FREE WILL AGAIN PARDON MY MUSINGS

Why free will is an illusion. From the works of E.O.Wilson, but modified in such a way as to clarify Wilson's own inability to be rigorously objective.

"Our [brains] consist of storytelling. In each instant of present time, a flood of real-world information flows into [the body's] senses. Added to the severe limitation of the senses is the fact that the information [the senses] receive far exceeds what the brain can process. To augment this fraction, [the brain automatically triggers familiar] stories of past events for context and meaning. [It] compare[s] them with the unfolding past to apply the decisions that [it] made back in time, variously right or wrong. Then [the brain imagines] forward to create—not just to recall this time—multiple competing scenarios. [The brain emotionally evaluates them] against one another by the suppressing or intensifying effect imposed by aroused emotional centers. An [emotional trigger is automatically thrown] in the unconscious centers of the brain, it turns out from recent studies, several seconds before the [awareness of having made a] decision arrives in the conscious part."
                                     The Meaning of Human Existence, p167

But Wilson says, and I agree, we must believe we possess free will. 

"Confidence in free will is biologically adaptive.... Without it the conscious mind, at best a fragile dark window on the real world, would be cursed by fatalism. Like a prisoner confined for life to a solitary confinement, deprived of any freedom to explore and starving for surprise, it would deteriorate."
      The Meaning of Human Existence, p170

Boy does that remind me of my first shivering encounter with Camus' The Stranger and Meursault in his prison cell awaiting his execution and the moment that he contemplates his meaningless existence within the benign indifference of the universe. I felt my existentialism in spades.

THE SILENT BOOMER AND FRIENDS

I used to think that for one to write well he (or she) must know himself extremely well, but then along comes Hemingway and other writers like him who was so lost he offed himself.

Ernie Shades McKnight

Maybe those who are busy knowing themselves well are the most romantic and self-observing types. They write one sort of literature and those who pay close attention to others write another type of literature which, of course, would be more objective and realistic. 

Geraldine

As the seasons turn, one type of writing rises to the top and next season the other sort of writing becomes popular again. Roughly you can see a progression like that from the Enlightenment to the Romantic and Transcendental Movement, followed by the Victorian Period which was followed by Realism and Naturalism. They in turn were edged out by the Existential writers who were followed by the Beats who were, if you ask me, romantics in their own way. Supposedly, we are now in the Post-Modern Era (since 1965), a cooler and more cerebral literature. I'm beginning not to care so much anymore if I understand anything about GREAT literature. The distinctions slip away and all one seems to care about is selling something, to stop suffering romantically and make a few dollars. Never mind if one's creations are literature or not.

Meet a couple of my friends who I think I know almost as well as I know myself.