Freedom of speech almost

| Blogs etc. | 3 Comments

An acquaintance of mine has brought it politely to my attention that I should be more careful with certain passages that I am describing in my blog. In one way I feel quite flattered and honored that people within my social circles have somehow or other discovered my blog and are actually taking the time to look at my entries. At the same time however, I feel a little bad if I have inadvertently exposed sensitive information which does not belong on a public medium like the Internet. Surely it was not intentional on my part. I was just trying to do my duty as a full-fledged blogger by recording events around me in a spontaneous and random way. These events need to be viewed through different glasses though, reprocessed carefully in my head, before they have been transformed from thoughts into actual passages in my blog. This is a new twist in my attitude towards blogging. Whereas I used to believe firmly in the complete unequivocal freedom of speech, I now realize that I have a responsibility as a writer to respect the values and beliefs of others. A while ago, I remember reading about some person who had regularly used her blog as a means of venting her hatred towards a number of fellow employees and even her manager. She did this in a mean and hateful manner which didn't help one bit. Although her boss kindly requested she stop doing this, she refused to remove these passages on the idealistic basis of so-called "freedom of speech." And she lost her job. Bye bye, and all for a stupid blog. Not that my entries are any where near that caustic and insulting, but still. I must be more conscious of this and more careful. In the beginning, I treated blogging as an open and honest means of expressing "anything" no matter what, the most important purpose being to express you innermost thoughts. Even if it meant dragging in others, pulling the surroundings unknowingly into your hole called the blog. This is not the right approach, in fact it is wrong, dead wrong. Now I realize that I am a kind of diplomat in a world of knowledge and ideas, and I must retain a form of professionalism in describing the events and the people causing them or being effected by them. Natural and/or unnatural. I have a social responsibility to everyone out there who might accidentally or purposely be perusing these contents. Welcome, grab a chair, sip your morning cofee and read my blog please. So it is time to avoid details about my work, private matters of others, remarks about fat or dumb people, acidic words and sentences of any form. Thanks alot acquaintance of mine for having brought this possibly embarrassing pitfall to my attention. So that is what I am going to do from now on, I promise each and every one of you now reading this blog entry. And all future blog entries to come. Okay? Freedom of speech does in fact have its limits. Even if it is a tiny relatively unknown piece of a blog as well as a minuscule voice in the challenging universe of blogging for you and me.

3 Comments

...... and before you know it there won't be anything to talk about that won't upset someone somewhere :(

IMO the only thing I've read here that I wondered about was the possibility of some of your work related stuff being commercially sensitive. In the cutting edge world that you work in even rumours can be dangerous

But as I've said on another site today (this seems to be a common theme today) it's your blog and you should feel free to write about whatever you feel comfortable writing about - from one end of the spectrum to the other. It's you that has to live with the consequences of your actions, whatever they may be.

I am a part of that theme today. Hang in there! Every once in a while I have to reminded that it's my damn blog, I can post what I want, that's at least what I intended to do from the beginning.

You are right Marc, but I guess I still do not have the guts to let out my guts from one extreme part of the spectrum to the other. This is bad, but I still got a family to feed and a future to think about.

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This personal weblog was started way back on July 21, 2001 which means that it is 7-21-2001 old.

So far this blog contains no less than 2498 entries and as many as 1877 comments.

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Graduated from Stanford 6-5-1979 ago.

Kiffin Rockwell was shot down and killed 9-23-1916 ago.

Believe it or not but I am 10-11-1957 young.

First met Thea in Balestrand, Norway 6-14-1980 ago.

Began well-balanced and healthy life style 1-8-2013 ago.

My father passed away 10-20-2000 ago.

My mother passed away 3-27-2018 ago.

Started Gishtech 04-25-2016 ago.