Why Do Bloggers Blog?

It would seem on the face of it to be an extraordinary pursuit. Halfway between having multiple penpals and attending a daily confessional, blogging always seems to contain some internal contradiction. It's the principle of a personal diary, but made public, or the principle of a community newsletter for a community of strangers. Seen from a different perspective it could be understood as a kind of underground network of information distribution, and often the internet has been put to subversive political purposes, but bloggers are generally a cheery bunch of enthusiasts, who seem to have no more nefarious intention than to entertain people with their daily experience.

I'd wanted to keep a blog for absolutely ages before my husband spotted an article about wordpress in a computer magazine. It's partly due to my own fascination with a contemporary culture that believes everyone has a story to tell. It became most noticeable first on the television with the rise of what used to be termed the 'docu-soap' in which the lives of 'ordinary' people – driving school instructors, or airport staff – were edited to produce a weekly soap opera with its quota of incident and drama and insight into human nature. It's such a human temptation to see ourselves as starring in our own little cinematic production. But it was also about living something I'd long been studying. If I did believe that identity was in fact composed of a myriad assortment of small narratives, and that our sense of self changed with the ebb and flow of the stories we told, wouldn't it be intriguing to watch such a dynamic in action? Particularly at a point in my life where I know it is essential to change myself and my most profound convictions (of which I am now an unhappy convict). And finally, it's the teacher in me, the anorak, the enthusiast. If I tell people that I teach French literature at university, most will say, oh right, so you teach French grammar, or else they are simply perplexed. I have to restrain myself from saying something inarticulate like 'Wait, you don't understand, I know such cool stuff, you wouldn't believe it!' But I do know cool stuff, about the way we think and about the way we write and about our relationship to history and to each other, and it's always been one of the great bullet-proof pleasures of my life to share that knowledge.

But why should that translate to daily postings of a couple of hundred words in the echo chamber of cyberspace? Well, I was reading Theodore Zeldin's wonderful An Intimate History of Humanity and thought maybe I had found an answer. Zeldin was talking about the ancient art of hospitality that used to be so privileged within global early culture that China's Great Plan in the third millenium BC lists 'the entertainment of guests' within its eight objects of government. The Lithuanian word for guest is 'clansman' because by eating and sleeping in another's house, the guest became part of his host's clan. And in Albania, a host who gave hospitality to a stranger was obliged to take revenge on anyone who harmed him before he reached his next destination. By about the sixteenth century, such tender attentions were beginning to die out, but as Zeldin says 'This type of open hospitality has been admired and practiced in virtually every civilization that has ever existed, as though it fulfils a basic human need.'

The basic structure of hospitality is to embrace what is other, what is different, and what is unknown, as if it were part of oneself. To treat it with respect and recognition. True hospitality as part of the human condition is not just about welcoming the stranger in, but welcoming the ideas and the beliefs that he or she brings with them. If hospitality has declined in our culture it's out of lack of generosity, and laziness, or else an exaggerated perception of the threat the other holds. But what strikes me about the blogging community (and I've mentioned it before) is the remarkable hospitality it extends to its members. The existence of psychoanalysis proves that we invest quite a lot in the possibility of talking to strangers and Zeldin points out that any social co-operation works out best between those who have only a few aims in common, who are not split by rivalry or hampered by negative experiences. Close encounters, then, are best when they maintain a certain amount of distance, when there are no tedious battles over issues of authority and control. That's the best part of the internet – it's supremely democratic and egalitarian; we all have our one voice which has as much weight as anyone else's. Its structure of engagement makes it very easy and simple for us to welcome the other in; our generosity costs us nothing. And within the context of hospitality that reigns here, we can easily and comfortably become intermediaries in each other's worlds. It's the only space available where we can express what we have to say and be heard with hospitality, and the fact that it exists at all, and that its use has been so positively and peaceably explored, must be an encouraging sign in our cultural development.