bazooka and fire away in the hope that your message makes it out alive. For over a year I picked up my info-weapon and let ‘err rip. Now, I’m giving peace a chance.

I write as a recovering blogger who jumped on board late but still fell victim to the medium’s faults. I have not been an early adopter of technology since the days of the Atari 2600, and thus it should come as no surprise that I did not type my first blog until October 11, 2007. My second entry came four months later and was entitled, “Why I should not be blogging.” It was probably one of my better posts.
My literary hero essayist Wendell Berry, who completely eschews the use of a computer, had already warned me when he wrote in What Are People For?

My standards, are not speed, ease, and quantity. I have already left behind too much evidence that, writing with a pencil, I have written too fast, too easily, and too much.

I am no Wendell Berry, though, and so my computer and I managed to pound out 112 posts in 2008 and another 29 in the first half of 2009, covering everything from Beltway politics and global warming to the guilt I feel when drinking bottled water. Despite my best intentions to calmly write, edit, and proofread thoughtful pieces, I too often would find myself blasting out something at two o’clock in the morning because I felt it simply had to be said.

Starting a blog from scratch is a little like stuffing a message in a bottle, tossing it out into a vast sea, and hoping the right people see it. Occasionally it happens. Thanks solely to his blog, a pastor friend of mine, Rev. Guy Williams, was interviewed by a CNN reporter who was looking for perspectives on a controversial religious writer.

My bottle got picked up too, not by a random reporter, but by a friend at church who knows David Frum, the neo-conservative author/columnist and former adviser to President Bush. Frum was launching a GOP revitalization website called NewMajority.com and was looking for a “green” perspective. I, as the blogosphere’s only self-proclaimed Republican Tree-Hugger, fit the bill. I went from a dozen or so hits a day to helping launch a site with several thousand readers.

Some read so they can shout, and I was soon introduced to the serial commenters, people who apparently have no life away from their computers and who work hard to have the first and last word on everything. In addition to the regular snipers at NewMajority, others on the Right happily took aim as well. The blogosphere is more about dissing than discourse, but yet I took a perverse pride in getting called names. The American Spectator’s blog said that I was a “thug” debater who had “drank the global-warming Kool-Aid.” Stephen Milloy, a former tobacco apologist turned anti-green crusader, awarded me his “Useful Idiot of the Day” award. I was truly thrilled. Who knew if I was changing any hearts and minds, but at least I was getting the right people mad.

Such thoughts, however, left me feeling uneasy about how blogging was changing me. I wrote plenty of things that never would have made the final cut using Wendell Berry’s pencil in the sunshine. And if, as Proverbs says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath,” I instead was often itching for a fight, confident that I could win any rhetorical duel. The goal of a duel, of course, is not to preach the truth in love, but to kill your opponent. The bullets are certainly flying online, and the real victim may be the collective concentration and civility needed to maintain a democratic republic.

At times, speed is a great virtue, and the democratization of the media via blogging, YouTube, Twitter, and cell-phone cameras does have some real benefits. The recent Iranian uprising, for example, could not have occurred without these technologies. Yet, these tools also fuel a flickering celebro-centric attention span that quickly pushed this truly historic occasion out of our consciousness. Michael Jackson died and the world seemed to say to the people of Iran, “If you can’t complete a revolution in a week, well then, we are just moving on.” Luckily for us Americans, our revolution occurred during the bookish 1770s.

Neil Postman, in his prophetic 1985 work Amusing Ourselves to Death noted the often determinative link between a medium’s form and its content. The brain simply reacts differently to a terse telegraph, a complex novel, or images on a screen. Different mediums create different cultures, and Postman worried that we were entering Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a place where people would “adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

The internet creates a culture of instant gratification and instant distraction. By offering an ever present cornucopia of tangents, the internet inhibits our ability to---oh, oh, what’s the word---focus. A friend’s recent head injury brought this home for me. To combat his post-concussion inability to concentrate, the doctor’s prescription was to (1) religiously avoid television and the internet and (2) read books.

As Berry observed, the marks of computerized media are “speed, ease, and quantity,” and Postman noted that an oratory and print-based society was capable of what seem to us today to be a surprisingly deep, nuanced, and long attention span. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas could debate slavery for three hours without losing their audience. Today, politicians are coached to talk in seven second sound bites. Blogs further this dominance of the new and the quick over the long and the lasting.

Surprisingly, despite the literally millions of perspectives available, blogs also foster dogmatism over diversity. Adding relatively little new information into the mix---perversely all these new “journalists” have led to a decline in detailed investigative journalism---blogs instead serve as ideological highlighter pens. Thus, for those who read a particular Cliffs Notes version of reality, their perspective shrinks rather than expands. My opinion is what matters, and I can instantly enter echo-chambers where I hear only opinions similar to mine.

I would like to say that after some contemplative soul-searching, I swore off blogging on principle. And, to some extent, that is what happened. While there were other factors, primarily David Frum’s embrace of judicial activism to further gay marriage, it was a 94 year old Catholic monk who put me over the top.

Sensing a need for a quiet place amid the storm of life, I sought out the experts. Holy Cross Abbey is within commuting distance to the hustle and self-importance of Washington, D.C., but the monks who work the rolling hills and set their day to an “office” of prayer seem to occupy another dimension, a place that feels not detached from reality, but at its center. As another visitor wrote in their retreat center guest book: “Welcome to the real world.”

The majority outside the abbey walls seemingly do not agree with that assessment, as few are racing to this lifestyle. Of the mere twenty or so monks who remain, several are over 80 years old. Nevertheless, as they sang their prayers in a hauntingly beautiful harmony, I did not feel that the world had passed them by but that they have somehow overcome the world.

While I have taken occasional personal retreats before, I never before availed myself of the spiritual direction often made available. As an evangelical Protestant I have not completely come to terms with the Catholic confession system that is usually at the heart of such encounters. This time, however, I could not resist visiting with one who had taken up the monastic life as a second career some 55 years prior.

Dr. Mark Delery left medicine in his late-30s for the work-prayer simplicity of a Trappist monastery. As we met for conversation rather than confession, I asked Father Mark what the message of the monastic life was for the world today. He answered, “Silence.” The former abbot then described silence as a form of pilgrimage that protects the internal flame of the Holy Spirit from the blustery drafts of modern life. Through silence, he said, “We learn the language of God.”

One does not proclaim a message of silence loudly and with fanfare. Yet, in a society where it seems everyone is screaming for attention, encountering people of calm devotion and few words spoke more effectively to me than any billboard or flashy website could. Father Mark did not dispute that there is indeed a need for preaching, teaching, and, as some might put it, doing something. Nevertheless, the quiet lives of these men at Holy Cross remind us that there is value in not doing as well. During my three Spring days of not doing anything at the abbey, I was able to smell the wild roses, hear the woodpecker, see the fireflies, and better sense the still small voice of God.

My final hours at the abbey were spent at the intersection of two worlds. The monks, who had prayed alone during the week with only a handful of retreatants observing (though I wonder if any of us ever once made their first prayers at 3:30 AM) were met by 120 Sunday parishioners who packed the small, simple wooden chapel.
The contrast between the monastic and “regular” worlds was most notable in the Nicene Creed. The Trappists said the ancient words slowly, almost as though they were meditating on each one. While most of the lay worshipers undoubtedly came regularly, and so this pace could not have been unexpected, the congregants simply could not slow down and were perpetually lurching a half sentence ahead of the monks. For us in the pews, the creed was a box to be checked; for those in robes, these words were truths to be savored. As I drove away and left the abbey’s country road for the fast lane of the highway, I could not help but feel that often in my rush to get to the next place I was missing the place where I am.

A few weeks later, I watched Kobe Bryant celebrate an NBA title. As the confetti was still in the air, I flipped one channel over and commemorative Lakers championship attire was already being hawked on QVC. Then, within two minutes of the final horn, I had uploaded my thoughts about the situation, concluding, “I felt I simply had to criticize our culture of the immediate and do it right now.” It seemed a fitting sentence with which to end my time in the blogosphere.

It has now been several months since I kissed blogging goodbye. I have also unhooked the cable TV and I no longer have internet access at my house, though do not expect me to toss my laptop or unplug completely anytime soon. I am now working through a stack of books that I purchased long ago but for which I could never seem to find time, even as Facebook often claimed an hour or more daily.

I am not seeking disengagement for the sake of disengagement. In fact, I am not seeking disengagement at all. There are indeed benefits to technology, but not all technologies are beneficial. Too often we forget to ask any questions of the electronic wonders that we encounter, wrongly assuming that progress marches forward on its own, immune to the possibility of sin and corruption. At our peril we forget Richard Weaver’s insight from Ideas Have Consequences: “With piety gone, every great invention proves short sighted.”

Yes, I still believe in the power of words, but writing and blogging are not really one and the same; neither are reading and surfing. My new motto is think more, write less. When I do put pencil to paper (or more likely, fingers to keyboard) I pray that my words will not just add to the digital tornado competing with a divine voice that still longs to whisper into listening ears. For as Elijah found to be true, “the Lord was not in the wind.”
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John Murdock is a natural resources attorney in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on Twitter at twitisbadforyou, just don’t expect too many tweets.

Thanks everyone!