Wednesday, May 14, 2014

The "Last" Blog

Source: pr-square.com

            A few months ago, I wrote a post as a sort-of “halfway” point that discussed my own difficulties in writing this blog given that my personality is so straightforward and that my blog topic is so ambiguous. Now, approaching the end of my year-long blogging project, I feel that it’s time to discuss what I have learned from dealing with that struggle, and what relevance this topic will have for my life going forward.

I’ve already reflected on the obstacles I’ve encountered in writing about a topic which by nature never leads to a practical conclusion. However, although I’ve identified my own struggle with writing about ethical dilemmas, I have been torn as to whether or not this struggle is actually of any value. Overcoming personal obstacles is a noble cause, but a part of me wondered there is any additional, practical value in analyzing topics that consistently conclude in ambiguous, almost philosophical endings. Throughout this entire year, there is not a single ethical dilemma that I have discussed where I believe I could resolve the conflict. In this respect, I have reaped none of the fruits of my own labor, and arguably no fruits were even produced in the first place.

However, I've been able to reconcile my own practical beliefs with the ambiguity in this blog, and here’s why—it’s realistic.

The most important lesson I have learned from this blog is that the most serious problems in the real world are the ones most likely to have inconclusive answers. Furthermore, real people have to act on these conclusions and make important decisions based on them.

I want people reading my blog, especially the realist ones like me, to understand that ambiguous answers are not useless answers I want people to be able to use these seemingly-inconclusive conclusions to their advantage even in the most practical of applications, and draw a lesson from this experiment that the worth of an effort does not lie entirely in its result. I want people to be able to utilize the pro-con analysis structure that I have used to make informed decisions on the kinds of difficult dilemmas we are all bound to face. It’s important to be able to do this in a very real, very practical way, because there are no simple, black-and-white solutions to the critical, real-world problems that demand to be addressed today.