(Updated)Sat April 9, 2005
“”I am adding this update as a response to questions raised by Sirocco where he thought I implied that world stories were worthless on this diary. Let me make it perfectly clear, I do think the world stories are extremely important and perhaps they deserve a special section themselves for easy referral to by members. I so often am not able to remember who wrote what and when and where to find it. But my main point was should we be trying to find ways to take action on these issues. I hope that this makes it a little clearer. I personally have written much about Iraq and the difficulties there, not just from an American perspective, but a world and a personal perspective.
Everyday when I sign on to DK or Booman I am struck by the number of worldwide stories, that outline the horrendous goings on in country after country, from Zimbabwe to Iraq, Us, South America, etc.
I am wondering what is the point of all of these stories constantly brought to our attention. How can we possibly take a viable interest in every one of these issues and if we do what can be done about them?
Sure I agree we should be interested in the whole world, but is that diffusing the problems we have in this country and our ability to take effective action (another question in itself).
What is the purpose of this forum and others like DK, just to endlessly discuss every issue, and then do nothing, take no action, just to know about it and discuss it to death.
I am concerned that we are wasting away the time when perhaps we could be actually doing something, become a force of change.
I am not saying I have the answers, but I am asking the question and perhaps we could discuss our purpose, if we have one, or if we don’t, should we?
I see a parade of subjects come up every day on the recent diary list, and very few comments are made. The problem for me and why I do not comment on a lot of these diaries is that I simply have nothing to say. What comment is meaningful to add to news stories and other such articles. On DK a news item is met with a long list of wows, too bad, this is terrible, etc. ad infinitum. Not so bad on this site, where much more substantive comments are the rule and not the exception.
Occasionally one of the topics catches fire and we discuss (or argue) it for days and in the end, what have we done, nothing.
What purpose is this serving except to take up a lot of time for a lot of people that is not doing one damn thing to change anything, just over informing all of us.
I personally think we need to narrow down our focus a bit and limit it to things we may possibly be able to change and start to figure out just what we might be able to do.
Right now the issues presented are scattered over the entire world and no action that I can see is being taken or even asked for, except for a few petitions here and there, a few letters written to media and newspapers and Congress.
So I am asking, “What you think about this; our purpose, the purpose of forums and blogs in general and what changes we could make that would make us (blog world) productive and effective and not just a big political chat room?
Lets talk!
