Ego And Context

I never cease to be amazed when I get a commenter accusing me of being "full of myself" or being self-promoting or egotistical. Such comments make me want to slap a label on the person marking them: "Unclear on the Concept".

Look people, this is a blog. It's about what I think.

I don't apologize for my opinions. I don't ask you to apologize for your disagreement with them.

If you want to talk about your disagreement, we can do that. If you start with insults and share only your contempt, you may not like the response. But if you want to better understand why I believe what I do, or you think you see a hole in my reasoning, by all means, let's discuss. That's what the comments link is for.

In the meantime, let's put my commentary into context:

First, I'm nobody you have to pay attention to. Not a priest, not a deacon, not a bishop. I hold no advanced academic degrees nor elective office. I don't claim to be superior to you in intelligence, morality or faith, I don't speak for anyone but myself and I have no claim on your attention.

You shouldn't lose sleep over anything I write on my blog; it's just the ignorant opinions of one guy, probably far away from you.

But there are a very great number of people in the mainstream media being over-paid for opinions I consider to be less well-informed, less well-thought-out and less well-expressed than mine. My blog is my chosen forum for exercising my right of free expression, and my vehicle for competing with all that noise.

Every person is entitled to hold himself in sufficient regard to be able to speak his own mind.

Anyone who doesn't like it, needn't read it. There are tens of thousands of others. If you ask me, life's too short to read blogs by people you can't stand.