WHY I BLOG

Keith Burgess Jackson has suggested that I explain to all and sundry my motives for being such a dedicated blogger. I post daily to six blogs of my own and also contribute frequently to three other group blogs. So I suppose that is indeed in some need of explanation.

Unlike most bloggers I rarely make comments on my blogs about events in my life but, for some reason that is rather opaque even to me, I do put up a few reports of my personal doings on Majority Rights. It is a high-traffic blog but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think I do it because that blog is mainly concerned with something that has a high emotional component -- immigration. And as someone who thinks that most (but not all) immigration, is OK I qualify there as the extreme Leftist in the group! (My views on that subject are however mainstream in Australia). So many of my posts are designed to move my co-bloggers and readers of the blog generally towards a greater acceptance of some types of immigration -- legal and selective immigration in particular. And I feel that personal anecdotes are more persuasive in that sphere than are rational arguments.

But that brings me to what I think is Keith's central enquiry: Do I think my blogging makes any difference? And I can answer that very easily. I know it does because my readers often tell me so. I doubt that I have ever converted a single Leftist from his Leftism but a lot of people of conservative views email me to tell me how my blogs are a sort of emotional and intellectual lifeline for them in the sea of liberalism that surrounds them. I am seen as one of the few voices who will invariably speak the plain truth, no matter how unpopular and politically incorrect it may be. Rarely does a day go by when someone does not email me with a grateful message of that kind. And I in turn greatly appreciate and am encouraged by such feedback.

But there is also a certain sense in which I blog for posterity. As an atheist, I have no hope of immortality of any kind so the ancient Greek idea that the only immortality you can have is in men's minds has some resonance with me. And some Greeks even achieved it. Will Socrates or Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae ever be forgotten? And over the period of my lifetime I have already seen many of the views that I have held move from being absurdities to realities. So I think I already have some basis for feeling that, in the future, I will be recognized as someone who got it right when most others did not. I repeatedly find that my theories and assumptions about the world work out in practice (even on the stockmarket!) and I think that, as time goes by, my way of thinking will become more influential precisely because it does yield good predictions. So I actually hope for more influence in the future than I have in the present.

So, like many scientists, my goal is to further human knowledge and understanding but my views on most things are so out of the mainstream among intellectuals now that only the future holds any promise of my achieving that. And since many scientists were ridiculed in their lifetime for putting forward what are now accepted truths, I don't think I am being totally unrealistic in that. In particular, I hope that my dissection of the motivations behind Leftism will one day win broad acceptance and thus reduce the evils that Leftists are forever trying to inflict upon us.

And how do I manage to write so much? One reason is that as a retired man I have the time for it. I spend about 12 hours a day in front of my computer screen. Another is that I am a born academic: Writing is what I have always done. And a third reason is that I find the world of ideas far more exciting than any other so I have few other interests in life. And there always seem to be women in my life who put up with that, rather surprisingly. Women are such fine creatures that I will never understand homosexuals.