The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Meant to get to this previously, but stuff just keeps coming up. I was not entirely surprised to read in the May edition of Scientific American (and I know I’m always saying this, but with the exchange rates so favourable now is the time to subscribe to US and UK magazines, or indeed further afield) an article under the heading “Blogging – It’s Good for You”.

So, if you will, allow me a few hundred words of solipsistic reflection backed up by empirical research.

The article suggests that:

Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.

Which is a good thing.

Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.

Interesting, although I wonder if blogging about stressful events that don’t happen to one counts? In other words, although sites like the CLR, Dublin Opinion or indeed the Irish Left Review, reflect a discontent about our societal direction often this is one or two steps removed from personal experience, at least much of the time. Mind you, that’s pretty stressful in its own way. Trust me, it’s no picnic having to go through health reports.

The models for writing as a therapeutic activity are not entirely clear.

Most likely, writing activates a cluster of neurological pathways, and several researchers are committed to uncovering them. At the University of Arizona, psychologist and neuroscientist Richard Lane hopes to make brain-imaging techniques more relevant by using those techniques to study the neuroanatomy of emotions and their expressions.

But as research in the area increases presumably we’ll have a better idea of the dynamics at work. And, obviously, this is directly related to:

“Blogging [which] undoubtedly affords similar benefits” to expressive writing, says Morgan, who wants to incorporate writing programs into supportive care for cancer patients.

I find another explanation suggested perhaps a little more convincing…

Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” Flaherty explains. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.

And comparing and contrasting with, say, playing computer games, something I haven’t done on any intensive level for the best part of a decade, I can sort of sense a similarity in terms of ’satisfaction’ at writing something.

There is more:

Some hospitals have started hosting patient-authored blogs on their Web sites as clinicians begin to recognize the therapeutic value. Unlike a bedside journal, blogging offers the added benefit of receptive readers in similar situations, Morgan explains: “Individuals are connecting to one another and witnessing each other’s expressions—the basis for forming a community.”

Of course if a community consists of entirely like-minds it can be stultifying. Or if it consists of rigid control and direction, which we can see exercised in some places on the net, it can be predictable. And that is a problem with net-based ‘communities’. The borders can be more impermeable than might be expected. So perhaps these are new sorts of communities, not so clearly bound by previous conventions, lacking a certain focus, explicitly lacking direct communication (at least in many ways) and often quite self-referential.

That’s something I dislike and distrust – probably as much as I dislike certainty. It’s easy to say something, it is often difficult to find supporting evidence. Certainty is usually built on nothing more than faith. Faith can be useful, but not always and not everywhere.

And, putting aside ego which is an obvious motive force as well, to me it is the latter issue which is most important. Why blog? Clarification. In other words to finesse, as best as is possible, concepts, ideas, impressions and ideology by weighing up competing systems of belief and attempting to engage with them. If someone says something is it correct. If not, where is it incorrect, and in spite of that is there any useful truth to be taken away from it?

I’ve also mentioned before Neil Postman’s thoughts that news consumption by the middle classes is their way of assuring themselves that they have some control over their world. Surely news analysis by many of us plays a similar function. Particularly, if I can hazard the thought, for those of us on the left, who let’s be honest, have seen our projects and programmes put the flame in the past decade or so. We talk and write because often talking and writing is the only place where we have any autonomy in societies – and populations – which are now near utterly indifferent to our brand(s) of politics.

I don’t think that’s cause for depression though. The word spreads, things change, sometimes for the better. And we’re all of us who participate in this assisting our own mental health.

Win win. Well, sort of.