Lately I’ve been thinking about determinism…  WTF you might think!  Perhaps one of the most enduring conundrums of philosophy is the ongoing debate, the wrangle over whether freedom is possible, whether the word refers to anything at all, — in a rigorous cause and effect universe.  Speculation about the topic can be traced as far back as the Stoics, to Chrysippus (279 – 206 BCE)  This is an old debate. 

How did I become trapped in this dark rumination, about whether freedom of any sort is possible?   What are we trying to say when we use the vocabulary of free will, of choice, decision, moral responsibility, accountability before the law, etc.  Are these words evidence of a massive mistake about how the universe works?  As you can see the topic reaches to the foundations of life as we know it, to the roots of the type of society by which live. 

Is there respite from cause and effect anywhere, in any sense of the word respite?  Why do I order the same item every morning as I hand my debit card to the Barista here at Starbucks?  Is the present time the contemporary end of a cause and effect chain that began when my grandmother offered me my first taste of warm coffee, poured from the stovetop, shiny aluminum coffeepot?  I was five or six years old.  Perhaps it’s a mistake to believe that the C&E chain began with my grandmother.  Certainly it was prior to my being born, without a beginning, unless the “big bang” is the beginning…

I suspect this consideration, reflection upon our role in the kind of universe which we inhabit continues, and likely will never reach an “answer” because the topic is vertiginous, dizzying.  Moreover we are loathe to give up the belief, the Faith that we are free to exercise choice.  If we do not bear responsibility for our actions how is morality, right and wrong action possible?  Do we not all believe “things are going to work out” somehow?

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Yesterday I offered a quotation from Donatella Di Cesare.  The lines from her book Immunodemocracy Capitalist Asphyxia, observed that the pandemic is the effect of human activity upon Nature.   Such effects, the result of the irreparable erosion of Nature will continue apace, unless we reassess, subject to critical review the capitalism by which we Americans have achieved a First World lifestyle.  We have evangelized and exported this ideology around the world, to every society that welcomes the activity of globalized corporations.

But this violent process would not have been possible
if it were not for the burning flame of capital.

We must reflect, must ask ourselves how many lifeforms are we willing to do without?  And what shall we think to ourselves, what shall we do — when our turn comes as the sea level rises, the weather patterns disrupt food production,  supply chains are severed by the trauma to society? 

What is life? How much life are we willing to do without?

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These words by T. S. Eliot, his poem The Dry Salvages haunt me…

The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.
Now, we come to discover that the moments of agony
(Whether, or not, due to misunderstanding,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple, and the bite in the apple.
And the ragged rock in the restless waters,
Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;
On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,
In navigable weather it is always a seamark
To lay a course by: but in the sombre season
Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

III

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.