I have just begun to emerge from months of being too busy to write at all. As the first step of my return, I have decided to implement something I had wanted to create for quite a while now: a blog.
The Useless Science blog can be found here: http://uselessscience.com/blog/Why start a blog? You can read more about it on the "About" page of the blog. The short version is that 1.) I want to start organizing my ideas more and 2.) I worry that using the forum as a scratch pad as I have been doing has left the (erroneous) impression on readers that one has to agree with my ideas or condone my attitudes to participate here. Although this is not, I feel, the case . . . and my initial plan for Useless Science was to create a venue for all manner of progressive Jungian discussion . . . it is impossible not to take note of the extreme lopsidedness of my contributions here.
I am concerned that I have done a disservice to the potential "progressive Jungian community" by basically blogging and essaying on a forum (taken for "marking my territory", perhaps?) . . . and a disservice to my own growing theory by scattering it digressively throughout the various threads of this forum. What I would like to see in this forum is collaboration, discussion, and debate among multiple voices and positions. I'm not sure if or when that kind of atmosphere will evolve here . . . but I hope the "outsourcing" of my creative work to its own venue will be a good first step.
That said, I will probably leave links in my blog posts to forum threads in the event that any discussions might evolve. I'm not a big fan of the comments sections of blogs . . . they strike me as not collaborative enough. The author and the commenters are too separated hierarchically.
I will continue to participate here as much as I can and respond to most of the posts as time allows. Currently, this will not be very challenging, as we have had very little participation in recent months.
I would also like to blow my bugle one more time for the value of a non-partisan, but intellectually rigorous space like the Useless Science forum. For this purpose (the reason it was created), it is sadly underused. I have often contemplated the reasons for this . . . and no doubt my own personality and contrary ideas are the most significant contributing factors. But perhaps it is also the case that the Jungian world does not have a very significant representation of non-partisan, serious thinkers. This "gnostic" vein (those who yearn to know rather than believe) in the Jungian community is surprisingly meager . . . and that doesn't speak well for any Jungian futurity. It also marks a distinct deviation from the energy the founder of Analytical Psychology himself exhibited.
Although I don't hold out hope for such a thing, I suppose it is also distantly possible that any readership my blog drums up could trickle into the forum as particpation. If so, that will probably take some time. There is only one new post on the blog so far . . . and one old one. I may find a way of pulling over a few posts from the forum to the blog with only minor revisions . . . but mostly, I will be starting fresh.
My Best,
Matt
