But there you are starting to slip out of the finite period of time. You imagination was imaginateing nanoseconds before the start of the dream.
I’m not really claiming there are any ucaused events in the universe as we know it. It’s just that if we ever look at any finite period there will be an uncaused event, and that in narrative its considered normal. If an uncaused even happens in the middle of a play- its bad writeing (like a dues ex machina.) However, at the beginning its perfectly acceptable.
So really there are two options,
something is uncaused
or
the chain of events in our universe is infinite
Most people don’t like 2 despite it being completely possible, so I focus on 1.
The thing with 1 is that people claim that this event must be special in some way. As if no ordinary event could pull it off, so you need to enlist the help of God. This I really question. If we can start any story with a few initial conditions and a starting event, then why can’t the universe start the same way. That is to say, to look for the cause of an event that is in the middle of a sequence is normal, to look for the cause of an event that is at the beggining is strange. Imagine if someone was at the movie theater going, “Hey how did all thouse building appear from blackness, and hey where did that man in the strange spider costume come from?”
From your conclusion, it doesn’t seem to be so questionable.{EDIT: I meant “clear” not questionable. Pardon, h3m.}
A couple of thoughts
De’trop, you seem to be a heideggerian. Of course, you’re going to problematize (to be polite) any use of the Will to Power.
By will to power I refer to that desire people have to narrate events in their own subjective way. This I mean in a literal and metaphorical sense.
When two people talk about a third person’s actions, time and time again I have seen how a person will take that third person and place an interpretation, a narrative, over that Third person’s actions (or events, however you want to call them). This interpretation serves to guide how the second person will react to the third person.
Metaphorically, you see this will to power, or rather this will to arrange things in a manner that suits a person or thing in the whole world, at least amongst living things. Examples -
in the Everglades, alligators dig mud holes for themselves to cool off in and swim in during the rainy season (May til October). During the dry season, the water levels throughout the whole area drop, leaving these small gator holes as the only Sources of water for miles. This concentrates hundreds of animals in one little spot for November to April. Then all the predators eat all the prey.
There is a theory, put forth by Paul Ewald, that most chronic disease like cancer or heart disease are in fact not “miasmatic” and indeterminate genetic or environmental diseases, but are caused by viral or bacterial infections. The bacteria are trying to make their environment more suitable for themselves.
The most interesting place where the Will to Power makes an appearance is on the ecological stage (or perhaps least surprising place, since the post-Platonic model of the world is an ecology). Heidegger and the Deep ecologists would have us stand back and let Nature come into the clearing. There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact I quite admire it, yet I do not think it is a possible model for action in the face our present environmental problems. The other model for action would be to design ourselves right into Nature’s great ecology, but bending the processes so that they benefit us. I base this theory on several works - Natural Capital by the Lovins and Hawkins, William Cronon’s Changes in the Land (about New England’s ecology as managed by the Indians - and manage it they did - and by the colonists), U of Chicago professor Anna Roosevelt’s work On the Marajo Island (at the mouth of the Amazon) Culture, being the most readily available.
Now a couple of interesting things I read in your essay
I think that this destruction is the Negative of the metaphorical sense of the Will to Power (being the negative doesn’t mean it doesn’t occur. Not by a Long Shot)
I had no idea that Marcel Mauss’s work on the Gift in primitive Societies made it into Sartre. I will definitely check that out and trace that lineage. Interesting. how much of Sartre is based off this idea of the gift as something one is honor bound to reciprocate? Once again anthropology proves itself to be the true root of twentieth century philosophy.
I have not read Nausea, but it seems to me a typical French reaction to think that They get American music, but to miss it by the broad side of a barn (the French kids I have spoken to think their hip-hop is the best, amongst other things). Jazz is not orderly, but rather the interplay between the pure chaos of improvisation and the pure order of composed and repeatable (but that’s rather redundant isn’t it - repetition is the very definition of order) written music.
Funny that he’s sitting beneath a Chestnut, the Most American of all the trees (Except for the Redwood - they’re tied for number one arboreal gringoness)
Completely off topic, but as one who has improvised I don’t think there is an ounce of chaos in it. It seems to be a direct extension of my state of being.
That just sounds to romantic for me, Hermes. I mean if you want to say that a system resists entropy, then that’s cool. But I don’t see how the process of equalibrium, for whatever duration it exists, would show an ontological ‘will’ at work. I think the concept of the ‘will’ is a glorified and ideological pathos that is applied to the force of evolution…the dynamic functioning behind it. It is a human psychological concept only, not a real occurance or possible being. All I think that is happening in this universe is, well, to put it romantically, an upset in a calm and motionless total being. A oneness that is completely meaningless. It simply is. There would be no ‘will,’ there would be no ‘not-will.’
Hell, that proposition itself wouldn’t even be possible.
I’ve just been reading the first post’s on this topic and i’ve got 2 tell u something. recent study shows that it would be impossible 4 cells 2 evolve into every single animal on the planet.
As 4 the beggining of God, i think that God was outside of time before the creation of the universe and therefore not ruled by the pricipals of time, look at a ring, where is its beggining? maybe that’s similer 2 the existence of God, Maybe he’s always been there.
“There’s not enough love in the world because people build walls instead of bridges”
I agree with you that it would be, “impossible 4 cells 2 evolve into every single animal on the planet.” And I think the reason for that is because with temperature and environment being the same for all species at a given point in time, the most we would see is four different kinds of species - inside the earth, on the surface of the earth, in the water and in the air. As far as variations in there are concerned, there would be minor mutations and that’s about it, but I feel DNA would remain the same. Whatever…
As for the ring, you’re only looking at the finished product. But before it formed it had a beginning like a mold and the first drop of gold or whatever. So it was never there always and so God must have been created too by that token, right? Now, every thing and life has a beginning and an end in the sense of deterioration and because we create things and we create life but since this universe seems to have no beginning or end, does that mean that this universe was not created but perhaps formed?
Now, either this universe is a thing or life, in which case it must be created. But if this universe is not created then it means that this universe is neither a thing nor some life, right? What is it then? An illusion? Nothing itself? Whatever, I don’t want to think anymore it’s useless!