The Risk of the Online Presence

We exist in Al Gore's Amazing Internet in a variety of locations, and under a variety of contexts.  I'm particularly aware of this because, as secretary of my 1,000-person graduating class at MIT, I have had to locate members of the class whose address has been lost to (or hidden from) the school's alumni records office.  The AGAI has made that particular effort a lot easier, and it has certainly taught me where people can be found.

And ... what we can find about them.  In this case, though, "them" is "me."

I don't believe that I ever wrote about why this site was started in the first place, or what I wanted to accomplish, or how long I planned to do it.  So here's the thing.

Over a year ago, I started writing here, feeling that I had a few things to say and wanted to write them as essays.  I believed there might be a couple pieces and that would be it, or that it might turn out that there would be more than a few things to say.  If there were, this would afford me the opportunity to practice writing something quite different from what I normally do.

I write for a living.  My profession is the development, writing and management of proposals to the Federal government on behalf of my clients, who are defense and civilian contractors seeking to do what they do, for specific proposed tasks for which the government seeks contract support.  Different writing chops needed, as you can imagine.

The point of all that is that while originally I had thought after 3-4 pieces I'd be tapped out, this is the 282nd piece, one every weekday for over a year.  And that, friends, is a lot of published opinions and a lot of Internet presence.  Which means that, were someone to seek out what I believe, there is a tremendous lode of material from which to make inferences, far more, and thus far more easily, than most other citizens.

This came visible to me, surprisingly not as I recently had my security clearance renewed, but in fact when I referred a close friend to a piece I had written last week.  He surprised me first by letting me know he was not previously aware of the blog and certainly not that I had been writing over a year, and second by saying he wanted to read it all from the start.

Now, first, I'm going to say that if on your passing you leave with even one friend willing to do that, or a comparable action, reflecting his friendship and affection, you have won life's war.  I'm incredibly touched by that sentiment.

Then, however, it gets dicey.  I have written about politics, sports, entertainment and the arts, personal philosophy and faith.  There is so much in the collective writings that involves opinions -- probably 99 and 44/100ths percent of it -- that I seriously doubt I have a friend or acquaintance on earth who agrees with all of it.

In this particular case, I actually don't know to what extent there is agreement or disagreement.  We know each other because we are both members of the Barbershop Harmony Society and sang together in a quartet for a few years -- not coincidentally the most successful I was ever a part of, principally due to his talents far more than mine.

One of the great tenets of that Society is that we do not bring politics or religion into our associations with our fellow singers; our pleasure is in achieving musical harmony, not opinionated discord.  Trust me, there's plenty of the latter just on how to tune a dominant seventh chord properly.  So I can faithfully tell you that this gentleman and I, though we have known each other fifteen years and made some great harmonies together, and our families are friends, have never once discussed virtually any of the topics addressed in this site!

I sit here today with a real sense of concern as to whether it is a good idea that my collected writings of 13 months' time be read by someone that close and about whom I care that much.

Finally, I have decided that, if it is not a great thing, it is OK, no matter what degree of agreement there may be with any of it.  I am who I am; I believe what I wrote; I stand behind my opinions.  In many cases, I write to tease out discussions from you all who read this; I believe in some things you will find here more strongly than I do others, but I believe them.

My friend is a brilliant gentleman.  I rather hope that we may, in fact, end up disagreeing some, and that we may be able to respond not by shunning each other as ideologues do, but by engaging in philosophical debate and discussion as we were given the ability to do by our Creator.

I'm proud of what is written here.  And I am proud of my friendships.  They can coexist.


Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
 Like what you read here?  There's a new post from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning to "prolific essayist."  Sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu.