Short-Takes on Why I Prefer Blogging to Social Media

If there is anything good about the 2016 presidential race, it’s that it served to bring to light many issues which were hidden, especially in the mind metaphorical human heart. Most of these issues involve empty spaces in both.

Here we go.

1. I prefer blogging to Social Media because ideas can be expanded upon and have its foundations described. A downside, however, is that those who need to read these types of pieces won’t do so.

2. Something else about Social Media: if you put up a status, on, say, Facebook, it is always prone to the commenter who hasn’t read your previous statuses--or your blog--and who refuses to do so. He has made up his mind about whatever it is you are saying and about you.

3. And then there are your regular friends, those who regularly comment on your statuses and vice versa. Most of them are great—even the liberals. But, sometimes, you find out that your friends are harboring all manner of misconceptions about things you thought you had in common.

Example: when you find out that a friend who calls herself a conservative, thinks that when someone posts a different opinion than hers on her page, that she is being forced into another opinion. And when you try to explain why this is not so, you get the post-modern version of how to define a word/concept.

This is a good, smart lady and I like her. But her thinking has been so post-modernly molded, that she thinks that anything which makes her intellectually uncomfortable is “force” and cannot see the illogic in it.

Call it the Safe Space mindset, where a person is free from the violence of your horrible opinions.

4. I have only blocked two people from my FB page; both were out-and-out straight-jacket lunatics. At my old blog, I blocked a few trolls after many warning and after tiring of changing their comments to something more entertaining.

5. On FB, I’ve trying to keep it from being an echo chamber. It surprises many people when I argue with them; they assume I’m angry or that they are about to be blocked. One the contrary, argument is what keeps your thinking from becoming sluggish, from gazing at your navel for too long.

6. I’d like to see more people become open to at least reading other points of view and having their minds changed. Yes, I know it won’t be many.

7. Have I had my mind changed recently? You bet I have. I thought that conservatives were better critical thinkers than liberals. It turns out that we are just as prone to error as liberals are. The culprits: pride and the refusal to be humbled by God.

You cannot improve your thinking process without at least reading what your ideological opponent says; exercise for your brain.
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And this analogy can be taken further: recent events have shown just who has been going to the intellectual gym—the library is one example—and who has been sitting on their duffs.

It's a very valuable revelation.

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