kokorodoko wrote: Wed Aug 30, 2023 11:50 am

We no longer have any sympathy today with the concept of “free will.” We know only too well what it is — the most infamous of all the arts of the theologian for making mankind “accountable” in his sense of the word, that is to say for making mankind dependent on him…. I give here only the psychology of making men accountable. Everywhere accountability is sought, it is usually the instinct for punishing and judging which seeks it. One has deprived becoming of its innocence if being in this or that state is traced back to will, to intentions, to accountable acts: the doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty.

!!!

If there's no free will, then there's no sense in assigning praise or blame for anything. We're all just automata, determined by our background. I disagree with that.

I am not that academically schooled in this area, but I absolutely do not believe in free will, like we each have some magic "decider" thing in us that lets us make choices based on...whatever.

It's much easier to demonstrate a strong likelihood that free will doesn't exist than it is to show in any meaningful way that it does. You don't have to wave your hands about it at all to assert the former.

I think it was Einstein who said we are governed by biological processes and environmental influences.

Not as reductive as it sounds. A multitude of both things within each of us, and the mix of them is going to be unique to every person on the planet.

As not-clued-into-things as we are, I guess we might as well have free will, because that's what it feels like to most of us on a moment-to-moment basis. But we're just pinballing along our usually well-worn paths, occasionally surprised by circumstance.

I find myself not at all depressed by this, at this point in my existence--I like it. A lot. It's funny, a cosmic joke. But YMMV depending on how seriously you take life.

People aren't anything special, in that sense. The energy in our lives is in surfacing commonalities (based on our derived impulses and interests) and the occasional surprises, which are only surprising b/c we are so predictable otherwise.

But that doesn't mean we are inconsequential. Very far from it.

Every one of us has significance, almost always far beyond whatever influence we might imagine ourselves having on existence. If you think about people you may have lost, especially people who remove themselves from things purposefully, probably none of them understood their impact on the world around them. And neither do we understand how widely we impact everything around us, simply by being here.

Anyway, I'm reading How to Change Your Mind and it's making me want to take psychedelics again.

I definitely think people can take the whole free will argument too far. For example, "That person is in jail because of his own choices." Well yes BUT...he just lost his job, his parents threw him out, he is in the grips of addiction, etc. Those things are real and they matter. Sometimes people imagine that they don't. That we just make all our choices in a vacuum.

This question has always been a mystery to me because as you eloquently say, eephus, we can't find a "decider" button within us.

A while back I decided to read every Graham Greene novel, just finished the final book. Some are certainly better than others but there's not a single one I didn't enjoy reading. My ratings:

1. The Man Within (Heinemann, 1929) 7/10
2. Stamboul Train (Heinemann, 1932) (also published as Orient Express)s 6.5/10
3. It's a Battlefield (Heinemann, 1934) 6/10
4. England Made Me (Heinemann, 1935) (also published as The Shipwrecked) 7/10
5. A Gun for Sale (Heinemann, 1936) (also published as This Gun for Hire) 8/10
6. Brighton Rock (Heinemann, 1938) 7.5/10
7. The Confidential Agent (Heinemann, 1939) 8/10
8. The Power and the Glory (Heinemann, 1940) (also published as The Labyrinthine Ways) 7/10
9. The Ministry of Fear (Heinemann, 1943) 8/10
10. The Heart of the Matter (Heinemann, 1948) 7/10
11. The Third Man (1949) (novella, as a basis for the screenplay) 9/10
12. The End of the Affair (Heinemann, 1951) 9/10
13. The Quiet American (Heinemann, 1955) 10/10
14. Loser Takes All (Heinemann, 1955) 6/10
15. Our Man in Havana (Heinemann, 1958) 9/10
16. A Burnt-Out Case (Heinemann, 1960) 10/10
17. The Comedians (The Bodley Head, 1966) 9.5/10
18. Travels with My Aunt (The Bodley Head, 1969) 6/10
19. The Honorary Consul (The Bodley Head, 1973) 8.5/10
20. The Human Factor (The Bodley Head, 1978) 9.5/10
21. Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (The Bodley Head, 1980) 6.5/10
22. Monsignor Quixote (Bodley Head, 1982) 8/10
23. The Tenth Man (The Bodley Head and Anthony Blond, 1985) 7/10
24. The Captain and the Enemy (Reindhart Books, 1988) 7.5/10

I am happy to be commuting every day now to drop off my kid at school, among other reasons for the fact that it gives me guaranteed reading time, finally.

I finished Pedro Paramo yesterday. Thank you to whoever originally posted about it here! On the whole, I did love it, but I was a bit unsatisfied with the final third (roughly) of the book, it lost momentum for me and the (SPOILER!) disappearance of Juan Preciado from the narrative from a certain point on, the switch from a chorus of voices and stories to this fixation on the title character's obsessive childhood love (interesting enough as one component of many for sure, but not compelling enough alone to sustain the drive and magic of the first 100 or so pages) – that didn't work for me, at least on first reading. But maybe something happened in my attention/focus or the way I was reading once I knew I was in the home stretch, don't know.

This morning I started Calvino's Invisible Cities on the bus ride home. The first page, which I've read numerous times with the intention of going further, is achingly beautiful.

I've also been reading Jim Harrison's Letters to Yesenin. I really connect deeply with his work, at least the poems.

LBx wrote: Sun May 09, 2021 6:45 pm On the 4th volume of the Book of the New Sun set recommended in the "Most Metal Book" or whatever thread (Protoolio?) before the DOTF. Easily binged the first one in a few days during a snowy covid getaway and have been hooked ever since with all the turns and reoccurring elements... Any chance the Long and Short Sun books are on par?

Just finished the Short Sun. Jeez... is there anything after this that will top that run? The Night Land? Dying Earth heads speak up...

jimmy spako wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 4:50 amThis morning I started Calvino's Invisible Cities on the bus ride home. The first page, which I've read numerous times with the intention of going further, is achingly beautiful.

I have Calvino's Invisible Cities in a mini box set but don't really remember it after a decade plus. Should revisit... I do remember If On A Winter's Night A Traveler and Auster's NY Trilogy having an impact at the time.

I finished my second time through The Last Temptation of Christ (maybe my fav book) and moved on to Carrère‘s The Kingdom. I kind of grit my teeth through the spiritual struggle part at the very beginning because once he really gets into the Bible and the history around 30-50 AD its like the warmth of the motherfucking sun. Right in the vein!

He does that conversational european writer style thing, but I really don’t hate that… when it works it works.

Going through that and Claude Levi Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques (not biblical), which is like antimatter for all travelogues. It just fuckin evaporates em

Next in my Bible orbit is kind of a left turn with Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke! Another re-read. I need to track down some of the texts Carrère mentions - the Mythmaker by Hyam Maccoby, Renan’s Life of Jesus, plus 2000 year old historical stuff. Or, you know The Bible might work but I am not in a hurry.

The Information by Martin Amis. A hundred pages or so in and so far so good.
A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer by Elisabeth De Feydeau.

The Undertow- scenes from a slow civil war. This whole rising fascism thing is both fascinating me and freaking me out. Scary times we live in.