Totally awesome part from the second chapter of Thoreau’s Walden:
Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
Let suppose for the sake of this argument that God exists. Any god would suit the purposes of this argument, but in this case we’ll select the Christian god as he is the most prevalent in American culture, in my culture. Supposing he exists and has attributed to him all the powers of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, accepting even his paradoxical ability to both know and change his “future mind”. Accepting that he is the creator of the universe, known and unknown, and of utmost importance to us, creator of humanity. God exists and in my hypothetical has provided such evidence that non-belief crosses the border into denialism (which I must state is not currently the case and I would posit the opposite). The question I find myself asking, especially in this hypothetical, is why exactly, other than surface reasons (survival, etc.) should I defer moral superiority to this being?
Why should I accept that just because a being is powerful, and knowledgeable, that moral superiority should be deferred to it. Why should I not demand as much of it, more even, than I do of my fellow man? Why should I not deny this superiority of morality until it has been proven? It seems to me that even God must be held to the evidence. That even God, must be held to the science. Why is God not held to the moral ambiguity that is so plain in the Universe? Why should I not require more than authority?
Another train of thought grasps me, and I wonder, if God did make itself known to us and stood before us and the sum of its powers became knowable to us, is there a power by which its presence amongst that sum convinces me of its holders moral superiority? I am unable to imagine such a power.
I am remain utterly incapable of understanding the mindset of one who despite no evidence, even celebrating the lack of it, attributes existance, power, and moral superiority to God.
This day is another day away
from my memory of you. Wandering
Woe. Begotten and lost. Awaken the
dreams the their cage. Forever
is, forever was. Traveling dancers
in the Night.
It doesn’t mean anything, I just thought it sounded beautiful read aloud.
My parents house rests at the top of a small hill in the middle of a small valley. When I was younger it was surrounded by tress that grew up out of the mud. I spent a lot of my youth climbing trees and trouncing through the mud, but today it only feels like a few memories remain.
One involves the mud. All of the mud was filled with low growing vegetation too. Sticker bushes, stinging nettles. We used to use the horse tails to assuage the bite of the nettles. You would pluck one and rip it in half and squeeze the juices out onto the newly forming bumps. I’m still not sure if it really did anything to help, but its what we did.
We were mostly well provisioned when we’d head out to traipse through the mud and the forest, the times we weren’t was never because of a lack of available equipment, boots, etc., but usually because the sense of adventure would come upon us too fast. That we had no time to prepare.
When I reflect the memories are always a little muddy, like the terrain I suppose, but I can only ever seem to remember the presence of one brother at a time. Not that much is different now I suppose.
I remember one time when i misjudged the ground and found myself with one foot buried up past my calf high boot. I remember how strong the power of that mud was. In my youth and probably even now, I didn’t have the strength to pull my foot and the boot out. So I had to pull my foot out of my boot, sit down in the mud and pull the boot out of the mud.
The cleanliness of my sock stands out most vivid amongst the colors in my memory. Stark white against the browns and greens of the world around me. Pristine sock and pants ran up from my toes until a harsh line of mud where the boot offered no protection.
I don’t know if you remember or had the same kind of boots that I had, but they had these loops on each side which made them much easier to put on, but also came in quite handy when the boot found itself buried below mud and filling with water. You knew with dead certainty you were going to have a one wet foot all day.
Its situations like this that make up my childhood and the situations like this that we forget are why children come home so muddy sometimes. My parents, bless them, never complained, my mother was always there to make sure as little mud got tracked into the house as possible, but she was also there because she wanted to hear all about our adventures. What a fantastic mother.
Before all the septic work was done when the forest that was my home was still there we used to have a swing set which we got for Easter. We used to get all kinds of awesome things for Easter. After the initial fun of swinging and sliding, because the swing set had a slide attached on one side, and it shocks me now that something as fun as swinging and sliding could ever lose its desire, but that’s how kids are I guess. Once you could swing it was time for a new adventure, a new skill. We would play a game, I think it was my mother or maybe my older brother got the idea or took it from a friend, but we played a game we called hot lava.
In hot lava you had to move all around the yard, like parkour, without touching the ground. You could climb all over the swing set or jump to the sandbox, but you couldn’t touch the ground. Next to the sandbox was a particularly tight group of trees, I’ve never learned what kind.
The trees produced a canopy so dense the ground underneath never got wet. It was a surreal place and I’ve only ever been somewhere similar one other time. You could climb up into the trees from the edge of the sand box and literally move from tree to tree because the canopy was so dense. I have spent hours at a time up amongst the trees.
All of those trees are gone now. The ones so close to the house.
Who the hell are these people who ‘don’t read fiction’. Like fiction has no value; like there aren’t lessons to be learned just because the events didn’t happen.
People sometimes, man. Open your fucking eyes. Open your hearts. You can learn a lot about yourself in fiction. Fiction teaches us without telling us that which we can and can never be. I love it.
Just thought I’d let you know.
Given enough time
To find the sign
I’d remember why
I gave it up.
And Curse the words
that we’ve all heard
that caused us all to
Stop and Grow up.
Memories and thoughts to cling to
and lyrics to sing to
Time to drop the pen
and Stand up.
Words to die and lie and cry
Words to wonder by
when the sun
comes back up
Someone should tell that kid
with the dream to be rid
of anger
To shut the fuck up.
When are people going to understand that the world isn’t strangely well suited for us, we are explicitly well suited for it? That if the world were different, we would be different?
To think otherwise is to assume an astonishing hubris, and displays a conviction to ignore demonstrable facts for unfalsifiable faith. To think otherwise is to purposefully set aside reason for irrationality.
Childhood indoctrination is to blame. More on this later.
As I follow further the thoughts on will I realize that even the feeling of consciousness is incorporated by the brain in creating will. There is no part of me that is not of the brain. No part of me that is not used by my brain to create will. And along with this, the perception of being me.
The concept of ‘the freedom of the will’ has been refuted many times, but the ones that only touch the surface concern the perceiver’s freedom to manipulate or create will, and I wish to expunge also the other forms of which it could be thought that will comes about by some process which is in any way free. I, being only a perception can exert no will, and my brain, being locked into the physical world, and by disallowing (should we?) actual randomness and not the perception of randomness, can follow only one course of willing. It would be more accurate to call it ‘the freedom from will’ and that freedom can exist only so long as the human brain does not understand itself well enough to predict precisely what it will next will.
Oh what a prison that would be, to know what the future holds for you, and that you are entirely the cause of it, and that you will forever be unable to change it. A safer question for ones sanity would be to ask: is it possible for the consciousness to understand itself well enough to truly know what it will next will? Or should we dare to run into the gaping jaws and hope that we are not swallowed?
It seems as if the best hope we have for any form of freedom concerning will is if there is somehow a true randomness buried in the heart of the universe.
The Adding Machine is a play that is currently going on (until this coming Sunday) at the ACT theatre in downtown Seattle (7th and Union). Jason, John, and myself went and caught it last night, it was totally fucking rad and if you can make it before Sunday you should go see it too. Tickets are $25 on the web, but if you show up just 30 minutes before the show you can get rush tickets for only $15 (assuming they are available).
The show is presented by the New Century Theatre Company which has set for itself the honorable goal of reviving good theatre in Seattle, where we have apparently been enduring mostly bad theatre for a long time.
I don’t often go to plays, but I’ve been to maybe 4 or 5 and this was definitely the best. I’m looking forward to what NCTC is putting on next and will definitely give it a shot.
This review in the Stranger blog is what inspired my viewing.
The searching for a soul, whatever meaning you may put on that word, is essentially a search for the ‘essence’ that lies directly beneath one’s will. What is the thing that causes the will? I think, and as far as I have seen it is true that, the cause is the current state, chemical and physical, of our brains combined with time and some velocity of change in this chemical and physical state. There is nothing below my will except for my brain. To suppose that there were is to predict that the thing we refer to as the ‘mind’, or as I have called the ‘essence’ can exist, or that is to say cause will, separately from the activity of the brain, but this has never been witnessed and the hypothesis seems both unfruitful and unnecessary.
If this is true, as I believe it is true, then I think that I am incapable of understanding something for which I profess belief. This consciousness is a prison, where I must observe at all times the outcomes of actions caused by a will that is at the same time wholly my responsibility and completely beyond my control.
Even the act of thinking is resultant of a will to think the thought, and I am responsible for my thoughts even as I have no control over them. Even the ‘me’ that is imprisoned is wholly of the brain, and likewise the perception of being apart from it. The feeling of consciousness is a byproduct of the feedback loop of sense and will and the part of consciousness for which I have no word, but the thing that is consciousness that imparts upon us the feeling of consciousness but is not the feeling.
What a complicated, monstrous, and awesome thing it is to be.
