Frans Hals Portrait of Renee Descartes
In 17th century France Rene Descartes decided to prove that he existed. Descartes didn’t want to keep his mind-blowing ruminations to himself, so he wrote several treatises on the subject. Apparently, Descartes felt that whatever he had to say did not have much value unless he presented it to an audience.
Which is why I have decided to blog: I know what I believe, but if my beliefs are held private, do they have any value?
I – we all – live in an environment of informational anarchy. The traditional roadblocks to expression – publishing houses and editorial staffs – are increasingly irrelevant. None of us today has to stand outside a bureaucracy, as Kafka’s Joseph K did at the palace gates, and wait for an obscure authority to acknowledge us. We can go around.
In a universe of global access, everyone may – indeed everyone is invited to – participate. Whether our words rise above the tide or are drowned in a torrent of unrestricted verbiage, fortune will decide. But sink or swim, rise or fall, once we have given an objective existence to our thoughts we can all roundly proclaim, in a contemporary version of Decartes’ dictum:
I blog therefore I am.
no place for rumors 