Once More, With Feeling

Parting Shots

• On pseudonymity in general, and pseudonymous blogging in particular: it’s important to restate that I don’t regard pseudonymity as morally wrong, lacking integrity, or any other pejorative category. Working folks adopt pseudonymity to minimize their risk from capricious employers; executives may stand less risk of firing (or may not) but face the danger of losing clients, among other hazards; people who live in disharmony with their neighbors or families (odd children out, estranged spouses, closeted gay folks, to name but a few) may want to sustain what little concord they can maintain on a daily basis; the political/commercial dissident understandably wants to speak boldly without the risk of state/economic retribution. All this makes a difference, and I'm not minimizing any of it.
  

  So far, though, I haven’t been convinced that adopting a pseudonym escapes mmoral significance altogether. I’m not eager to out my colleagues. Instead, I’m interested about what we have to say when someone deliberately adopts a course of action by which she or he intends to avoid the consequences of what he or she says or does. The Discreet Blogger seems to practice in a harmless enough evasion, but at what point do we say, “That flopnozzle ought to be held accountable for what he or she said!”
  

  This slippery-slope isn’t the only problem with pseudonymity; otherwise we might shelve it with other morally-interesting slopes and move along. Pseudonymity risks nurturing a sense of autonomy and immunity that may contaminate other practices, especially when lying poses such a powerful attraction and such widespread social support (after all, our political leaders do it as a matter of course). The pseudonym offers an agent a Gyges’ ring; we may be so constituted that we use the power of invisibility/pseudonymity only innocuously, but we’re always subject to the temptation to use it less laudably, and (again) that’s not a netural state.
  

  (By the way, saying that “I’m just raising the question”t morally neutral either. Someone can say, “I’m only asking whether whites are a superior race,” and he or she would still be answerable for the racist implications of the inquiry. I’m answerable for discomfiting Discreet Bloggers, who may feel as though I’ve unfairly targeted their innocent anonymity. I ask that they read this line of inquiry within the larger context of my wanderings in the maze od “who we are,” but if they don’t I’m still on the hook for bugging them.)
  

• Lest anyone think that I’m solely interested in beating up Discreet Bloggers (which I repeatedly stress that I’m not), here’s a reason I keep dwelling on the matter: I’m interested in names and links (topics concerning which a number of our colleagues have been pursuing over past weeks, and I'm working on tracking their now-archived observations), on character and reputation, and on the ways they all unfold online. The path I see ahead of me doe involve the link between integrity and identity, butin deference to Stavros and everyone else who’s suspicious about that move, I’ll make sure to shore up that connection as best I can before I try to make it a load-bearing member of my argument.
  

• Tom, bless him, picks up many of the overtones and resonances (are these distinguishable? I don’t know enough about music to tell) of my own blogstream and the various tacks that others have taken in relation to the identity-topic. I have the feeling I missed something of his when I compiled my link-backlist about identity last night.
  

• Oh, one other thing about links and identity: as I’m persuaded that our identities are ineluctably socially constituted (and Jeff was there the other day), so I’m inclined to suspect that links (perhaps especially reciprocal links) matter more than as just name-dropping, as wannabe-ism. And one of the exciting aspects of our hyperlinked disorganization lies in our capacity to travel social links online to observe and sometimes to generate alliances that would be much more awkward, improbable, perhaps impossible in the physical social world. Not just geography but also class structure, vocational divisions and suspicions, distinctions based on appearance, all are relativized (though never eradicated) by our hyperlinked social networks. That changes who we are, electronically but also physical-socially.
  

• Moreover, I’m aiming at matters of “voice” and “name” and shared identity, in ways that implicate the church and also corporations. I’m not persuaded by Chris Locke’s sense that corporations don’t have “authentic voices”: “a corporation [can’t] have any authentic voice at all since it doesn't have a self and doesn't have a body” (quoting here from David Weinberger’s characterization of Locke’s position), but it’ll take me a while to get there.

Getting Better

Zzzzzzzzzz

What’s Goin’ On

To these I would add references to Steve's post today, which itself respond's to Alex's; Jeff Ward's site pertains from top to bottom, but especially here (though I demur at his suggestion that I always think hiding is a mistake--more precisely, I'm unwilling to regard it as unproblematic); Dorothea's observations here; let's have a hand for Jonathon, here and here; the inestimable Ray Davis, here; do not conceal your approval for the Happy Tutor here; and a few of my forays and responses, here, here, and here.

But everybody's talking 'bout identity these days, I'm glad to read it all, and will jump back into the pond shortly.
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      ( 8:52 AM )  

Staying Tuned

Big Nights Out for M & A

Then Sunday night, we travelled south to the City to visit North Shore Baptist Church for their Sunday night worship and outdoor dinner, at the invitation of friend, Seabury student, colleague at U Blog, and all-around delightful comrade Tripp Hudgins. Imagine, if you will, a pair of sturdily Anglo-Catholic vegetarian theologians at an enthusiastic, electric, multicultural American Baptist outdoor worship service, occasionally asking, “Is that incense?”—“No, dear, it’s the burgers on the grill.” A splendid time was had by all, and Tripp already blogs so we didn’t need to talk about it, though we probably did somewhere in the long conversation that followed the service.

Living the high life, I tell you.
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      ( 8:04 PM )  

Results Are In

Heartfelt Apologies