Many think that everything we do is predetermined. Churches preach that. Philosophers struggle with the problem of free will versus determinism. Many of us, however, will say that of course we have free will. We are Americans. We can do whatever. Try to stop us.
“Aha!” says modern Electronics. “Try using your phone when the battery is empty. Sure, you are free to load it or not to load it. But where does that get you? Admit it: you are at the mercy of Technology.”
You are writing an important treatise, something truly heretical. Having free will, you are entitled to do this. God will not stop you. But the word processing software will. It suddenly freezes. You cannot write another word. You are at the mercy of the Microsoft Corporation.
You go shopping for some imported black delicatessen pumpernickel. The store does not carry such. No surprise. You are at the mercy of supply and demand.
You order a book for your kindle-1 but it is sent to kindle-2. You are at the mercy of Amazon.
We are free to create or do what we want, but it may go wrong. The more pressing our plan, the more likely it is to go wrong. Maybe that is what Friedrich Nietzsche meant when he said that free will does not exist.
In sum, we may be free to be creative, to plan our luncheon on the grass with or without clothes, whatever. In the end, however, we are at the mercy of Murphy.
Having read about the gruesome sacrificial rituals of the ancient Aztecs, I found it interesting to hear the why and wherefore of this practice, as suggested by recent anthropological research. It appears that people believed in beings they vaguely referred to as The Gods and that in the beginning of things those gods sacrificed themselves and by that act enabled the people to live and prosper. The “beginning of things” must have been a problem for the Aztecs. Apparently the gods did not create the Aztec world but owed allegiance to some higher power and their self-sacrifice was to honor that higher power, just as the Aztecs’ human sacrifices were a way to honor and thank the gods. The sacrificial victims were most likely voluntary martyrs submitting to a most honorable ritual that was still carried out in the sixteenth century.
I am not a wine connoisseur. Obviously. Because I buy my pleasant, harmless dry red at three bottles for ten dollars. If I go shopping on one of my thrifty days I buy six bottles and pocket the 10% bulk discount. I buy my fruit and my oatmeal and most everything else I eat at the local supermarket where there is always something “special” and on sale and where people are invited to enjoy the savings on Five-Dollar-Fridays. In other words, it is a humble neighborhood where residents are thrifty, hold on to their wallets, and redeem coupons.
If you listen to the current President of the United States of America, the Press is the enemy of the people, spreading “fake news”. That does not surprise me any more. But I learned early on how that plays out. I grew up in Nazi Germany. When the National Socialists took over the government in 1933, the first thing they did was to shut down all opposition papers to prevent them from spreading “Jewish lies”.
It is not in a valley. It is on a hillside. But as cemeteries go the Park has one overriding advantage: it is close to my home. Within walking distance actually, yet all the fellows that have come to rest there were brought in by car and a few were carried up on the shoulders of six to eight sturdy sons and grandsons. So far none, I have been assured, availed themselves of the pedestrian access.
In the days when Tsar Peter was ruling Russia and the Great Northern War was raging the invading Swedish forces lived off the land. Russian farmers would prepare for the Swedish soldiers’ raids by stashing away supplies in secret places and then pretending to have nothing. The Swedish soldiers, however, came upon a very simple and effective way to make the farmers give them the key: they took away the children. More recently, the Hitler government rounded up unwanted people. He had them separated into men, women, and children. I think I know what happened to the men and the women. I wish I did not know about the children. But the testimony of SS-Obersturmfuhrer Hafner is on record: “The children were brought in a tractor. The Wehrmacht had already dug a grave…” I am glad, though, to know that the surviving guilty members of the Nazi German government were hanged.
I am not one of those that hear the grass grow. Nor do I hear the squirrel’s heartbeat, to borrow another concept from George Eliot. But then I would not want to hear such things, anyway. I would settle for just hearing what those around me are saying. Not that I do not “hear” them – if anything, I am annoyed by the din, the constant roar that surrounds me – but I would also like to understand what people are saying. I find it very taxing to give a well-reasoned cohesive answer to a question I did not understand. I am not a reliable conversation partner. Folks may be put off when they discuss Macy’s sale of pots and pans and I respond that I don’t really need any socks, nor pants. The short of the story is that the family counsel came to the conclusion that I should have a hearing test.
If you are young and healthy you seldom see a physician. You do not think about blood pressure, salt, and heart attacks either. Your systolic blood pressure is about 120 mmHG. But then you get old and the situation changes. You go to the doctor more often than you would like, and you watch with apprehension when they measure your blood pressure. You also learn some Greek and start to talk about hypertension vs. hypotension. Both are bad news. One day, some years ago, the paramedics measured my blood pressure at about 79 mmHG and took me straight to the emergency room. I learned that day that low blood pressure can be deadly, depending on how hypo you go. My case, luckily, was not serious enough to worry. They sent me home again.
Modern Hawaiians, I am told, are not particularly religious. They will tell you, however, that there is a goddess of fire and volcanos, Pele by name. She lives on Kilauea and from time to time makes the mountain blow its top. That explains a lot as we are finding out. There was a time when it explained everything because, after all, she was a goddess. Things have changed. Pele is no longer a goddess. She has been demoted to a mythological figure, a creation of man’s mind.