Bill's Notes

Via Harry's blog comes a story about a couple of New Media artists who committed suicide over the summer. The thesis is that they were driven mad by the Internet — something I think that's unproven.

But the article did make a point about the hyper-social and hyper-isolated aspect of Internet communication, and the possibility of real insanity and life damage as a result. It took me a while to see the danger. I've lost at least two friends as a result of this blog, and had trouble with two former workplaces as a result (one while I was getting ready to leave, the second well after I left).

In my last job, people were reading this blog, commenting anonymously, occasionally discussing the blog at meetings (but never telling me about it), complaining to my boss about it, and all this came out just as I was leaving. In one case, I made a serious error in judgment — I spoke about a co-worker, and thought that I'd mitigated any discussion about our conversation by mentioning I thought he was a pearl of an individual. (I still think he's a terrific person.) But upon mature reflection, I recognized that the anonymity of my blog didn't protect me from the fact that I was telling stories out of school. I deleted the entry, and resolved to avoid such, well, betrayal in the future.

I got to thinking about the concept of "off the record" and privacy. I recognized that when you're dealing with a blogger, nothing's really off the record anymore, normal interactions between people can end up on the Internet. That's what I realized had to change. I had to come up with a personal policy about what I would say on this blog, and what I wouldn't -- and it meant real changes.

You see, initially I had thought, anonymous person, anonymous blog, it's OK. But I soon recognized that's not true if people get hurt, and not if people can find out about it, or if other people can identify the people in question. That is, what was supposed to be "slice of life" blogging had real ethical questions -- questions that I initially thought were dealt with by being anonymous, but soon came to realize, it's a lot more complicated than that.

That's one reason I have such an ambiguous attitude about blogging now. That's also the biggest reason for deleted posts. I also recognized that I was getting sucked into cyber-space, even though I recognized the dangers. A year or two ago, I made some changes.

One thing I did to help un-isolate myself from the cyber-space, which can, in fact, lead to a kind of madness, was eliminate Internet access at home. It's normal now. And I'm happier that way.

Another thing I do is comment less on other blogs. Someone has something to say about everything, and inevitably, you'll come into conflict with someone about anything. And there's a kind of culture shock that comes when people fight you on anything -- even things that may seem perfectly obvious.

You see, a lot of our conclusions come from our worldview — different worldview, different conclusions. Comment boxes are not exactly the best spots to challenge someone's worldview, or to have your own challenged.

I've rarely, if ever, seen anyone do anything other than further argue their point in comment boxes. (There are exceptions, of course.) An awful lot of stuff simply involves conflict — conflict that can become masturbatory. The repetition of arguments in comment boxes, over many years, is amazing.

Gay "marriage"? The same arguments come up over and over again. Truth is, it boils down to one side thinks we can change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, and one side thinks you can't/shouldn't. Fair enough.

Abortion? One side thinks women have the only choice; the other side says the fetus should have a choice, too.

God? One side says God exists and is evident by creation; the other side that's a false assumption.

George W. Bush? He he. Not going to touch that one ... let's just say like any leader, he is subject to a myriad of criticisms and defenses. I'm not trying to say that all issues boil down to a binary opposition, only that whatever the argument is, it's repeated a lot.

Anyway, I was talking about my sanity, and how the Internet can lead to madness. I guess the point is everyone should be aware of the dangers (despite the benefits of cyber-space) and come up with a personal policy to preserve their mental health. And bloggers, such as myself, need to come up with personal blogging policies about dealing with others' privacy -- even when we try to do "slice of life" blogging, or memoir-type articles.

Michigan paid $400,000 to put would-be patsy Appalachian State on the schedule. Then the Wolverines lost.

So, a thought: Can you imagine what practice must be like this week. As a friend of mine who played cornerback for Michigan back in the Bump Elliott days said, "This week will be an exercise in humiliation, followed by pain."

Well, this is interesting.

I've seen these kinds of questions asked more and more, as if men were discovered just recently, like some exotic species of marmeset found in the depths of the Congolese rainforest. And here we once again have men trying to explain men.

But part of being a man is you don't have to explain ...

IJS.

One sore subject for many of us is housing prices. Between 2000 and 2006, home prices increased 86 percent in real dollar terms, according to this.

What infuriated me was that it was obvious that we were in the "boom" part of a boom-and-bust cycle. I'd seen it during the late 1980s in New Jersey's Route 1 corridor, as well as in my former hometown of Toms River. Housing prices went nuts then, and 10 years later, houses were actually worth much less in straight-dollar terms, not factoring in 10 years of inflation.

So when the price of a rowhouse in Roxborough went from $70k to $180k in a couple of years, I was a little surprised that people really hadn't learned anything.

Me, I was naive. I had assumed that when interest rates went down, housing prices would rise a little, but that meant extra cash in our pockets because our loans would be lower. But I didn't think people would actually bid up the price so that what would've been interest became principle -- and more.

It never occurred to me that people would pay twice as much for a house as it was worth a few years earlier. It never occurred to me that a critical mass of people would do so, forcing the disciplined buyers out of the market, though I was quickly disabused of this notion and filed it under "extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds."

I moved to the Poconos rather than take on a hundred or so extra thousand dollars in debt. That was debt that I might not be able to repay if housing prices went down. I recalled in the early 90s, after the last bust, many people had severe negative equity in their houses. They were at extreme financial risk if they got laid off. Some did, and ended up having to sell their homes without being able to pay off their mortgage. They are now forced to walk the land, homeless wanderers, twitching and muttering, bearing the mark of Cain. (All right, that's a little over the top.)

All this is to say, I don't feel sorry for you if you end up with severe negative equity in your home.

Not that any of the readers here would do that. The readers here, after all, are not mad followers of popular delusions.

Paul Burgess reminds me that today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Read Paul's entry — it's outstanding.

I read On The Road in 1988, just as I was sobering up. The book came as a big surprise — Kerouac seemed far different than what I expected. The book was lighter, more ecstatic, but more disciplined than what I was expecting. Kerouac himself is a bit confusing to people — he was a conservative, a Buckley-loving conservative, and a kind of Catholic mystic. He reminded us that Christianity doesn't mean middle-class conformity. And he's not to be judged by his followers.

I dunno. Something about that book just pulls you, though unlike Burgess, the only line I can remember is the last line:

... so in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out [...] the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty.

Ever since Gatsby, American writers have to deal with this ending, what many consider (including me) the greatest page of American lit ever written:

“As the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Kerouac — he stayed focused on that "transitory enchanted moment," he desired that "aesthetic contemplation," he stayed with it to the end, and I think that's why Kerouac has such a hold ... God bless him.