Sunday, September 21, 2025
D+32-/216/-1219
46 BC Julius Caesar celebrated the first of four triumphal processions in Rome - over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus and Africa - with the leader of the Gauls Vercingetorix led in chains
1915 Cecil Chubb bought the prehistoric monument Stonehenge for £6,600
1922 US Warren G. Harding signed a joint resolution approving a Jewish homeland in Palestine
1949 Mao Zedong and Chinese Communist leaders proclaimed the People's Republic of China
2015 Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, pulled out of the Republican Presidential race
2022 Vladimir Putin announced the partial mobilization of Russian population, drafting between 300,000 and 1.2m men to fight in Russia's invasion of Ukraine
2022 New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his children, alleging widespread fraud through inflating his personal net worth by billions
In bed at 8, up at 6:50😳. 64°, high of 73°, cloudy, rainy later
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 9:30 a.m.
Calvinism, atheism, etc. On this date 2 years ago, I wrote a kinda long reflection on God, religion, theodicy, free will, and predestination, the kind of pre-dawn, second cup of coffee reflection I don't seem to be capable of anymore. I read it again this morning and nothing much has changed in terms of my beliefs, doubts, fears, puzzlements, or wonderments. I have gained no new wisdom during two more years of old age, no enlightenment, no epiphanies. In the last few days, I have encountered references to psychoanalyst Erik Erikson's theories of '8 stages of life,' especially the 8th stage, old age, which he describes in terms of "integrity vs. despair." "Integrity" is the condition in which, in reflecting on one's life, one has a sense of contentment, satisfaction, a life well-lived. "Despair" is the opposite, when, at the Wild Strawberries age, one feels regret, disappointment, missed opportunities, guilt, and/or shame. I of course fit squarely into the "despair" category. I suppose 'despair' is as good a description as any other to describe this condition. I think of Erikson this morning, however, because of the question of responsibility, free will, and predestination. Are my failures my own fault because of blame-worthy choices I made in my life, or are they attributable to God's will (Deus vult!), or can I, like Flip Wilson's Geraldine, blame the Evil One (the Devil made me do it!)? Stanford polymath Robert M. Sapolsky is perhaps today's leading proponent of the "free will is a myth" school.
“This book has a goal—to get people to think differently about moral responsibility, blame and praise, and the notion of our being free agents. And to feel differently about those issues as well. And most of all, to change fundamental aspects of how we behave.”
“it’s going to be plenty hard to convince people that a remorseless murderer doesn’t deserve blame. But that’s going to be dwarfed by the difficulty of convincing people that they themselves don’t deserve to be praised if they’ve helped that old woman cross the street.[*”
“Thus, essentially every aspect of your childhood—good, bad, or in between—factors over which you had no control, sculpted the adult brain you have.”
“Let me state this most broadly, probably at this point too broadly for most readers: we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
I think of course of that favorite Yeats' poem, Vacillation, and the lines
No longer in Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.
. . . .
IV
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
V
Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.
Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
Apparently Erikson theorizes that integrity and despair are not static, either-or states for any of us, but rather conditions we move between from time to time. Perhaps that accounts for my frequent feelings of deep appreciation and gratitude for all the good and beautiful in life, while at the same time, feeling penitent over my many failings. According to Sapolsky and Calvin, it was all preordained, to Calvin by God, to Sapolsky by genes and environments, but, even if I were to accept either theory intellectually, it doesn't relieve Yeats's appalling sense of personal responsibility. I guess that's what keeps some psychiatrists, psychologists, and clergymen busy with us elders.
 |
| Charley Kirk's Memorial Service scares the shit out of me. The mixture of right-wing politics and right-wing Christianity. Thousands of people listening to a troop of bagpipers in plaid kilts and knee socks playing Amazing Grace, then a guy named Chris Tomlin singing songs of Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts, etc., etc. Most of the members of the cabinet are present and will be eulogizing Kirk, their presence to be capped off by the eulogies of J. D. Vance and Donald J. Trump. All this in a context that is overwhelmingly CHRISTIAN and RELIGIOUS and GOD FEARING. with a MARTYR FIGURE in Charlie Kirk. One eulogizer says, "Charlie used to say, 'If only we could figure out a way to bring the Holy Spirit into a Trump rally." I have been wondering for weeks in this journal whether Trump is waiting for and trying to set up a 'Reichstag Fire' event that will trigger some kind of Enabling Act, like the one the gave Hitler the right to rule by decree, i.e., to be a dictator, the Ermächtigungsgesetz, officially titled Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich lit. 'Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich.' I fear Kirk's assassination and this gathering may be it. Fingers crossed. |
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