Eight fifty.
I pulled out the biography of Virginia Woolf I’ve had for many years. Somewhere I have one of James Joyce as well. I wonder what year it was when the old canon was abandoned completely? Not just a canon but a curriculum. Now it’s just history. It wouldn’t do me any good to return to the university because it’s all changed. A lot of my old professors are deceased. Time flies. I drank away over ten years. I wasted time feeling resentful but also dependent on other people’s opinions. I finally learned that the worst that can happen is you make a mistake. The good news of this is that all along, you were a free agent. I reject the idea that a divine power rewards or punishes us in our process of living. We alone are responsible for our fates. We alone have power over our own lives. We are absolutely free— and responsible. It is bad faith to deny this freedom… Then again, does it make sense to say I was responsible for the schizophrenia? It was a circumstance beyond my control, but still I could take responsibility for my reaction to it. It is very important to take advantage of our freedom in every situation… I feel like a Coca-Cola today.
Ten ten. As I walked to the store, I was feeling under the weather. Probably from allergies. I noticed a lot of tree pollen on the street. I considered volition with every step I took. How do free actions start, and at what level? Hume thought that matter is infinitely divisible, and as deep as you go, causation obtains. Free will didn’t exist for David Hume. It would be a holistic view to believe in freedom and responsibility. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As if to fill in essential cookie cutters; this is the view of Aristotle. It’s been three decades since I read The Winter’s Tale, and a year since any Shakespeare at all. Freedom boils down to faith in an idea. As long as you believe you are free, you can act as if it were true.
robgradens 