‘The Bloghead’ by Frank A Hilario

Just Blogging

I call my blogsite The BlogFather, but I am not him; neither am I The Blogfather. You can call me instead The BlogHead. As in blockhead. (See also Jughead, as in Archie Comics.)

Look at the image; now, which head is mine: the one with the red hat or the one with the handkerchief over his face, with only the eyes showing? Neither. I am the one taking the photograph, remember? I have nothing to hide. I work mostly with computers, sometimes with the camera, that’s what I do; I write, edit, desktop, blog, shoot, upload.

Right now, I’m calling myself The BlogHead for several reasons:

(1) Just looking. I’m looking for The Blogfather, the ideal one. When you go look for an ideal, you are bound to fail. So why look for an ideal at all? I don’t mind failing; you can say Failing is my middle name. If you don’t go look for the ideal, you’re pathetic.

(2) Just blogging. So you don’t mistake me as proclaiming that I am The BlogFather / The Blogfather. That’s an overwhelming responsibility. I just want to blog.

(3) Just inventing. I have so far invented these:
A Blogger’s Pledge (Blogging Rights)
Blogal Village, Blogal Village Voice (The Blogal Village Voice)
blogeasy, bloghard (The World According To Worp)
bloghead (right here, right now)
blogical (see ‘The Power Of The Press’ on this webpage)
The Ten Commandments Of Blog (The American Frank), which is an amendment of my very own earlier proclamation
The Ten Commandments Of Blogging (Blogging Rights).

(4) Just feeling free. I have declared unilaterally that the 5^th freedom is the freedom of blog, which you can read about if you jump in here: (Creative Leaps).

(5) Just enjoying. I have in this corner defined blogging upon my own advice (see ‘The Power Of The Press’). Only a bloghead would do that, right? (Incidentally: Upon my own advice – that’s another way of putting into perspective the power of the blog.)

‘Instinct & Consciousness’ by Frank A Hilario

Instinct & Consciousness

The BlogFather? As in The Godfather. Because I’m old enough; I will be exactly 67 on 17 September 2007. Because I have always been prolific, overseeing a kingdom of plenty (numbers, not wealth). I have 2x more blogsites than I have children (12): I avoid mixing subjects. Because ‘The BlogFather’ is better than my earlier Compuser Says, an obvious paraphrase of ‘Confucius Says.’ Because I can see that blogging has a lot of growing up to do here and abroad, more so over there, and it can use some inspiration – we need to aspire to greatness. I’m a teacher – I passed the Teacher’s Exam (80.6%); I hope to inspire you to be the greatest bloggers you can be. The Godfather became the greatest movie ever made. Because I believe I’m the first blogger in the world to recognize and proclaim blogging as the 5^th freedom, as I wrote on 14 March 2006 in one of my blogs, Creative Leaps. Awesome freedom.

Awesome responsibility. Blogging must be exercised creatively and critically, emphasis on the conjunction – ‘and’ signifying concurrence, combination. Creative and critical, faith and reason, useless each without the other. Thus, if you want to swear, to use bad language in a new idiom, why, that is very creative of you – but consider the neighbor, the listening ear of the other person, the eye of the beholder.

It’s very easy to be negative – you don’t need to be told, you don’t need exercise for it to become a habit. Negative is creative only if you turn it into a positive. The marketing geniuses do that, the copywriters do that for them.

Being negative is like this: During the The 1^st Philippine Blog Awards, the invocation was by a Roman Catholic priest, Fr Stephen Cuyos, and B complained (almost) without mincing words about The Good Father’s A Blogger’s Prayer. Instead of saying he was offended because he was not a Catholic, B could have taken it for what it was: an exercise in blogger’s freedom. There were no offensive words that I heard. And B could have just taken the opportunity to come up in his own website with his own ‘An Alternative Blogger’s Prayer’ or something. There’s always a choice – if you are creative. That’s why I emphasize creativity. In fact, there are many choices, depending on how creative you are. (Another choice? Ask someone else to come up with A Blogger’s Manifesto or something. On second thought, I just might come up with that one. Actually, I have already come up in another blogsite with The Ten Commandments Of Blog in an article I previously published with the American Chronicle. I blog my own.

‘Instinct & Consciousness.’ If you look at the image (one of my shots during the opening polo season of the Manila Polo Club on 07 January 2007), there is a big red line that divides the field sharply into two. It’s a low-lying fence for the riders and the horses not to go out of the playing field. Still, I was conscious in composing the photograph so that there are shadows to effectively blunt the invasive wide red line. A line divides only if you allow it. You cannot cross the line from critical to creative if you will not. The shadows of creativity must always be on top of your head if you want to enjoy your photography, nay your blogging.

What prompted me to create still another blogsite this time? You wouldn’t believe it: Carl Jung. I had borrowed Baby O’s book Modern Man In Search Of A Soul (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co, 244 pages) and about an hour ago, I was reading in our Comfort Zone (you know, for downloading at your leisure) at our apartment about ‘The Stages Of Life’ and was struck by these lines:

It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the dubious gift of civilization. It is just man’s turning away from instinct – his opposing himself to instinct – that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. Even when we turn back on nature … we ‘cultivate’ nature. As long as we are still submerged in nature we are unconscious, and we live in the security of instinct that knows no problems. Everything in us that still belongs to nature shrinks away from a problem; for its name is doubt, and wherever doubt holds sway, there is uncertainty and the possibility of divergent ways. And where several ways seem possible, there we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear.

Thus my tagline for The BlogFather is ‘blogging, instinct & consciousness.’ Like Jung, I believe in instinct (which I can tap through my faith or creativity) and consciousness (which I can tap through my reason or criticism) – but instinct comes first and comes last. If I understand Jung correctly, the true measure of consciousness can be found only in instinct. The true measure of reason or criticism can be found only in faith or creativity. With reason, we have only fear; with faith, we have hope and love. What more could we ask for?