First thing first

To be honest, i never felt any urge to blog. This would perhaps explain why am I starting to blog so late despite being in touch of internet for several years. But i've been watching people doing and talking about it. Though I could never exactly understand what makes people tick when it comes to blogging. Recently one of my friends suggested me to take blogging as an active interest. The same old question - "Why blog" came up and struck me. This time I decided to do some alalysis myself to understand Why people blog. I'll point out some of what i came up with -

• In psychology, there is a well established theory known as "Maslow's heirarchy of needs for humans". I just love its simplicty and its universal appeal. And somehow we all already know this. The theory establishes relationship between social status of an individual and the kind of needs the individual would have at a particular status. As a living creature, we have some very fundamental needs - needs like food, sleep. If any of these fundamental needs are not fulfilled, we may cease to survive. Once these fundamental needs are appropriately fulfilled, we start worrying about our safety/stability. Safety from the possibility of going back to the older or even worse state where even the fundamental needs were not taken care of. These are called safety needs. Once we have an OK kind of personal/professional life, we start feeling the need to fulfuill our emotional desires like being part of the society, having bunch of good friends etc. These are social needs. Once we have all these three kind of needs fulfilled, we start feeling the need to be admired, to be appreciated etc. I think blogging comes here. People blog because they want their voices to be heard, their view points to be appreciated, admired and validated. And the fact that most bloggers are educated people who have the priviledge to enjoy their lives with their fundamental, safety and social needs met - vindicates this.
• Some feel that it gives them power to disseminate information pretty quickly and to a very broad reader base. While some blog just because others around them are doing it and they don't want to be left behind. Some use it as a stress buster. Several others are just doing it for experimentation - What does it mean and how does it feel to blog. This particular blog comes under this category. Another reason to blog is that blogging has become fashion today. And not having a blog doesn't sound that cool. Right? :)

Incidently and quite intertingly, one line in point 1 - "because people want their voices to be heard, view points to be understood, appreciated, admired and validated" is compelling me to write more about how we humans want our view points be admired and in process get ourselves validated from others. May be that is the topic for my next post.

Till then, good bye !
Amit