Why Do I Blog? A Blog about Blogging

Howard Gardner © 2024

In the last few years, I have become an inveterate blogger. I create and post a new blog roughly once a week. In the recent past, I have posted a few hundred blogs across a range of sites. 

What do I blog about?

ONE ANSWER: My blogs fall into a few slots:

1. My long-time interest (over 40 years) in multiple intelligences. See multipleintelligencesoasis.org.

2. My long-time interest (nearly 30 years) in good work and good citizenship. See thegoodproject.org. In the last few years, several of my partners on the Good Project have posted their own blogs.

3. My more recent interest in—and, indeed, obsession with—the human capacity to synthesize vast amount of information. See howardgardner.com/synthesizing.

4. My even more recent interest in the origins of the capacity to think beyond the self. Soon to be launched, a blog website for our Good Starts Project. See more about the project here.  

5. From time to time, items of personal or autobiographical interest (as is the case here).

For the most part, I author or co-author the blog—but sometimes, I ask others for permission to post what they’ve written on one of these sites, and then I serve as a low-key editor. (Here’s a recent example.)

ANOTHER ANSWER: Whatever happens to be on my mind—this blog exemplifies that “occasional” category.

I suspect that for many of my peers (as well as non-peers), much of what I accomplish with blogs could be achieved as well with tweets, or other entries in social media. But I prefer to be a bit more reflective, more authorial and authoritative, and not to be subject to a word or character limitation.

Why do I blog? Further Thoughts

When I mention this hobby (or condition!) to others, I get one of two predictable reactions. In the case of persons roughly my (and President Biden’s!) age, they are likely to say: “What is a blog?” or “How do I subscribe to it?” In the case of persons a generation or two younger, they will nod—and depending on familiarity and candor, they are likely to respond: “That’s so passe!”  or “I’ll check it out.” Or: “Where’s the graphic version or counterpart?”

SOME REFLECTIONS

As long as I can remember, I have been a writer—as well as a sometimes editor. As early as second grade, I created and printed out a one-page newsletter. In high school, I edited (and also co-edited) a weekly newspaper and magazine, THE OPINATOR (still around today!), at preparatory-school Wyoming Seminary). I have also been an “easy writer”—which is not to say always a meritorious writer—and had no trouble filling up “blue books” in examinations or in turning out one term paper after another. And by the time I got to graduate school in my early twenties, I was already writing articles and drafting books.

Of course, I primarily write by putting pen or pencil to paper, or by stroking a keyboard. But it’s worth pointing out that I often draft titles, sample paragraphs, even an outline of an entire piece while I am taking a walk, sitting quietly in my dining room chair, or before dropping off to sleep—thinking, reflecting, writing, and re-writing are almost seamless for me.

While my major scholarly preoccupation has been the authoring of academic books and articles, I also appreciated—indeed welcomed—the chance to write what might be dubbed “occasional pieces.” I was delighted when Psychology Today—(in my view) a better magazine in the 1970s than it is today—invited me to contribute a monthly column, and I did this comfortably for two years (see my collection Art, Mind, and Brain). In such writing, I tossed off the rigorous (and sometimes ludicrous) roles (and robes) of academic journals, and instead attempted to adorn lighter literary clothing.

Also, as I became better known, I was asked to write columns or op-eds for leading publications, such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe, on occasion for The Atlantic or Scientific American and I also reviewed books for The New York Review of Books and The (London) Times Literary Supplement. (I also appeared with some regularity on public radio and, on occasion, even on morning television shows—a fate that would be unthinkable today.)

To be sure: I was never a prominent member of the chattering classes—let alone a bona fide New York public intellectual. But among academics in the social sciences, I was certainly one of the people to whom editors or journalists turned when they sought written or spoken comments on the events of the day.

This situation no longer exists. We could speculate about why that’s the case, and probably each of the speculations would contain a grain of truth.

Waiting for Godot

But an important point remains: I still think a lot about what is happening in the world, what I’ve been reading, the media presentations and artistic exhibitions that I’ve attended in person or online. And rather than waiting to be “commissioned” (which would be like Waiting for Godot), I simply ponder what I want to say, write it, ask my wife Ellen and a few trusted colleagues to look over the drafts, edit as advised, and then post the results. (Not that every thought makes itself into pencil or keystrokes—but often a strand of thought dropped at one time re-emerges and sometimes transmogrifies into strokes and posting.)

While part of my literary output remains books (solo-authored, co-authored, or edited collections) and I occasionally write or co-author articles for scholarly or educational journals, blogging has become my major literary activity.

What happens post-posting?

I suspect that in a good number of cases, the blogs go unread—or almost unread…written but not read. Sometimes, the blogs elicit comments. Occasionally, I nudge appropriate commentators, while at other times, readers discover the blog on their own and comment. But it’s nothing like a major newspaper where hundreds of comments can flood the screen within hours.

But there’s another—and (for me) important—reason for the creation and posting of blog: It’s to some extent self- serving, but it’s also done for the record.

Ever since I was young, I have embraced a watchword—one that certainly was not original with me but which I ardently believe: “I live every day as if I were immortal and, equally, I live every day as if it were my last.” The blogs constitute my professional diary. They record what I’ve been thinking about and what I want to share with others. They may well go the way of all flesh—that is what happens, after all, to the physical body. But if I die and individuals want to know my “last thoughts” about “MI,” “Synthesis,” “What’s Good Work and How to Achieve it,” or “I, We, and They,” such individuals can venture into the blogosphere.

And perhaps: If Large Language Instruments evolve in that direction, future post-mortem entries to these several blog series can perhaps add to the collective wisdom—or the collective nonsense—about the aforementioned topics. But I would not take these post-mortem contrivances too seriously!

Many thanks to Shinri Furuzawa, Annie Stachura, and Ellen Winner for their extremely useful and candid comments. Even when I did not follow their advice, I appreciated have it!

REFERENCES

Gardner, H. (1982) Art, mind, and brain. Basic Books.