BLACK LINES
  • Blog
  • Top Shit
  • About

Determinism will give you peace

24/8/2015

Comments

 
As with all Mercedes above a certain power, with the exception of the SLR McLaren, the speed of the 600 SL is electronically limited to 250 km/h. I don't think I dipped particularly below this speed between Murcia and Albacete. There were a few long and very open bends; I had an abstract sense of power - that, no doubt, of a man indifferent to death. A trajectory remains perfect, even one that concludes in death: there can be a truck, an overturned car, an imponderable; this takes nothing away from the beauty of the trajectory.
As much as I love Michel Houellebecq (I have a poster of him in front of my typewriter), I can't help but feel that all his books are derivatives of the same themes explored so perfectly in The Elementary Particles. The above quote is from The Possibility of an Island, a book that I enjoyed, but one that wasn't nearly as pleasurable as The Elementary Particles (I suppose his themes are starting to feel a bit repetitive).

That said, Houellebecq continues to make interesting observations, and he makes a good point about religious faith - liberals just don't really get that people can believe in these crazy metaphysical propositions:
My atheism was so monolithic, so radical, that I had never been able to take these subjects completely seriously. During my days at secondary school, when I would debate with a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew, I had always had the impression that their beliefs were to be taken ironically; that they obviously didn't believe, in the proper sense of the term, in the reality of the dogmas they professed, but that they were a sign of recognition, a sort of password allowing them access to the community of believers - a bit like grunge music was, or Doom Generation for fans of that game.
This has obvious implications for the way in which liberals view phenomenon like Islamic terrorism - from their perspective, surely some underlying political or social problem is at the root of this behaviour, which is otherwise inexplicable - and to someone who's never experienced the true ecstasy of religious experience (as I have), violence in the name of God alone seems inconceivable.

One of the core themes that runs through Houellebecq's work is the idea of reductionism as something that takes away from the meaning of our lives. This is a theme I've personally been pre-occupied with and comes up recurrently in Beta Male - indeed, having written a similar passage to the following, I'm almost shocked at the parallels (I finished the novel before I read these particular quotes):
   "She is so young, so beautiful... ," murmured Vincent in a pleading tone.
   "I imagine that, in the case of an ugly old woman, elimination would seem more excusable to you."
   "No, no," Vincent protested angrily, "that's not exactly what I meant."
   "Yes it is," said Knowall pitilessly, "it's exactly what you meant; but let's move on. Tell yourself she's just a mortal, a mortal like all of us up until now - a temporary arrangement of molecules. Let's say that in this specific circumstance she is a pretty arrangement; but she has no more substance than a pattern formed by frost, that a simple rise in her temperature would reduce to nothing; and unfortunately for her, her death has become necessary so that mankind can progress....

...Suddenly I thought again of the way in which Knowall had described the Italian girl: a pretty arrangement of particles, a smooth surface, without individuality, whose disappearance would hold no importance... and it was this that I had been in love with, that had constituted my only reason for living - and, and this was the worst of it, still constituted it.
One of the implications of reductionism (and frankly, of modern physics more generally) is that all true causation ultimately occurs at the level of subatomic particles. It follows, then, that insofar as humans make choices, they are no more free than the interactions between these particles, which take place in a rigorous, law-like fashion. From this, determinism follows, which the protagonist of the novel finds absolutely horrifying:
...I was too old, I had no strength left; this observation did not, however, diminish my sorrow, because from the place I now found myself in there was no way out other than to go on suffering right to the end, I would never forget her body, her skin, nor her face, and I had never felt with such clarity that human relations are born, evolve, and die in a totally deterministic manner, as inexorable as the movements of a planetary system, and that it is absurd and vain to hope, however slightly, that you can modify their course.
Contrast this perspective with that of one of the neohumans living in the post-apocalyptic landscape of the earth:
The idea that things could have been different did not cross my mind, no more than a mountain range, present before my eyes, could vanish to be replaced by a plain. Consciousness of a total determinism was without doubt what differentiated us most clearly from our human predecessors. Like them, we were only conscious machines; but, unlike them, were were aware of only being machines.
Does regret even make sense if this is true?

Something to think about.
Comments

    writer

    cynic, idealist​
    posts on most weeks

    RSS Feed

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014

    people I admire

    Haruki Murakami
    Michel Houellebecq
    Bret Easton Ellis
    Chuck Palahniuk
    Marcus Aurelius
    Sam Harris
    Bon Iver
    Dallas Green
    Frank Yang
    Cary Fukunaga
    Leo Babauta
    Luke Muelhauser
    Jake Seliger
    Jack Cheng
    Scott Alexander
    Mark Manson

    Categories

    All
    AI
    Alex Rosenberg
    And The Departed Leave Behind Gifts
    Anime
    Arrivcal
    Asian
    Atheism
    Basic Income
    Biracial
    Bon Iver
    Bro Philosophy
    Broscience
    Chad Kultgen
    Chinks
    Christian Apologetics
    City And Colour
    Confirmation Bias
    Cormac McCarthy
    Cory Doctorow
    Cynicism
    Dallas Green
    Daniel Miessler
    Death
    Don't Forget To Bring A Towel
    Drones
    East Asia
    Emo
    Emo Shit
    Empathy
    Ethnocentrism
    Evangelical Christianity
    Evolution
    Evolutionary Psychology
    Failing And Flying
    Failing LIKE A BOSS
    Failure
    Fiction
    Fiction Writing
    Flow State
    Forgiveness
    Frank Yang
    Frans De Waal
    Freedom Of Speech
    Free Will
    Funereal
    Game Of Thrones
    General
    Goals
    Grave Of The FireFlies
    Grief
    Half-Asian
    Hapa
    Hate Speech
    Hath Not A Jew Eyes?
    Heartbreak
    Heartiste
    Homunculus
    Hope
    Human Biodiversity
    Idealism
    Identity
    Immortality
    Incompatibilism
    Inspiration
    Jack Cheng
    Jack Gilbert
    John Loftus
    Junot Diaz
    Ken Jeong
    K-Pop
    Lee Strobel
    Leo Babauta
    Letting Go
    Levels
    Love
    Machine Intelligence
    Machine Learning
    Majid Jordan
    Make Good Art
    Malcolm X
    Man's Search For Meaning
    Many Worlds Hypothesis
    Mark Manson
    Memento Mori
    Michael Fassbender
    Michel Hollebecq
    Michel Houellebecq
    Microaggression
    Micro-aggression
    Mindfulness
    Minimalism
    Minimalist Tattoos
    MINO
    Mixed Race
    Miyamoto Musashi
    Moonlight
    Music
    Narrative Distance
    Neil Gaiman
    Night's King
    Nihilism
    Novel Writing
    Oculus Rift
    Operating System
    Oppression
    Philosophy
    Philosophy Of Evolution
    Philosophy Of Mind
    Principles
    Provocation Versus Art
    Pseudoscience
    Quantum Physics
    Race
    Racial Identity
    Racism
    Rational Actor Theory
    Rationality
    Ravi Zacharias
    Reductionism
    Regret
    Rob Montgomery
    Sam Harris
    Scientific Racism
    Serious Advice This Time
    Short Story
    Simulation Argument
    Singularity
    Skynet
    South Korea
    Steve McQueen
    Studio Ghibli
    Suicide
    Tattoos
    Tei Shi
    The Average American Male
    The Cult Of Goal Setting
    The Elementary Particles
    The Hard Problem Of Consciousness
    The Possibility Of An Island
    The Rational Male
    The Red Pill
    The Weeknd
    Tokyo Ghoul
    True/not True
    Utility
    V For Vendetta
    Victor Frankl
    Virtual Reality
    VR
    We're Fucked
    WFIO
    Who Taught You To Hate Yourself
    Writing
    Zen
    Zen Habits

    Archives

    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014


Powered by
  • Blog
  • Top Shit
  • About
✕