freedom and resistance
Just in the nick, summer arrives: cloudless sky, hot sun. According to our Western Canada Wilderness Committee calendar hanging in the kitchen, the solstice itself occurs at 10:22 tonight. Checking that against my American Ephemeris for the 21st Century: 2001 to 2050 at Midnight, I see that it's correct. At that moment the sun will reach the northernmost point in the sky in its yearly round, directly over the Tropic of Cancer, and will at the same time enter the astrological sign of the same name. Goodbye, Gemini.
I keyed notes this morning from Rubicon and From Eden to Exile, but after sending Kimmie off to work in the sunshine (feeling cheerful because wearing a new outfit that we got for her yesterday: black capris with white piping and a white cotton suit-style jacket with collar and lapels), I found myself undermotivated. I was happy to get an e-mail from Warren, which I read a couple of times: he was responding to having read chapter 15-16, and also to my Thursday e-mail complaining of faltering ganas for my project.
His cure: discuss thematic aspects of the work. I'm not sure whether he really is so enthusiastic about theme, or whether he simply knows I respond to this topic, but either way I enjoy it.
(Woops--just welcomed Kimmie home. She's upset about a run-in with a coworker today, so we talked about that awhile.)
Warren thinks that by introducing Julius Caesar as a character I am automatically raising the issue of fate or destiny, and he is no doubt right. He actually took the trouble of scanning through Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, as well as looking at material he's just read in Hillman's The Soul's Code, and the story of Er at the end of Plato's Republic. (The story of Er, an experiencer of what we would now call a near-death experience, also crops up in my own chapter 1.)
My meta-project, The Age of Pisces, automatically raises the question of fate or destiny, since this question is central to astrology. How fated are we? How free? The question is as poignant now as ever, with mechanistic science seeming to account for more and more of our experience in terms of brain physiology and chemistry. At the time of my story, 48 BC, this question was also hot, since astrological fatalism was sweeping the world. The question gnawed at them as it gnaws at us, and the people of that time adopted the same stances we adopt today: fatalism, freedom, or something in between.
It makes a huge difference whether we regard each other as autonomous, free individuals, or as machines driven by inexorable physical law. In my view, the fertility and relevance of this thematic question underlies the popularity of stories about robots. Movies like Terminator and Terminator 2 are, at bottom, tackling the question: What does it mean to be human?
Machines, including computers, are deterministic devices: a particular input will always lead to the same output. They are not free. That's what makes them useful. If a machine can be made indistinguishable from a human, what does that say about our freedom? According to Erich Fromm and Eric Hoffer, most people find freedom to be an irksome, oppressive burden. Another fascinating curve in the topic: we don't want freedom.
This topic is deep. I'm happy that Warren sees it as key to what I'm writing.
My writing day? A fizzle. I got on the phone and talked with my Mom for an hour or two. I'm resisting my book--successfully, it appears.
I keyed notes this morning from Rubicon and From Eden to Exile, but after sending Kimmie off to work in the sunshine (feeling cheerful because wearing a new outfit that we got for her yesterday: black capris with white piping and a white cotton suit-style jacket with collar and lapels), I found myself undermotivated. I was happy to get an e-mail from Warren, which I read a couple of times: he was responding to having read chapter 15-16, and also to my Thursday e-mail complaining of faltering ganas for my project.
His cure: discuss thematic aspects of the work. I'm not sure whether he really is so enthusiastic about theme, or whether he simply knows I respond to this topic, but either way I enjoy it.
(Woops--just welcomed Kimmie home. She's upset about a run-in with a coworker today, so we talked about that awhile.)
Warren thinks that by introducing Julius Caesar as a character I am automatically raising the issue of fate or destiny, and he is no doubt right. He actually took the trouble of scanning through Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, as well as looking at material he's just read in Hillman's The Soul's Code, and the story of Er at the end of Plato's Republic. (The story of Er, an experiencer of what we would now call a near-death experience, also crops up in my own chapter 1.)
My meta-project, The Age of Pisces, automatically raises the question of fate or destiny, since this question is central to astrology. How fated are we? How free? The question is as poignant now as ever, with mechanistic science seeming to account for more and more of our experience in terms of brain physiology and chemistry. At the time of my story, 48 BC, this question was also hot, since astrological fatalism was sweeping the world. The question gnawed at them as it gnaws at us, and the people of that time adopted the same stances we adopt today: fatalism, freedom, or something in between.
It makes a huge difference whether we regard each other as autonomous, free individuals, or as machines driven by inexorable physical law. In my view, the fertility and relevance of this thematic question underlies the popularity of stories about robots. Movies like Terminator and Terminator 2 are, at bottom, tackling the question: What does it mean to be human?
Machines, including computers, are deterministic devices: a particular input will always lead to the same output. They are not free. That's what makes them useful. If a machine can be made indistinguishable from a human, what does that say about our freedom? According to Erich Fromm and Eric Hoffer, most people find freedom to be an irksome, oppressive burden. Another fascinating curve in the topic: we don't want freedom.
This topic is deep. I'm happy that Warren sees it as key to what I'm writing.
My writing day? A fizzle. I got on the phone and talked with my Mom for an hour or two. I'm resisting my book--successfully, it appears.
posted by paulv at
4:04 PM
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