“There come times in every sentient man’s life,” H.L. Mencken observed, “when he must simply unload his ideas, or bust like a star-shell in the highroad. … Hence the huge ink industry. Hence democracy, Bolshevism, the moral order of the world. Hence sorrow. Hence literature.”

Hence blogging?

Sure. If I had to pick one factor most responsible for the blogging phenomenon (after the requisite technology, of course), I’d pick Mencken’s simple observation that there are times a person must unload his ideas or bust.

Some people feel the need to unload more often than others. Hence boors.

How many times have you slunk away from a co-worker who seems intent on telling you how everything is? How many Edith Bunkers have patiently listened to years of their husbands’ bombast?

If blogging has provided an alternate venue for grandstanders, gasbags and gadflies, we owe the inventors of free blogging software a hearty “Thank you.”

Who Says?

Fortunately, most bloggers aren’t boors. Many are interesting, many are funny, many are charming. Blogs are as varied as the individuals who write them.

And it’s not just a matter of subject matter and tone. Bloggers are procedurally dissimilar, using myriad ways to generate content for their blogs.

Despite their different approaches, all bloggers can be broken down into two broad categories: Pasters and Composers. The Pasters copy and paste written excerpts and visual elements from other websites. The Composers write original copy — random thoughts, maxims, essays.

The Composer works harder for the simple reason that it’s harder to write out your own thoughts than to copy someone else’s.

Since at least Montaigne’s invention of the essay form of literature in the 16th century, writers have been tempted to “borrow” one another’s work even when not directly quoting it and giving it proper attribution. In can be a mark of laziness or fastidiousness, depending on how it’s done. If you don’t quote anyone, you don’t read enough. If you quote too liberally, you don’t think enough for yourself.

They say the Catholic convert and respected writer Clare Boothe Luce frequently used lengthy quotes in her magazine essays, much to the frustration of the otherwise-admiring editors who solicited her work.

Even though the Composer works harder, the Paster is necessary. If you want to see a dead blog, click on one that never provides a link to another site. If you want to see a tired-looking blog, find one with no cut-and-pasted pictures.

Most blogs are expected to have both pasted materials and original script. But how much of each?

I started thinking about this recently after I ran across a splendid blog post at Against the Grain (ratzingerfanclub.com/blog) about Pope Benedict XVI’s views on capitalism.

I wrote on my blog that this was the “archetypal” blog post. It presented a great mix: 70% pasted script, 30% original script, 16 links, a picture, all oxymoronically jumbled together in coherent form. It was too lengthy to be a typical blog post (at 4,200 words, it far exceeded attention-deficit-friendly cyber prose), but its amazing mix of material was a great example of what makes blogging a unique form of writing.

But good luck finding blogs that regularly follow this approach.

Many blogs consist of all paste, or links with little or no comment. A few blogs provide all original prose, but they fail to provide authoritative links to support what they’re saying. Unless you’re a blogger with a lot of authority behind you (say, Michael Aquilina at fathersofthechurch.com or Amy Welborn at amywelborn.wordpress.com), blog readers want to see your sources.

If you’re looking for bloggers who provide a good mix of composition and paste in their posts, I recommend Bonfire of the Vanities (frmartinfox.blogspot.com), The Anchoress (theanchoressonline.com), Dappled Things (donjim.blogspot.com) and Ten Reasons (richleonardi.blogspot.com).

Ideas About Ideals

You might ask me: “Scheske, why’d you spend so much time thinking about the archetypal blog post? Your seven kids and wife not keeping you busy enough?”

It’s a fair question, and I don’t have an answer. I can only respond: I think about archetypes a lot. I think everyone does, though they don’t refer to “archetypes.” They refer to “the ideal” or “the perfect model.” The ideal or perfect model of anything interests people, whether it’s the perfect baseball player, the perfect house, the perfect statesman. People intuitively want to know: What should a thing be?

Man’s search for archetypes, ideals and perfect models is merely the search for what should be. The search has been around for thousands of years.

“Ideas,” wrote Plato scholar Allan Bloom, “are the justification of the philosophic life.” If a person doesn’t inquire after the ideal, he has stopped reaching for the higher things.

As Catholics, we ought to be greatly interested in the question of what a thing should be. It’s the most personal question in our lives because each person needs to know what he should be, what God is calling him to be.

Diversity, especially the intense diversity of the blogosphere, is a good thing, but too often the grains of diversity cover up goodness and scratch away truth. Diversity is often nothing more than a vehicle for relativism and a mask for skepticism.

To fight a diversity-obsessed culture, it’s good practice to sit back and think about what constitutes the objective standard against which things can be measured. “What is the archetype of X? What is the ideal of Y?”

When we think in those terms, even if it’s in the context of something as mundane as blogging, we are dealing with what the great essayist Russell Kirk liked to call the “permanent things,” and when we’re dealing with the permanent things, we’re spending our time wisely.

Eric Scheske blogs

at The Daily Eudemon (ericscheske.com/blog).