Advice to a Young Blogger: Be Consistent, Insistent, and Persistent

 

Advice to a young blogger just starting out [1] [2]:

 

 

1. Be Consistent

 

Not so much at the level of content or argument, but in terms of style; i.e., don't worry if your blog contains wild variations of subject matter and logical contradictions - consistency is not the same as identity - just ensure it maintains a certain look and feel and a certain level of intensity [3]. 

2. Be Insistent

 

Not on one's rightness - as Nietzsche said, it is nobler to declare oneself mistaken than to insist on being right (especially when one is right) - but insistent like the waves on the rocks; i.e., completely indifferent to the morality of your actions, but all the time shaping the coastline.    

 

3. Be Persistent

 

Just keep writing and keep publishing posts even when it is difficult, or tiring, or boring to do so - even when other people encourage you to stop. Persistence is a perverse virtue that pushes one beyond what others regard as normal or usual or even healthy; it's continuing to dig even when you're in a hole.   

 

Notes

[1] Funnily enough, this is the same advice that is given to gender diverse children who believe themselves to be born in the wrong bodies and wish to transition to a gender identity other than the one assigned at birth: be insistent, persistent and consistent and you just might persuade your parents and the health care professionals dealing with your case that you are genuinely transgender and not merely gender non-conforming or simply like dressing up and playing imaginative games.  

 

[2] Any would-be bloggers reading this - of any age (or gender) - might also like an earlier post (published in October 2021) offering untimely advice on how to develop an effective blog: click here. 

 

[3] Deleuze would probably speak at this point of forming a plane of consistency upon which concepts can arise from chaos, but I'm not Deleuze. 

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one - on establishing your blog as a plane of immanence - click here. 

A Brief Note on Love, Hate and Humanism

According to Lawrence, the mistake made by those who claim to love humanity lies in their moral insistence on the fact, rather than in their feeling of being at one with their fellow men and women. 

And although some may care a little too earnestly about the suffering of unseen strangers, Lawrence concedes that we are physically - if remotely - connected to all people everywhere and that mankind is thus ultimately one flesh:

"In some way or other, the cotton workers of Carolina, or the rice-growers of China are connected with me and, to a faint yet real degree, part of me. The vibration of life which they give off reaches me, touches me and affects me [...] For we are all more or less connected, all more or less in touch: all humanity." 

This libidinal humanism - if we may call it such - is central to Lawrence's politics of desire. And it is intended to be in stark contrast to the "nasty pronounced benevolence" which is only a disguised form of "self-assertion and bullying", that he often associates (fairly or otherwise) with Whitman.

Lord deliver us, says Lawrence, from this latter form of (ideal) humanism and from all falsification of feeling: "Insist on loving humanity, and sure as fate you'll come to hate everybody."    

I think there's something in this suggestion that every time you force your own feelings or attempt to force those of another, you are likely to produce the opposite effect to the one hoped for. And we would do well to consider this today of all days, as we remember again the time when, in the name of Love, Europe rushed into four years of mechanical slaughter and self-sacrifice. 

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Nobody Loves Me', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 311-20. 

For a related post to this one on Lawrence's humanism, human exceptionalism, and belief in a common ancestor, click here.