Skip Navigation

The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

Writ On Water

By The Daily Dish
Jun 2 2008, 3:51 AM ET

Appleyard considers how blogging highlights self-contradiction:

I certainly contradict myself and blogging repeatedly draws this to my attention. Being moody and impressionable, self-contradiction comes naturally and, as usual, I feel it is important to defend this character flaw as a universal virtue. Self-contradiction is an entirely reasonable response to a world under-determined by generalisation.  Opinions, as I have said before, are both over-rated and transitory; they also, I might add, lie behind much of the strife in the world. I regard opinions, mine included, as of great anthropological interest but of little ultimate value in themselves. Blogging has brought me to this meta-opinion (actually, I regard it as a fact) and so, in one limited sense, it has set me free.

Nige responds in the comments:

I entirely agree with you about opinions and consistency and the whole boiling. Blogging, it seems to me, positively demands self-contradiction, bad moods and good moods, dark and light, different voices, radical uncertainty. Blogs are writ on water.

Like the logs whence our neologism arrives.



Presented by

More at The Atlantic

9 fACES of the New Egypt 9 Faces of the New Egypt
10 of the Greatest Kisses in Literature The Greatest Kisses in Literature
We Don't Need a Digital sabbath, We Need More Time You Don't Need a Break From Technology
When a Rising China and a Humbled West Meet, Who Bows Deeper? A Rising China and Humbled West Meet
'Plug In Better': A Manifesto Plug In Better
Special Report
The Civil War National Portrait Gallery The Civil War
A 150th-anniversary commemorative issue, with Atlantic work by Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and others. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

Valentine's Day 2012

Feb 14, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)