Naming Baby
Picking a name for a blog is about as difficult, it seems, as picking just the right name for a newborn infant: in either case the “parent” hopes to choose an identifier that speaks adequately to the character, personality and even appearance of who/what the “child” will eventually become. The fear becomes choosing something that will ultimately label and potentially limit its subject. For example, say mother, in a moment of romantic idealism determines, “surely with that set of lungs my baby is destined to be a great singer!” And so, she names her baby boy Pavarotti, only to discover by age 5 that her child is tone deaf (and sadly destined to a more-painful-than-average adolescent experience filled with “Come on Povi [ha ha ha], sing for us!”).
During my blog-naming struggle the driving question was not merely, what do I want this blog to speak to, but more “how do I keep the name from limiting the scope of subjects I allow myself to explore?” Eventually, I landed on a name expressing my life’s driving and ongoing effort; Something that has come to comprise “Me” as an adult; an ideal that has led me in and out of faith, down various career paths, and on various, always intense, academic pursuits–most recently into the field of Psychology. I settled on the name “Accounting for Truth” because I have felt the resounding negative impact of holding to a belief system under false pretenses, out of a multitude’s devastating disregard for contradictions and marginalization of those bent to question “the system.”
As a species we have watched armies form out of ignorance and manipulation simply because people were afraid to question a dominant voice and a heavy hand. We have watched millions bow to over-empowered religious icons, most likely because mindless submission is simple. I, like so many others, have been victim to the cancer of mindlessness living, and this blog is an effort to seek out and account for Truth. In so doing, I understand it will sometimes be sensible and/or necessary to yield to ambiguity, to acknowledge the space between black and white assertions as the closest thing to Truth. Regardless, if I or anyone else is going to label something as reality, we ought to be able to account for the details (the research, the experiences, the observations, etc.) that make it thus. I supposes those details are what this blog is about. Hmmm. Case in point: Perhaps she would more gracefully wear the name “Accounting for the Details.”
I found out that my blog name is actually the name of a crappy band! Ugh man, and I thought I was sooo clever.