What's wrong with fatalism? It fits the universe better than other theories of behavior.Originally Posted by cacian
What's wrong with fatalism? It fits the universe better than other theories of behavior.
Hi PeterL. well I was just thinking that we are what read. if we enjoy fatalism with all its glitz and downs then we should expect the same back in feelings conversations and behaviour. we are not amenable to what surrounds us and since we are the product of everything we do, then literature, which takes a fairly large amount of our time/life because we enjoy a book as much as we enjoys the company of friends and family, evidently replicates itself in us and for us. we learn to respond accordingly mood way and otherwise. something has got to give and we up and down with words and meanings.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
No, it is more like we read what we already are. We are the product of what came before, not what we do. We read literature, whether great or small, due to causes that largely pre-existed us. The chain of cause and effect goes back to the Big Bang or even earlier.
I see your point and am beginning to understand your perspective on this. My only criticism of your position is the fact that a genetically gifted person might never go on to cultivate their intellect, will without education, without books, fail to reach their full potential. Like me my brother was in gifted classes as a kid, like me he got the best grades, but unlike me he did not pursue education into adulthood, and the discrepancy between our levels of intellectual sophistication is apparent to anyone who listens in on our discussions. I utterly own him in every debate, even in those which presuppose no specifically scholarly knowledge.
“To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
Potential isn`t enought. Without educations we cannot develop our skills, ideas. That is why education is so important.
Even if "The chain of cause and effect goes back to the Big Bang or even earlier" that does not preclude "proximate causes". It's reasonable to say that a murder "caused" someone's death, even if the murder was the inevitable result of the big bang.
Genetics is only part of it, but were you and your brother very similar in personality from the youngest ages? I would guess that there were significant differences from your earliest activities. Did he not cultivate his intellect because he didn't read great literature, or was his personality such that he was not interested in intellectual matters? I would contend that he was destined to be not especially intellectual from before birth.
But without potential and relevant interests people do not follow a program of education.
I wonder if this has ever been used as a defense! :P
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
"The Big Bang made me do it!"
Yes, without any doubt.
Charges dropped!!
“the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought....
I don't know I think everything we do up to now has an effect on us. If a book is depressive then the emotions learned picked up from it are going to be the same. It may be not be evident but long term what we read will shape the way we think and behave long term.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
That is a matter of logic. Any philosopher of physicist would argue that everything that we do will inevitably be the cause of some later actions. The chain of cause and effect is not evident, except on rare occasions, but we read what we are programmed by DNA to find interesting. Everything makes perfect sense, and it all fits nicely together, but we need to find the evidence that is not clearly bvious.
I don't think the question here is at all whether someone can be a wicked person while also having a good taste or love for literature/art/culture. The answer to that question is obvious as you have pointed out. A psychopathic person is likely to draw psychopathic conclusions from what he reads. The solipsistic mould everything they read around themselves and so gain little perspective. But literature in general makes people more open minded and more understanding of others. In a free society literature is always available: this is not a coincidence. The Nazi's were also book-burners, as are nearly all of the most reactionary ideologies around. This is not a coincidence either.
It doesn't necessarily make you better per se, but it provides one with the tools to make oneself a better person. I just don't think that can be denied, at all. I cannot think that the world would not be a far better place if everyone in it had read say Middlemarch. But of course: literature can also poison the mind, that cannot be denied either.
This is such a nothing answer. No one was asking whether the world was predetermined. Nor does it have any relevance to the question, whatsoever. I didn't know something being predetermined meant it never changed, because that is what you seem to be implying.
Experiencing great art of any kind makes us better people in some way, of course. At the same time, I feel the education system, especially the Anglo-Saxon education system, tends to fetishize and place on a pedestal the act of reading in and of itself as if it were some morally superior activity. It's the 'reading for reading's sake' attitude that gets on my nerves. Reading Kafka will broaden the mind just as will listening to Schubert or even watching Ozu. At the end of the day, it should be accepted that writing is simply a form of expression as is painting canvases or composing music, and they're all valid. The Anglo-Saxon intelligentsia hasn't caught on to this concept. The French, for instance, have grasped this. Read Gore Vidal and you'll see what I mean.
Someone in his or her mid-twenties can't pick up a copy of Pride and Prejudice or Great Expectations without being told they 'should have read that in ninth or tenth grade'. Why is this? It's a huge paradox. American society is deeply anti-intellectual, yet people are expected to have read X, Y, and Z by the time they turn twenty because that's the trajectory 'edcuated' people are supposed to follow. It's an obsession with superficial signs. Having been taught Great Expectations in tenth grade is a sign. Getting a 750 on the SAT verbal is a sign. It has nothing to do with profound, genuine intellectual curiosity. It's about creating the image/illusion of 'well-readness', since 'smart' people have read the 'great books'. How inane would it sound if I patronizingly told people they should have been familiar with Morisot's canvases by the end of eleventh grade or that they should have listened to Bartok's quartets by the time they turned 19? Was someone who was 28 when Pride and Prejudice was first published too old to be reading it?
When people say they 'hate reading', many are simply caving under the pressure to foster an image of learnedness. Not all, but many. There's this pressure to have read all that 'great books', in order to develop into an enlightened, superior being. It's not enough to say 'I'm reading Dostoyevsky and Faulkner at the moment but will eventually get to Charlotte Bronte or Chekhov' the way one says they're a fan of Mingus and Neil Young but will listen to Monk and Nick Drake eventually. If people were permitted to take such an attitude towards their exploration of the literary canon there would be a lot less bitterness towards reading in and of itself I think. But no, you already need to have read Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Yeats, Joyce, Faulkner, Balzac and everyone else by the time you're 25 or 30 or else you're ignorant. People are pressured to know the literary canon inside and out before they've even begun their journey.
Last edited by mande2013; 06-11-2013 at 02:19 PM.
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