Apologia Pro Bloggia Sua

Blogging can be inherently a self-centered enterprise. Blinkered. Unintentionally revealing. Or, as a sophomore student expressed earlier this year, " a sad and disgusting appeal for attention."

Some avoid with aplomb the pitfalls of narcissism through blogging about objective events, or blogging fiction, or charming us despite their focus on self.

Blogging about "terminally uniqueness" is essentially annoying? Yet part of this process involves the search for others in similar situations so as not to feel that very marginality.

All this blogging over the past year has clarified the main focus for me. The unifying theme is surprisingly not identity or even culture per se, but perspective. Bi-culturalism is a path to perspective, but there are many others. Critical distance is empowering and othering. I guess I value perspective above anything. Perspective as opposed to the other two P's: provincialism and parochialism.

On consideration, this is probably the vainest of all possible vanities. Self determination in the face of any sort of loyalty. Okay, I am beating around the bush. I am talking about extreme willful individuality, which is not exactly the same as "empowered relativism."

I have blogged elsewhere thusly:

But an individual can also use insider/outsider status to become an able social critic. In this type of marginality, the individual can shift between values and cultural frames of reference, to make informed and independent decisions and choices. He or she feels at home with ambiguity and makes a commitment to relativism. This type of individual can become very important in this modern, interculutral, nomadic world, because they can provide a bridge between cultures, and are at home with ethnorelativism.

While I sometimes continue to struggle with a coherent sense of self, and values, I intellectually appreciate the power of ethnorelativism to avoid provincialism, provide perspective, etc. However, I don't really feel the truth of the argument. That is, I am not so much making a commitment to relativism, and ambiguity, as drowning in it. Rather, to be really honest, I am in a rejectionist position in that I much prefer, empathize with, etc., my Irish life: summers spent there, and having lived in Dublin twice as an adult. I find it hard to practice the sense of self, security, and confidence here in the US that I can there.

I can practice that ethnorelativism anywhere I find myself except here at home. Here, I practice much more the rejectionist critic role. My first instinct is always non serviam. And part of this is just doggone willfulness. [I have just discovered a website called Non Serviam that I intend to explore. Here are two blurbs from the site:

Non Serviam is the name of an electronic 'zine which has been distributed through the Internet for a period of three years. Its focus is on ownness - that is self-ownership - and is, due to the interest of the editor, mainly centered around a dialectical egoism inspired by Max Stirner.

and

This is the first "real" issue of non serviam, and the present theme, as will also be the theme of the next issue, #2, is as presented in #0:

By asserting oneself - by insurrection - one is an egoist, one who puts himself first. For the next issue of "non serviam", #1, I would therefore appreciate articles about "what egoism means" in general. Both questions of the type "is hedonism the real egoism", and articles pondering the status of egoism in ethics are appreciated. Psychological angles of attack are also appreciated.

I digress.

Perspective is power. Perspective also creates an 'otherness' in oneself. Those on the borders are perceptibly different. This state of in-betweenity is known as liminality. It is interesting that:

a) I have always been interested in liminal people, before I knew what liminal meant, or marginality or relativism, for that matter. I have blogged previously on my interest in shamanism, for example.

b) Maureen Dezell has said in her fabulous “Irish America: Coming Into Clover”:

“Hail fellows well met without being met at all” is how Anna Quindlen described the American Irish. “The unknowable extroverts. It is no accident that some have taken to professions that give the illusion of being among the people while remaining essentially separate. Newspapermen, who are of the crowd but outside them. Politicos, who always stand apart in the crowd. Priests.” (p. 71)

So there is some suggestion being made about specifically Irish (American) liminality, or at least separateness.

AHHH! The F(undamental) I(nterconnectedness) of A(ll) T(hings). And you thought it meant Fix it again, Tony.

So, I mean to expand this exploration of perspective, liminality, and self (and shamanism) by relating an experience I had while practising an cxercise in Shamanic Journeying from the book, The Way of the Shaman, by Michael Harner.

In my first journey I explored the tunnel to the Underworld. What can bring more perspective than astral travel?

In the next post.