I hate it when you write something and realise later that you've unwittingly made a Telegraphism - the practice of unnecessarily adding words to make your letter to the editor sound more convincing. "Decidedly," "so-called," and "ahem" are my favourite Telegraphisms. I made one the other week whilst blogging, starting off with "Just how much..." when I should have just said "How much..." Here is the entire blog the way it should have read:
how much truth is there in the refrain, taken from the 1995 smash hit "Greg! The Stop Sign!! "Hardwired into everyone's headIs the person they're gonna be -Growing up is not a matter of choice, It's a matter of wait and see. ?If personality is determined at birth, as the TISM song suggests, then why? And given that our brain gives rise to our mind and our personality, why can't we push the argument for predestination a little further and consider its application in other areas of genuine insight - physics, chemistry, geology, and scientology, for instance? If I have understood the implications of Newtonian mechanics correctly, the clockwork like movements of large bodies in the universe like planets, suns, and galaxies, were set in motion by the supreme watchmaker, God, at the moment of creation, and all matter within the universe follows a given path unless a force acts upon it. All atoms. Even the atoms within our heads, the ones that constitute our delicate little porridge-coloured brains. And by extension, the atoms within that give rise to our conscious experience - all of our love and our sorrow, happiness, fear and surprise, through to the concern and pity we feel when someone claims that they enjoy golf. All movements and events were set in motion and determined at year zero. The birth of Socratic philosophy - predetermined. Millions of men fighting and dying in WWI - predetermined. Me still giggling at the title for this post - predetermined. It was of course a matter for theologians throughout the centuries to determine just how much free will we have as bipedal, thinking, rational human beings. And their consensus, surprise surprise, seems to be that we have loads of free will because they think (my italics) that God wants to see us make the choice to live a life which would make Jesus proud. But we all work with a personality which binds us, which gives us certain strengths and weaknesses. I am not capable of many, many things, which, among many, many other things, proves that you just can't trust a theologian.I'm adhering to the TISM/Newtonian mechanics route: everything in my life was determined at conception, and I am one of many possible outcomes from a random expulsion of jism. Therefore, I renege all responsibility for everything in my life for the rest of my life, and until the aim of human evolution is attained, socialism, a system under which every man gets what he needs (Audrey Tautou materialising in this room and at this very moment) and contributes what he can (homebrew), I defend my right to swear, cheat, lie, drink, womanise, gamble, steal, dance the Macarena and force my neighbours to listen to U2 over and over and fucking over again.YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Thankyou for letting me air my thoughts a second time. If only Audrey would get the message...
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