The weblog manifesto. This is how it begins:
- Write.
There’s more, but that’s how it begins. Without writing, there is no weblog. Without writing, there is no conversation online, anywhere. Chat rooms, usenet posts, instant messenger, weblogs, every aspect of the global conversation: they’re all just words. To quote Rosencrantz (or possibly Guildenstern): “Words, words, they’re all we have to go on.”
And my boss wants me to stop writing.
In college, I was a philosophy major, and I had a wonderful philosophy professor who wrote a wonderful article called Logical Rudeness. Philosophy is all about conversation, especially (in the last few hundred years) written conversation. One philosopher comes up with an idea and writes it down and publishes it. Other philosophers pick it apart, look for hidden assumptions, look for leaps in logic, deny axioms, argue conclusions, split hairs, go every which way with it. This is logically polite. It adds to the conversation, the ongoing argument. The arguments run deep, and in ten thousand years they have not been resolved, nor will they be resolved in the next ten thousand years. That is irrelevant. The essence of philosophy is not the conclusion but the conversation.
But along the way, and increasingly in modern times, there are a few philosophers who actively attack this conversation. There are philosophical systems which preclude further argument. If, for instance, you believe that thinking itself is a disease that must be cured, no philosophical argument can sway you. The act of making the argument, by definition, involves thinking, so it is simply giving further proof that the person making the argument is diseased. (I’m not making this up; there are philosophers who believe this.) This is logically rude, not simply because it is impervious to logic (although it is), but because it is a philosophy which denies other philosophers the chance to philosophize in return. It stops the conversation.
Note that this is different, in an important way, from a philosopher (like, say, Kant) who believes that he has it all figured out and builds a comprehensive philosophical system to try to stomp on other philosophical systems. Lots of later philosophers argued with Kant; some accepted his premises and went in a different direction, others rejected his basic premises altogether. But as comprehensive as Kant’s system was, there was nothing in it that precluded arguing against it. Kant savaged all philosophers who had come before him, but in the end, he was logically polite. He added to the conversation, steered it in a new direction… but then the conversation continued.
And my boss wants me to stop writing, because of what potential clients might think.
On a smaller level, you probably understand this point. You probably know someone who has blind religious beliefs that preclude further argument. You can argue to a certain point, and then they come back with “well, I know it’s this way because God says so.” “Because God says so” may work for them, it may help them sleep at night, it may even be true… but it does nothing to further the discussion at hand. It beats the discussion into the ground and refuses to let it run its course on its merits. “Because God says so”, even if true, is a logically rude argument.
And my boss wants me to stop writing, because he read this story and was afraid that it might reflect poorly on the company if potential clients read it. Please read it now; I’ll wait.
…
Last winter, a few months after I started my current job, I started writing a book. It wasn’t much, but it was fun, and it gave me an excuse to learn more about Python, XML, XSL, web publishing, and lots of other cool things I wanted to learn more about. And it helped me stay sober, because reading and writing are two things that are very difficult to do when you’re drunk or stoned, and the acts of writing at night and reading my own words online the next day helped me focus on why it was important to stay sober.
The book, incidentally, has been a huge success. It’s been translated into half a dozen languages. It’s currently five chapters long, and growing. It’s included in major Python distributions; if you’re on Windows and install ActiveState’s ActivePython, you’ll get my book on your start menu. That freaks me out every time I think about it, it’s just so incredibly cool. My little book, my weekend hobby, my conscious act of sobriety, is downloaded by 4000 people a month, distributed to even more, and read by people all over the world.
My boss doesn’t want me to stop writing my book. He loves my book. He points potential clients to my book online to show how technically competent our development team is. At least, he did before yesterday. Yesterday, he found the link on my book’s home page to my weblog. This weblog. This weblog that has deeply personal stories like this.
He could have asked me to disclaim any affiliation between our company and my personal site. In fact, I do this already, on the “About” page, but I could have reiterated it on a page that contained such a deeply personal story. I could reiterate it on every page. This site uses the Manila content management system; adding a line to the footer of each page is as simple as typing it once.
He could have asked me to write it differently. Maybe put a disclaimer at the top, saying to make sure to read all the way to the bottom. The way the story is written, it sounds like it could very easily be in the present tense, still going on, still happening, still a part of my life. It’s only in the last few paragraphs that you learn that the story has a happy ending, that I’m drug-free and have been for almost two years. Using the present tense was just a rhetorical device to make it seem near. That was intentional; it does seem near. Addiction is always near. Even if it’s not in the present, it could always be in the near future. Addiction is like that. But I agree that, because of the rhetorical device I employed, the story could be confusing. It was meant to be confusing. Rhetorical devices are like that.
He could have asked me to remove the link from the book to the weblog. I would have considered it. Different projects, different personas, different audiences. All from one source, but there’s a good case to be made for not linking them together so directly. I would have considered it.
But no. The very existence of this weblog is a liability. Google, after all, knows all, and it never forgets. As I write this, searching for my name on Google brings up a page of my weblog written a month ago, and a reference to an announcement from two months ago that a new chapter of my book was now available. #1 and #2 links. Even without a direct link from one to another, it’s not difficult to make the connection. A connection from a site he cares about (and wants to promote) to a site that embarrasses him.
So my boss wants me to stop writing. This is the writer’s version of a philosopher’s logically rude argument. You can ask a writer to write about something else. You can ask a writer to write some other way. You can ask a writer to write in some other place. The one thing you can not ask a writer to do is not write. Remember the weblog manifesto:
When I was about to publish the first version of my book, I wrote my own mini-manifesto. I almost put it in the preface, but decided against it at the last minute. I left it in a comment in the source XML file, an easter egg for those adventurous enough to dig a little below the surface of the book. Here’s an excerpt:
“As I write this, the year is 2000, and the Internet is a battleground of intellectual property disputes. Some people would like you to believe that, without proper financial incentives, music, literature, and computer software would disappear. After all, who would make music if they can’t make money on it? Who would write? Who would program? I know the answer. The answer is that musicians will make music, not because they can make money, but because musicians are the people who can’t not make music. Writers will write because they can’t not write. I’ve been programming for 16 years, writing free software for 8. I can’t imagine not doing this. If you can imagine yourself not doing what you’re doing, do something else. Do whatever it is that you can’t not do.”
Writers will write because they can’t not write. Repeat that over and over to yourself until you get it. Do you know someone like that? Someone who does what they do, not for money or glory or love or God or country, but simply because it’s who they are and you can’t imagine them being any other way?
You do now.
And my boss wants me to stop writing. Asking me to write only good things about the company and our partners, that would be censorship. Asking me to remove a link or a single story, that’s censorship too. Those types of censorship attempt to steer the conversation in a certain direction, or to keep it within acceptable limits. But this is not that. This doesn’t contribute anything to the conversation; it doesn’t even respect the conversation enough to try to shape it. It stops it dead in its tracks.
I didn’t fully understand this until I was explaining the situation to my girlfriend over dinner. I suddenly remembered the logical rudeness paper my philosophy professor had written, and I explained it to her, and then I said, “You know, that’s a really interesting parallel. I should write that down.”
And my boss wants me to stop writing.
How rude.
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