Can writing be for remembering, continued

The last post ends with a certain suspension. If we're being honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that none of us are entitled to writing our lives down publicly until approved by the public. You are always free to write it down privately, as a personal memory device, so as to not remember everything and let the documents remember it for you. 

But here's the thing: where is the line between the public sphere and the private? Technically, the Blogger website, a privately owned cyber space, which invites whoever is willing to write a blog for themselves, is somewhat vaguely public. (or vaguely private, depends on your preference.)  I have a blog-like thing on Substack (which I will not give the link here for my own protection and anonymity) which has much more interactions than here in Blogger. I guess the two platform are quite different precisely in the public-private division: Substack is more public, while Blogger is more private. Even more public is X, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Telegram. Which makes people think, comparatively, a blog is somewhat born to be private. No, it is not. 

The problem here is, even the most public cyber space can be used private-like. I used to know someone who had a secret social network account and used it to show the very unknown side, let's say a very open, sentimental, even a bit seductive side, of her. But the psychology here is quite intriguing: did she want people to know her that way or did she not? Who else is concerned (or projected) here? Which side of her would she prefer personally, the normal side or the wild side?

When you create a social network account, you kind of consent to being publicly seen, only it is in your way, however you want your image to be seen. Otherwise, why not just create a blank file in your  personal computer and pour everything out there? Yet here lies one of the most fundamental contradictions of us modern human beings: we want personality and publicity at the same time! To be a personality, we tend to keep the private self; to gain publicity, however, we have to show the private self to the public. And while most of us aren't quite comfortable enough to show ourselves completely, we tend to cover our bad sides, consciously and subconsciously. So the other way is to be anonymous, so as to be frank about the original self, as if one has gotten out of it, has become a new self, and so can look back on the original self objectively. This is actually not showing the private self, but creating a fantasized self and showing a conversation between the original self and the fantasized self. The anonymous is for the public, the origin is always private.

Take a look at how Hannah Arendt recognized this problem: 

The distinction between the citizen and the individual becomes a problem as soon as we become aware of the discrepancy between public life, in which I am a citizen like all other citizens, and personal life, in which I am an individual unlike anybody else ... Laws, once they are established, are always applied according to precedents; the trouble with the deeds and events of personal life is that this life is destroyed in its very essence as soon as it is judged by standards of comparison or in light of precedents ... The trouble, obviously, with this discrepancy between public and personal life, between man as citizen and man as individual, is not only that laws can never be used to guide and judge actions in personal life, but also that the very standards of right and wrong in the two spheres are not the same and are often even in conflict.

All the same for the blogging industry (if it can be called a industry): the public norm of writing does not tell you what to write personally, and the two sets of values are never the same. It'd be quite strange to view the blogging industry this way, because it makes zero sense to build such a thing in the first place. Why make something that contradicts itself in principle? Question 2 from my last post provides an answer: because we live in a highly specialized society. Each and every one serves a tiny little part of an industry, which in turn serves a tiny little part of the society. By exchanges in the market, we all get benefits from such arrangements, as the great Adam Smith told us. And today our society even have the extra profit to give each and everyone of us a tiny little cyber space to record our lives, to be vaguely publicly recognized, to enjoy the vanity of an imagined celebrity. ("Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes," said Andy Warhol.) It works as long as it is fantasized. Yet the truly public sphere is still out there, still out of reach by most people, and those who really want to get into it will have to de-personalize themselves, that is, to specialize in a certain public topic, or, to act as a certain public figure.

Personally, I feel a certain pressure when I know someone is watching me writing, and the way to tackle such pressure is always to talk about something, not about myself, but about a much larger group, like a community, a nationality, or just the whole humanity. To talk about everyone is the perfect way of avoiding to talk about myself. And this is good for you in various ways. You stop looking at yourself solely. The egocentrism starts to break down. You get to find the common grounds between you and many other people. You get to know the self in the multiple perspectives of the society. And such writing is always a form, not of remembering, not of simply thinking, but of thinking for the public, to the public, in the public. It then becomes a conversation.