Culturally Unconscious

My friend Andrew first suggested that we start a blog covering politics and culture, when we were undergraduates at Oberlin College. Since then we toyed with the idea off and on, but for over two years both of us were to busy or lazy to get started.

The idea really got off the ground about six months ago, when Andrew read a post I had written on my personal blog, critiquing a op-ed by George Will. At that point we decided to get serious, and went about choosing a name for a blog and setting up the website, for which Andrew deserves almost all of the credit for.

We created this blog because we believe that on many issues, both the many stream media and the blogosphere fail to fully address the issues they cover. Too often the media and bloggers take only a one sided or half hearted look at issues, such as education, health care, foreign policy, the economy, and the political debates in Washington.

Bloggers especially are quick to denigrate those they disagree with as unintelligent or disingenuous, without examining whether their opponents arguments have merit. And they fail to acknowledge or examine their own biases and backgrounds, which lead them to hold the opinions that they do.

Anyone who comments on public affair as often as most pundits and bloggers do, is likely to be wrong a significant portion of the time. The fact that these pundits and bloggers fail to acknowledge the fact that they could be wrong leads to an irational certanty. Andrew and I are both strong supporters of the market place of ideas, and we recognize that for the market place of ideas to work people must be able to acknowledge and accept when they are wrong.

The name culturally unconcious refers both to the failure of the media and bloggosphere to address the multiple sides of the many issues, as well their own biases. The name also exists to poke phone at ourselves. Despite the fact that Andrew and I often act like we know the answers to all of the worlds problems, we don’t. We also have are own biases. We both fall somewhere to the left of center on most political issues. But we also acknowledge that liberals, conservatives and everyone between can and will be wrong some of the time.  And when we think someone is wrong we plan on blogging about it.