Going public with ideas – article on well-being

When I started this blog I read that the typical pattern for blogs is for lots of enthusiastic posting at the start and then for regularity switfly to drop off. I’m certainly conforming to that pattern !

It also seems clearer to me now that Facebook is better designed for sem-public conversation of this type. That’s where everyone is already hanging out, so it’s a site lots of people check regularly, so more people hang out there to interact…. etc…. The classic network effect.

But I do like forcing myself to structure my ideas in this semi-public way which Facebook doesn’t quite promote. It makes things less flighty. You have to actually think things through a little. Tie things down. Commit yourself.

After my early postings about happiness – and having thought about Marco’s reply – I realized that this was an area that I wanted to explore more. So I wrote an article for Compass – where I’m volunteering a couple of days a week at the moment – to try and take these thoughts a little further. And also to get out of my comfort zone of just chatting about this stuff with friends. To put my ideas out there and see how flamed I got by putting them on a public forum amongst people with their own strong ideas and confidence to articulate them. If you’re interest the article is here - I’d be interested to know what you think.

Hannah Arendt on thinking

Writing in the NYRB (Vol LIV, No.4) Jeremy Waldron paraphrases Hannah Arendt as saying:

“Thinking is possible among people who know how to talk back and forth with one another – that’s how one learns to think. But thinking will atrophy in an environment that lacks the stillness that allows us to concentrate in inner dialogue or … in a social environment where distrust among people makes first outer conversation, then inner conversation impossible.”

He also describes her as believing that we tend towards having moral conduct when we have this inner dialogue with ourselves. We wouldn’t do things we’d given thought to not being able to live with ourselves for having done. Hence when this inner dialogue ceases then we are more likely to act immorally.

These seem reasonable observations, wouldn’t you say? If one takes them on board then they make it seem almost essential to take space and time for personal reflection and for engaged and thoughtful conversation with friends.