so somebody at alistapart isn’t very happy with the maturation of blogging. indeed it could be considered boring, or even – mundane:
“Is this all the web is for, trying to bring the world to us and measure our success in hits and links? Or is the gift of the web its potential to bring our true selves to the world? Not our mundane musings and shout outs to people who recognize us on their home page because we use the same stupid software, but the depths of what is within us. What if everyone spoke their minds and actually put some effort into it? How about presenting who you are – what you are made of – what drives your inner being? Take a chance and create without bounds. Don’t waste the power the web has given us in a hit-seeking circle jerk.”
but alas, poor soul, if only you opened your mind to the profundity inherent in the mundane
“Should we be surprised at the idea that telling the untold stories of the mundane can be perceived as an act of such potential violence that the mere reference to mundane activities needs be banned from the public domain? Not, I submit, if we keep in mind the interrelation between the mundane, storytelling, the untellable, untold story and the construction of the human. In my discussion of Bohannon and the Tiv, I mentioned the manner in which spelling out the story of the mundane makes us strangers to ourselves. If storytelling produces and perpetuates our construction of the human, and the limits of stories are humanity’s limits, the mundane rests on precisely that crux: its presence is necessary for being human, but its story cannot be told — for investigating the parameters of the mundane will radically distort our assumption of our own humanity.”
“And if looking at the mundane can reveal how the limit of our humanity lies deep inside us, rather than somewhere in our outer reaches, we may well be in a position to recognize our identity with and responsibility towards the infinite diversity of beings who share our planet.”