An Acknowledged Phenomenon In The Blogosphere?

Punditry or opinion writing has always found comfortable and adequate expression in the blogosphere from its inception. Its continuing phenomenal growth can be argued as being powered and sustained by this innate desire to opine and to search for proper media to express them. OpEd pages are arguably the most read or visited sections of any printed or on-line paper.

We can surmise that there must be countless sharp minds, honed through many years spent in either academia or profession, floating out there in the firmament, many with time, talents, and pen to spare, to devote to this punditry. And the blogosphere has been picked as their proper and easily accessible forum for such grand cerebral exercises. Where every eager participant is allowed free and ample clean slate to create masterpieces.

It can also be argued that many opinions expressed in the countless blogs sprayed across the broad extent of the blogosphere are about the things that are socially, politically, or economically impacting the different countries in the world.

From my many incursions into blogs, I can safely say that many are of this orientation and motivation. Forming opinions about what is wrong about the country and what steps to be taken to bring it back to the righteous path of prosperity, equality, and equity.

In my old homeland, it has almost become the favorite national pastime for pundits and opinion makers to dissect and analyze all the political and economic ills of the country and to mentally erect their individual theories on the best paths back to recovery and prosperity. It may help rationalize this by pointing out that the country at present suffers from what might rightly by judged as record negative findings in the areas of poverty, corruption, social discontent, etc.

Thus, dissertations about these readily grab the rapt attention of many readers because these dire conditions directly affect many of the same readers. On the part of these attention-yearning pundits, a veritable field day ensues to try to come up with the most riveting prose that can both stir the emotions and the minds of many to devote eyeballs to their sites or papers.

Some go beyond by framing their theses in gilded books of both hard cover and paperback. Without question such products enjoy brisk sales nowadays. Many consumers are interested to devote time and money to purchase their works, so they can sob and heave in the warm embrace and comfort of astutely interwoven prose and buzz phrases or ideas.

And the local blogs and media are littered with such punditry. Many are adulated, widely read and listened to, and accorded high places in the hierarchy of important and influential people in society.

But to me, there is one other equally patriotic and noble group that does things less flattering, less attention grabbing, less appealing, and maybe less valuable before the eyes of the general public. But most probably, can show more and better results. This is the group that most likely decided early on that the best approach to the path to recovery and prosperity was to put shoulders to the plow, investing whatever meager time and resources to the many little economic activities that when taken together equal the local economy. And in the larger context, the entire country's economy.

These are the people who believe in the cliché that change to be meaningful and sustainable must begin one man at a time. That to effect change, we begin with each person, giving each the opportunity and the means to economically uplift himself.

These are the people who believe that trying to singularly grapple with the entire onus of the country's ills, both real and perceived, is to guarantee failure. That to wait for a miracle may be wistful thinking, at best. Or that to expect great followings simply because your hypotheses stand tenable to great logic and scrutiny may be unrealistic.

These are the people who believe that thinking grand schemes and plans are good in theory and on paper. But may take generations to translate to implementation or good results. Or may likely all fall by the wayside due to indifferent neglect or inattention.

These are the people who believe that solutions are never neat and easily categorized, nor capable of being put to cadenced and orderly prose. Good ones are usually messy and randomly chaotic, and typically do not follow standard expectations.

These are the people who accept that workable solutions do not necessarily invite good public attention and approbation, nor produce spectacular results. It is sufficient that they end up with good and productive increments that taken on the long haul can produce meaningful changes.

One wonders if this group can get sufficient attention for and coverage of their endeavors in the same blogosphere that appears to idolize the other kind. Their number could be just as numerous and pervasive as the present anointed darlings of the blogosphere.