Things change (or, Montaigne and the Open Web)

"Are you f'ing kidding me?" Laura replied, "you publish a bajillion blog posts every day!"

Which, of course, is not true. Although I have published almost 3,000 posts on Open Thinkering I'm way less prolific than I used to be. So when I complained that I couldn't think of a blog post to write for the Reclaim Open conference, I wasn't being facetious; I'm getting older and the things I'm writing about are changing.

I very rarely miss writing a weeknote, a format that's easy to compose as I'm literally writing about what I've done that week. And over at Thought Shrapnel, when I'm not on "low-power mode" over the summer holidays, I'm writing about my own thoughts on things I read online. I'm hardly pontificating about the "state of Open."

So, instead, this post is going to be a bit different...

I'm far from being the first to point out that Michel de Montaigne undertook a form of 16th century proto-blogging, including quoting and referencing classical authors. At this point in time, I've been reading his Essays on a regular basis for around two decades. The more I read them, the more I see the differences between what he shared upon taking up his pen on his 38th birthday, and what preoccupied him just before his death 21 years later. In fact, in the translation I've got, it shows the alterations he made to previous writing as he got older.

Interestingly, the difference between reading the same words from Montaigne in my mid-twenties and mid-forties is profound. It's interesting to me that much of what I skipped over in my youth now deeply resonates with me. But then, in those twenty years, I've become a father, changed occupations, and moved house multiple times. More importantly, though, are the internal changes in my understanding of self.

And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. ('To the Reader')

Appropriately enough, I started blogging at about the same time I started reading Montaigne. While there isn't a causal link between these two things, what's interesting to me is how similar he and I are in terms of outlook, if not temperament. For example, the first and most important thing in Montaigne's writing is ethics, which is central to his whole project:

You can attach the whole of moral philosophy to a commonplace private life just as well as to one of richer stuff. ('On repenting')

One of the great things about living, working, and sharing openly is that people can observe not only your thought processes, but how these have evolved over time. What usually changes much less is one's moral philosophy, the way you approach the world. We become more or less confident in sharing this at different times depending on our mood and what's happening in the world, but ultimately we're drawing a line in the sand saying "this is me, this is what I believe":

Anyway these are my humours, my opinions: I give them as things which I believe, not as things to be believed. My aim is to reveal my own self, which may well be different tomorrow if I am initiated into some new business which changes me. I have not, nor do I desire, enough authority to be believed. I feel too badly taught to teach others. ('On educating children')

And then, as we get older, we hopefully find ourselves in a position where we are more concerned with living up to our own standards than those of others:

We must do like the beasts and scuff out our tracks at the entrance to our lairs. You should no longer be concerned with what the world says of you but with what you say to yourself. ('On solitude')

You may wonder, then, why share any of this at all? If we should be more (or only?) concerned with what we say to ourselves, then why write anything for public consumption? Why not write all of this down in a diary? Why not just go for a walk and think deep thoughts to oneself?

These are all good questions, and I probably haven't got satisfactory answers. For me, it's because I like writing, I like sharing, and ultimately (I suppose) I would like to bend the world and its opinions to my way of thinking. Like this post, however, I don't always end up in a place that I intended when I started. In fact, many times I start out not quite knowing what I'm going to write:

[W]here I seek myself I cannot find myself: I discover myself more by accident than by inquiring into my judgement. ('On a ready or hesitant delivery')

Some people manage to live a life where they say different things to different people. As Montaigne points out, they must have very good memories. I try and be as straightforward as I can with everyone: family, friends, random people on the internet who read what I write. This has been interesting when I've been to conferences and events and people have come up and talked to me as if I've known them for years — even though it's the first time we've met:

I speak to my writing-paper exactly as I do to the first man I meet. ('On the useful and the honourable')

And that, I suppose, is one of the reasons to write and to share openly: to build community. Despite writing something and putting it on a blog seeming like quite a solitary act, akin to throwing a message in a bottle out to sea, it builds relationships and causes people to reflect on their own thoughts on the topic you're addressing. But, really, I write when I have something I need to get out of my head; like many people, I write when and because I have to:

All I want to gain from doing anything is the fact of having done it: I do not attach distant corollaries and pleadings to it; each thing I do does its job separately: let it succeed if it can. ('On the useful and the honourable')

So my encouragement to others to blog and to share what they know openly is this: create a digital 'paper trail'. This is useful for others to be informed, know what you think, and to ponder the same things as you; but it's also useful for you as it provides a quick way to find something that you've previously written about. I can't tell you how many times I have typed my own name combined with a particular topic into a search box to find out what I've previously written on something:

We only know, I believe, what we know now: ‘knowing’ no more consists in what we once knew than in what we shall know in the future. ('On schoolmasters’ learning')

I was going to say that working openly and blogging has been one of the best decisions I've ever made. But it was never really a decision as such. Which is why, I — somewhat controversially — wonder whether certain people are predisposed to share more openly. This is not to say that anyone can't share things openly, of course they can, but that there are certain personality types for whom it seems less like a decision and more like an urge.

One of the things I find difficult with Montaigne's work sometimes is that he very rarely 'concludes' his essays. He just kind of stops writing which is an interesting way to end an essay. Or, indeed, a blog post.