Should bloggers get a life?

I’m sure I’m not the only blogger to have had Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech drawn to my attention. Lessing says:

“Writing, writers, do not come out of houses without books. We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned, and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing.”

The issue of children being raised in homes without books, by parents who do not read, is not new in the 21st century. Some writers have managed to emerge from this background, but class and gender bias have undoubtedly deprived the world of many more. Neither is the idea of a ‘fragmenting culture’ new – it’s the cry of the threatened throughout the ages. It’s surprising to hear Lessing complain about how ‘our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned’, when her earlier great novels took on patriarchy in those decades, and would have led me to think she would be in favour of that sort of thing.

Lessing does have a point about weaknesses in the education system which disadvantage young people. There are many reasons for this: the home environment, lack of funding for education and for libraries, lack of respect for teachers, the political emphasis on test and exam results, consumerist culture, television, and no doubt many more. But Lessing has only one culprit in mind:

"We never thought to ask how will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging."

So ‘we’ (who?) blame the internet, and blogging in particular, for civilisation’s decline. Well, the internet has certainly changed my life. I can’t imagine doing my job without it, both in terms of access to information and the ability to communicate easily with people all over the world. Of course not all the data are reliable, but learning this is part of using any information resource. The internet also helps me to make better use of my leisure time: news sources, concert tickets, route planning, flight booking, arranging to meet people, posting photos on Facebook, as well as googling anything and everything I want to know. Why should this fantastic resource be labelled inane just because some sad individuals use it to look at porn?

And now I turn to blogging. It’s terrific that so many people are prepared to put their time into this free resource. I always start the day with a look at Slugger O’Toole for news and local debate; I’ll check out John Self for book reviews; Cedar Lounge and Splintered Sunrise for politics; and Flirty for entertainment. I could name many others. Of course there are dreadful blogs out there: boring, inaccurate, sexist and racist - but as with the internet as a whole, the good far outweighs the bad.

Writing South Belfast Diary has helped me to sharpen up my opinions and my writing skills. I’ve found it particularly helpful to clarify my views on Irish politics, but because this is a personal blog I write about anything I like, which is very liberating. Blogging hasn’t stopped me from being involved in a political party, taking an evening course, reading books, attending concerts and plays, and going on holiday. And having a full-time job. In other words, from having a life. I would argue that a couple of hours spent putting together a well-informed blog post is a superior use of leisure time to, for example, watching TV reality shows or soap operas, shopping as a leisure activity, socialising with people you don’t like in order to avoid your own company, or becoming obsessed with work.

Far from detracting from life, blogging enhances it. It gives a voice to those of us who wouldn’t otherwise be listened to. But to blame bloggers for the deterioration of intellectual discourse in post-modern times is according us a little too much power, I think.