Amazon review of Jethro Tull Aqualung

I'm about to piss off a lot of Tull fans, which is ironic really seeing as I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Tuller and have been for twenty-nine years. Here's my opinion: I don't think Aqualung is anywhere near the best Tull album. In fact, Aqualung would rank pretty near the bottom if I were to make a list of Tull albums from favorite to least-favorite. The only ones to rank below it would be Too Old to Rock and Roll Too Young to Die, Under Wraps, Catfish Rising, and Dot com. Nor do I think Aqualung is representative of the band's music as a whole. In fact, I regard it as being somewhat atypical in regard to their total output. Furthermore - and this complaint has a lot to do with my previous statement - I think the sound quality, at least on the album's original release, was pretty lousy. As far as I'm concerned, the albums on both sides of Aqualung suffer from a similar problem: Benefit is only slightly better than Aqualung, although it's dismal on certain tracks (Play in Time, Teacher), and Thick as a Brick is only a marginal improvement on the previous disks. I don't know how or why it happened, but A Passion Play, though scarcely a year later than TAAB, marked a return to the excellent sound engineering found on Stand Up, which had practically gone missing for three years. Before I continue, I know these are unusual statements to make, but I've been saying them for a long time and I stand by them. Also, Ian Anderson himself has said that he was not happy with how Aqualung sounded, and he has also intimated (particularly on the interview contained on the CD reviewed here) that he doesn't regard Aqualung as his strongest work and often seems as mystified as I am over the fact that Aqualung became so much more famous than any other Tull album, at least in certain parts of the world.

I love Ian Anderson and his band as much as anyone. In fact, I can say without reservation that Tull is my favorite band. My admiration for Anderson is very profound. But that being said, there seems to be a struggle going on inside the man, a struggle between creative genius and genuine humility, between fierce individualism and a "collective soul", to steal a phrase. Despite the obvious talent and the will to succeed, there was a man who was slightly unsure of himself. This insecurity manifested itself quite frequently in Jethro Tull's music, and I think Aqualung might be a good example of it. In the late sixties and early seventies there was a harder edge coming to pop music, a more menacing and troubling approach: the infancy of heavy metal. I have little doubt that Anderson was aware that groups like Zeppelin and Sabbath were at the forefront of this metamorphosis from the placid naivete of flower-power to the industrial angst of metal, and I can't kick the feeling that Aqualung was Tull's first, and perhaps only, real foray into the darker side of rock music. If there was ever a riff that could be considered a classic template for heavy metal, it was the opening riff of Aqualung's title track. There was nothing remotely similar to it on Benefit from one year before, and the heavy tracks on Stand Up were indeed heavy but still firmly rooted in blues. There was nothing bluesy about the song Aqualung, nor in much of anything on the rest of the Aqualung LP; but there is plenty of music that is dark and heavy: Aqualung, My God, with its sinister riff, Cross-Eyed Mary, Hymn 43, Locomotive Breath, and the better part of Wind Up. Note that in these songs there is a lot of single-note riffing as opposed to chordal, which was something Zeppelin and Sabbath did a great deal (Dazed and Confused, Heartbreaker, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Black Sabbath [song], Wicked World, Behind the Wall of Sleep, Electric Funeral, Faeries Wear Boots). Needless to say I wasn't the least bit surprised to read an interview where, when asked what would have happened if Tony Iommi had stayed with Jethro Tull (the Sabbath guitarist had "joined" Tull very briefly, couldn't stand it, and quit), Ian answered: "Then every Tull album would have sounded like Aqualung." This statement is of particular interest since Iommi, of course, never played on Aqualung and had nothing whatsoever to do with that album, or any Tull album.

Ian was uncomfortable with the studio where Aqualung was recorded and in my opinion this is more than evident on the end result of those sessions. I find the sound on Aqualung to be quite shallow and thin, and maybe this was because of a lack of confidence in Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond's playing, who, according to Anderson, was a fledgling on the instrument? Also consider, this was Clive Bunker's last outing with Tull. According to what I've read, he was becoming uncertain about the musical direction in which the band was heading, and I feel that this uncertainty could have somehow been transfered into the recording process. Not that the drumming is mechanically sub-par, just that Bunker is far less present on Aqualung (and Benefit, now that I think about it) than he was on the first two Tull albums. Listen to Dharma for One, Cat's Squirrel, New Day Yesterday, and Nothing is Easy. Bunker is absolutely up front and bristling on those tracks. As an example of what I mean when I refer to the bleak sound quality from this particular period, compare the versions of Teacher offered on Benefit, where it originally appeared, and on Living in the Past, where it re-surfaced on that early compilation. The version that appears on the latter album was re-engineered and is far superior to the original version. You don't have to be an audiophile to hear the difference. In my opinion, it would have been nice if the same set of ears that produced that better version of Teacher (it might have been Ian, I don't know) could have worked the same magic over the Benefit, Aqualung, and Thick as a Brick albums in their entirety (not that TAAB is all that bad, but it wasn't as good as it could have been).

This re-casting of Aqualung is an improvement on the original, and I have to admit that I warmed to the songs a fair bit more than I usually do (of course that could have been the Rumplemintz), but it could be that there is too much deficiency in the original tapes to ensure a top-end sound no matter what magical wand is waved over them. The bass lacks punch and presence (Oh for Mr. Cornick a la New Day Yesterday!), the drums are not immediate or forceful, the voice lacks resonance and depth, I feel in large part to Ian's wanting to sound snide, sarcastic, and rebellious: it's higher-pitched and somewhat hollow. This snide, sneering tone is present on certain parts of TAAB, but is almost altogether gone on A Passion Play. I am referring to the aural, emotive quality of Ian's voice here, not lyrical content, though obviously the latter effects the former.


To hearken back to what I was saying about Ian Anderson's essential humility (in a healthy, not religious, self-loathing, sense) and what appears to me a small degree of uncertainty in regard to his muse: I think Aqualung was by and large an experiment in a musical genre from which Jethro Tull was subsequently to depart completely and in which I doubt they ever felt completely comfortable or honest. TAAB has none of Aqualung's metallic tone insofar as the music itself is concerned, and APP is miles away from it, so far in fact that it's not even hard rock let alone tentatively heavy metal; but while this is true there are quite a few times through the years when Ian seemed to be more persuaded by the fact that he was a pop icon, a position to which he might have felt duty-bound to stay at least ostensibly true, than by his own purely musical instincts. The Album "A" comes to mind, which seems like a response to the flimsy, keyboard-saturated music of New Wave; as does Under Wraps, which has our beloved Ian creating still more technologically-oriented soundscapes in order, it seems, to escape the Celtic, folksy, bucolic image Tull engendered automatically in people's minds; then there was Crest of a Knave, where almost anyone can detect the influence of Dire Straits. I put Aqualung in the category of Tull albums which, though very good and even excellent in many respects, were in some significant ways more the result of external influences and trends than of true artistic inspiration. Of course all of this is merely conjecture based on impressions I get from the music and from things Ian Anderson has said over the years, and I could be completely wrong about all of it; but If I could name one album which I *believe* to be one-hundred percent sterling Ian Anderson/Jethro Tull, it would be Songs from the Wood.


Even in old interviews when he was a young man I get the feeling that Ian was far too humble to do himself justice. At one point he says something to the effect, "Why should people pay more to see me than to get a hamburger? I know I wouldn't." When he introduces his songs in concert (see Youtube) he often seems apologetic and reluctant to play them, and acts surprised when the audience cheers like crazy as the number begins. I saw one video of a live version of Minstrel in the Gallery where Ian appears to be hesitant to even utter the title of the song, and looks around shifty-eyed once the words come haltingly forth as if waiting for audience approval, or for some heckler to raise a stink. An artist as original, intelligent, and talented as Ian Anderson shouldn't need a nod from anyone. All the critics and hecklers will recede into oblivion where they rightly belong. This doesn't include me, of course, since I never stepped out of oblivion in the first place.

Amazon review of Jethro Tull Crest of a Knave

The more Tull reviews I read the more I'm convinced of how futile the whole enterprise is. The one thing that is undoubtedly true is that music appreciation is a subjective matter and the stupidest thing to do is hold our fellow listeners in suspicion or contempt simply because certain sounds cause vastly different reactions in them than they do in us. In this spirit I approach Crest of a Knave, and in particular this re-mastered edition. To echo what someone else mentioned in reference to these Tull re-vampings, simply raising lows and highs doesn't make for a better sound. Through most of these tracks the kick drum is over-bearing and thumping, and the cymbals are hissy. It's been a long time since I heard my vinyl copy of this - which went missing several years ago - and I never owned it on CD, but I don't remember having such impressions before. Enough about that, on to the music.


I'm often surprised, even baffled, by the disparate opinions of my fellow Tull fans, but I have to remind myself that my opinions are probably stranger than most. For instance, while I like Budapest well enough, I don't think it stands head and shoulders above the average Tull song. I find it sparse and far too lengthy, and never mind who it sounds like. There are better songs on this album. One of the songs not included on the original LP, but which did appear on the CD version, which strikes me as something very fine is The Waking Edge. This is a country song. Not folk mind you, but country, as in American-style country and western. If you don't agree, go back and have another listen, particularly to the chorus. You'll have to skip the lengthy intro which runs to a minute and a half, and which, quite frankly, is an example of the kind of superfluous musical foreplay which makes a lot of progressive rock music intolerable to me. At 3:42 there's a beautiful solo, on bass guitar of all things. Not because it's a country song, and therefore highly unusual for Tull, but because it's a good song plain and simple, I think it's one of the highlights of the album.


Steel Monkey is a solid rock song, full of energy and muscular keyboards with Martin's false harmonics, reminiscent of ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, sprinkled all through-out. Jump Start and Farm on the Freeway are both strong tracks, particularly for the flute and guitar breaks which fill out both songs and in which Ian and Martin display the musical chemistry that makes them one of the most entertaining duos in rock music. Said She Was a Dancer is simlar to The Waking Edge in that it's country-fied, wistful, and laid-back. It includes some of Martin's best guitar work and shows that he is equally adept at both a heavy, distorted sound as well as one which is perfectly clean.


One of the regretable things about CDs is that you have to judge the whole album as a single unit from beginning to end. With records you had the album split into two sides and the artist was compelled by necessity to make each side function as a thing-unto-itself, and subsequently you had some sort of symmetry, or asymmetry, between the two, some sort of co-dependence or relation. The first side of Crest, on vinyl, ending with Said She Was a Dancer, constitutes a very solid Tull side. On the other hand, side two was not nearly as satisfying or coherent. You had the soft and sprawling Budapest followed by the decent but not terribly strong Mountain Men, and concluding with Raising Steam, perhaps the weakest track of the bunch. Not much of a consummation or climax, artistically speaking. The earlier CD version offered two more songs than the LP - Dogs in the Midwinter, The Waking Edge - and these tracks, although the former is not bad and the latter is excellent, even if they had been part of the LP's second side wouldn't have made side two as strong as side one. This was the last Tull album I ever owned on vinyl and maybe that's why I'm ruminating on this two-side issue.


At any rate there has always been something off kilter with Crest for me, and because of this I don't think it's absolutely top-shelf Tull, nor do I think it could have been. It's a new Ian Anderson vocal style for one thing. He doesn't sing on Crest as much as he speaks in tune, and he sounds like somebody else so often that it's actually a bit embarassing. One has to realize that he was about forty when Crest was recorded and one must face the fact that aging takes its toll on a person's voice, and particularly on a person who sings professionally. Getting down on a forty year-old man for not being able to belt it out like he did when he was twenty is like getting down on him for having a few gray hairs. For this reason I don't blame Ian for his more subdued style: I'm simply being honest when I say that it makes for a product which will inevitably be less magnificent than vintage Tull.


I also have to say that I like Part of the Machine more than any of the songs on Crest. The guitar and flute breaks are nothing short of brilliant. It's quintessential Tull, but unfortunately it can't be judged as an integral part of Crest of a Knave since it was never included on it. Had it been, it would have made Crest a better album.

Amazon review of Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick

Critics, amateur and professional alike, have made such frequent use of certain terms that they've lost all of their potency and are little more than cliches. The terms I'm referring to have been used in reference to Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick probably more often than any other pop-rock record, with the possible exception of one: A Passion Play, also by Jethro Tull, which directly followed TAAB. It isn't that the terms pompous, pretentious, or self-indulgent, are without meaning, or that they are totally inapplicable to the aforementioned works, it's simply that those three terms, to name a few, are so hackneyed that it surprises me when someone who seems intelligent and informed uses them nowadays in a review, in the very same way it would surprise me to see a fine poet use the simile "red as a rose", or "soft as silk" in a new poem. As any reader of poetry knows, those two cliches are completely impotent to a modern ear, they convey nothing, they do no work, for the simple reason that they are worn out with use and are so familiar that as soon as the eye and ear register them they are passed over and given no attention at all.


Jethro Tull's 1972 follow-up to the tremendously successful Aqualung album, Thick as a Brick, is one of the great grand-daddies of early prog and is to many minds perfectly representative of the so-called excess and self-indulgence of seventies art-rock, or whatever you wish to call it. In my opinion progressive rock was, unlike today, literally progressive at that time. The bands that flourished in the seventies were moving things forward at a truly amazing pace, and in that decade the biggest acts in rock were all unique, in that there was something about them, musically speaking as well as theatrically, which set them apart from everyone else and which was in its most genuine sense inimitable: Tull, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Queen, Yes, Floyd, to name a few. When Punk came along you had bands that were basically conservative to the core, bands that insisted on bringing rock and roll back to its roots. Those young tories had had quite enough of rock and roll as art, they were tired of poetic, narrative song lyrics, musical experimentation, innovation; they wanted the old anger, the bad reputations, the snotty, leather-jacketed, three-chorded rebellious conformity. There were some great punk bands, like the Clash for example, but overall punk seemed much more like a social movement than anything else and music was a tool, an expedient means of making a stink, whereas with prog and other types of forward-moving rock music of that era, music was an end in itself.


As for self-indulgence: it's precisely because of this trait that we have some truly outstanding art to consume and enjoy, and it's the opposite of it which results in so much flimsy and ephemeral aural debris coming over the airwaves. I'm not just referring to bland top-forty crapola, but to many a recording artist across the popular-music spectrum, from rap and hip-hop to so-called alternative rock, industrial, and metal. Unlike the premier artists of the seventies, you could play mix-and-match with personnel from many of these bands and you'd hardly know the difference. Everyone wants to look the same, sound the same, create the same effect, convey the same emotion. I can't flip through a music-mag anymore without seeing the same angry eye staring out from under the same barbed eyebrow, the same f-you finger sticking up from the same tattooed forearm. Who is impressed by these flagrant concessions to conformity anymore? These people are not self-indulgent, they are selfless, in the worst possible sense, and selflessness doesn't enhance creativity, it puts a stop to it. That isn't to say there isn't some great music being made. There is; but many of the prevalent musical genres, rap, hip-hop, and all the various sub-genres of metal in particular, are so deeply infused with the punk esthetic of angry, mean-spirited uniformity that one has to wonder if there is any real concern among them about taking music into the unknown.


When Thick as a Brick was issued it was virtually unheard of in the pop music industry. It's easy to use twenty-twenty hindsight and see that songs of epic proportions would become the norm for prog-rock acts throughout the decades to come, but you have to put yourself in 1972, when this sort of thing was only just getting underway. Not only was TAAB in most respects a novel and momentous release, it was also a great risk. Aqualung was tremendously successful, and Thick as a Brick sounded nothing like it. Aqualung was fraught with heavy, memorable riffs. Thick as a Brick was a spacious and evocative piece of music, a single song that gathered momentum as it went, and there was almost no heavy guitar at all, let alone any of those catchy riffs. Naturally such a piece of work makes certain demands of its listeners, and because of those demands many people have decided that TAAB is a pretentious and pompous record. How dare Ian Anderson think we should spend forty-five minutes of our time listening to something he dreamt up in his moments of self-delusion? Not that I think TAAB should be everyone's cup of tea. If you don't like it you are entitled to your opinion, and your opinion is probably as good as anyone else's. As I said in another review, it's senseless to render judgments about one another's tastes in music (and here I mean music strictly as music, not as socio-political posturing or fashion statement), since music appreciation is firmly in the realm of the subjective; but what bothers me is labeling a record as pretentious and pompous simply because it doesn't cater to your particular tastes, or because you haven't got the time to give it a fair listen, or, worst of all, because those terms are so common and easy to use.


To be fair about it, there are some things about TAAB which I don't like. For one, it seems too fast-paced, which might sound ironic considering the song's length, nor do I think the production was top-notch. Also Ian Anderson had not yet gotten total control of his voice and his singing is full of youthful bravado and that pinched, sarcastic tone that we hear all over Aqualung. Contrarily, there are some more subdued, delicate passages throughout the piece, a particularly notable one being the "Do you believe in the day" section on side two. TAAB is the first outing for what was arguably Tull's best line-up, but in my opinion the truly great period for the band was to commence the following year, in 1973.

Amazon review of Shyamalan's film Unbreakable

I was initially disappointed with the climax of this film. My heart sank, not so much because of what had occurred in the movie but because I felt that my growing admiration for M. Night Shyamalan had been seriously damaged. The climax felt trite, contrived, and thoroughly unrewarding. I felt for a moment that the things Night's detractors had said about him were true. That is, until I took the DVD out and decided to give what I had just seen some serious thought. After a few minutes the realization sank in: the climax to Unbreakable is the only conclusion it could logically have come to, given everything that precedes it and given the themes it develops. In this way it is nearly on par with The Sixth Sense.

Ostensibly, this is a film concerning the relationship between David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the lone survivor of a train derailment, and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a collector and afficianado of comic books. Elijah believes Dunn to be the superhero he has been looking for all his life, the exact opposite of himself, as Elijah has been afflicted since birth with a medical condition which causes his bones to break very easily. The story follows Elijah's efforts to convince Dunn that he is truly a superhero. But in Unbreakable, as with most of Night's films, there are many different stories and themes inter-acting with one another. On the simplest level, it's a story about a superhero, his classic reluctance to attain to his role due to a quiet humility and a lack of selfish ambition. It's also a love story, and, as is typical with Night's masterful storytelling, there are several love relationships being examined: father and son (Dunn and Joseph), mother and son (Elijah and his mother), and husband and wife. Intertwined with that there is a story of frustration, anger, resentment, and evil. Since this is a film about opposites, there are equal glimpses into the workings of good and evil, and the various types and magnitudes of both. On the side of the good we see the common love of parents for their children, the sacrifice of a promising career and great success for the sake of romantic love, and the selfless intervention at the scene of a horrendous crime to save the innocent. On the side of evil we see petty theft, barbarous torture and murder, and calculated, catastrophic massacre.

I could go on and on about the possible themes treated in this amazing film. The one that really jumped out at me is the old argument between Freewill and Determinism. How Elijah Price comes to be the person he is is brilliantly executed, especially in a flashback scene where his mother entices her son to go outside and get a gift she has left for him on a park bench. The gift turns out to be a comic book, and Elijah's mother tells him that she has bought many of them. So Elijah is rewarded for his virtuous effort of going out into a dangerous world by acquiring access to a fantasy world where heroism and virtue are delineated with vivid clarity. But being the intelligent child that he is, Elijah also sees that for every hero there is a villain, for every act of good, a contrary act of evil; for every good thing, a bad thing: a balance. It is not for nothing that when Elijah opens the gift the comic book is upside down. He will see things upside down at another point in the film, and there is a strong thematic purpose behind it, as there is a strong thematic purpose in his interest, even obsession, with comics. 

What has this to do with freewill versus determinism? A lot. Was Elijah's personality mapped out for him by his initial circumstances? Certainly his medical disability is not his choice, but to what extent does the vulnerability and weakness caused by that disorder effect his character, his life choices, his destiny? Some would say a great deal, others would say his choices were entirely his own despite the disadvantages he was beset with. It's a huge ethical issue which goes far beyond the parameters of a simple superhero flick. And it's an issue which in bygone days I thought I was decided on, but which now leaves me entangled in doubt and wonder.

Unbreakable is also a study in the struggle for identity and sense of purpose, and in this respect it has something in common with the later film, Lady in the Water. Unbreakable is a darker film, but ultimately, no less hopeful.

Amazon review of Shyamalan's The Village

M. Night Shyamalan (hereafter referred to as Night) has got himself into pickle, and I suppose maybe it's his own fault. Many people are going into his movies with the single-minded purpose of figuring out the "twist", and in the process are not paying enough attention to grasp the more important things. In a sense Night reminds me of the guitarist Buckethead, whose genius shines through the presence of a KFC bucket turned upside-down and an expressionless white mask, at least for those who can look past the bucket and realize that it's irrelevant and only a problem for those who insist on seeing the gimmick instead of listening to the music. Night is known for this gimmick of the surprise ending, and people are ignoring the virtues of his films because they are too focused on the gimmick.

**This review will contain spoilers so please read no further if that is an issue for you.**

Okay. There are two major revelations in this film, one of which occurs late in the film and the other which occurs at the end. The first revelation, that the creatures - "those we do not speak of" - are not real, is something which I more or less assumed early on. I immediately made a connection with these creatures and the myths of religion. I admit that I didn't know that this myth of the creatures was fabricated by the village elders. Many people consider this a silly premise, even a preposterous one, but given that we live in a world where our ancestors (our elders, if you will) actually have fabricated a massive lie about a mysterious realm populated with demons and a real-live Satan to boot, I find it completely plausible. Not only plausible, but entirely realistic. History is full of efforts by well-intended groups of people to isolate themselves and their loved-ones from the outside world by creating micro-utopias and religious and/or ideological communes of one sort or another. Why people have difficulty accepting this premise is completely beyond me, especially since the film goes to great lengths in exposing the inherent flaws in similar premises and why they almost always fail.

The second revelation (or "twist", if you must), which is that the film takes place in modern times, is almost entirely irrelevant and adds nothing of great importance. It changes nothing. We already know everything we need to know by the time this revelation occurs, and the story is all but finished. We already know that this community has isolated itself from the outside world because of the disillusionment and fears of those who created it, because of the wild hope that their new world will be purer, better, and safer. When I saw the modern vehicle pulling up to Ivy, the blind girl who is the hero and central character of the film, I wasn't racked with any great surprise. It was a "meh" moment. I didn't care much, to tell you the truth. All I cared about was if the driver of the vehicle could help Ivy complete her mission. That's it.

And why is that? Well, because one of the things this film is is a love story, and a triumphant one at that. Ivy is in love with Lucius Hunt, and he is in love with her, and he needs medicine to survive two stab wounds given to him by another person who also loves Ivy, but with a different kind of love, as Lucius is about to explain before being stabbed. As anyone who has seen enough of Night's films knows, or should know, Love, with a capital "L", runs like a bright thread through all of them (at least the ones I've seen). Romantic love, familial love (the deceased mother and living daughter in Sixth Sense: two words to remind you of one of the most moving scenes in movie history: "Every day"), and deep, spiritual love (with and without the religious connotations). It bugs me to no end that in all the criticism I've read about Night's movies, so much is written about the damn "twist" and so little about the power of Love. What's especially touching about Ivy's love for Lucius is the way she has to draw him out, to make him speak his feelings. She is the great strength in the community, despite being blind, and the scene on the porch where she gets Lucius to confess his love for her is one of the most satisfying scenes I've ever watched in any film. Adding to the poignancy of this unspoken love is what is going on between Alice Hunt and Edward Walker (Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt). Lucius is speaking at one point to his mother, Alice Hunt, and mentions that Edward Walker is in love with her. She asks her son how he knows this, and he replies, "Because he never touches you." Again, a hair-raising line and a magnificent reflection on what it's like to harbor feelings of love for someone and not be able to tell them, a feeling with which I am painfully familiar.

Early on there is a scene which stands in stark contrast to all of this: a scene where Ivy's sister confesses her love for Lucius Hunt boldly and without restraint. It's an early reminder that no matter how we try to insulate the people we love from being hurt, our efforts will very often - if not indeed always - go for nothing. The scene serves to remind people that the dangers of the world do not merely consist of evil people or evil creatures with dark intentions. Even Love can be dangerous, and in fact often is. Not only dangerous, but fatal. Enter one of the other pivotal characters, Noah Percy. Noah has some sort of mental deficiency and his behavior is often reckless and erratic. Ivy Walker is about the only one who seems to have a calming effect on Noah. She has power over him, and only later on do we realize that Noah has his own deep feelings of love for Ivy, feelings which become a dark and dangerous force equal to that of any evil mythical creature. Noah is the person who stabs Lucius, because Lucius threatens Noah's relationship with Ivy. It's not for nothing that Night has Noah dress up as one of the Covington Woods creatures in order to terrorize Ivy on her painstaking trek through the woods to the "towns" and frustrate her efforts to bring back medicine to save Lucius. He is showing how even innocence and love can be corrupted into something deadly and evil, and why we don't need to invent supernatural agents of terror, nor even supernatural agents of Love, for that matter, since the very real and natural Love that we are capable of as mere humans is sufficient to make us do virtuous and heroic things (as well as terrible things). This reminds me of a wonderful few lines spoken late in the film by Edward Walker, when he and the elders are beginning to realize that their utopian dreams may have been somewhat misgiven (I am paraphrasing, and may not have it exactly right): "Love moves the world. The world bows before love, in awe."

To sum up, the Village is a film which offers many things to think about: is religion a good thing after all, can any utopian system actually work, is it a good idea to smother our loved ones in good intentions and keep them from living full, normal lives, and can love really save the day, when all is said and done? I believe it can. Thanks, Night, for this great and thought-provoking piece of work.

Most perfect poem? Here's my nominee

The Beautiful Changes, by Richard Wilbur.

State's rights

I have said a few times that rights apply to persons, not groups, but given the existence of things like state's rights, I most likely spoke in error, although there is plenty of dispute about just what state's rights are and how they could or should be exercised.

Also, in case someone cares to remind me that a right doesn't actually exist anyway and that the concept of a right is a human invention (like the late George Carlin in one of his routines where it seemed he thought he'd discovered something):

No shit?  

Self-esteem and the Self

I don't know what came first, this theme in philosophy that there is no self, or the equally popular contempt for ego and/or self-esteem in general among certain intellectual types not strictly associated with philosophy. What I do know is that they are related and that both are dangerous. In case there is any doubt about this all one has to do is take a look at history, or even just recent history. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and the ultra-militaristic Japan of World War II, are examples of collectivism taken to its logical conclusion. When the reality and sovereignty of an individual consciousness is trivialized, or not recognized at all, any sort of atrocity can be expected. It's much easier to shoot someone in the back of the head if you're convinced that his existence as a person is meaningless. By the same token, it's much easier to turn someone into a butcher if you convince him that he is merely a functioning cog in a machine over which he has no control, and that the good of the machine is more important, more sacred, than any personal feelings or qualms of conscience. If this were not true, than one is obliged to think that the Japanese forces that rolled into Nanking in 1937 consisted of a majority of barbarians and psychopaths. One is forced to conclude the same about officers and soldiers in the German army who set about eradicating the Jewish population in Europe a few years later. This might sound bizarre, but I don't believe that the majority of individuals involved in either situation committed those atrocities because they were evil people by nature; what I believe is that they were brainwashed and desensitized by an ugly and powerful mechanism of extremely bad ideas.

Before I go any further I want to state emphatically that the United States is in no way whatsoever immune to this mechanism of bad ideas, though at its outset it probably stood a better chance of being so than any other nation in recent times; in fact, the U.S. is now on the verge of becoming one of the most dangerous forces in the world. Jefferson's Wall of Separation is being unbuilt at a rapid clip, thanks to the ignorance of most Americans and the tireless work of Christian historical revisionists. We have a population which seems to truly believe that the American system of government was founded on a Judeo-Christian tradition and worldview, when in fact that exact opposite is true. We have a nation full of Christians who will foam at the mouth while defending their bibles and their ten commandments, who have never actually read the bible and couldn't tell you what the ten commandments are. These are people who were brought up in church-going households who believe that attending church is, in and of itself, a moral act worthy of respect and reward. The existence of God isn't a philosophical question for such people, it is metaphysically given: there is a God, the same as there are seven continents and nine planets. What's worse, this God is inextricably tied in with everything that is good in the world. A denial of God is exactly the same as a denial of everything good, and an atheist is not so much someone who lacks a belief in God as someone who lacks belief in goodness. One of the most dangerous aspects of America at this time is the ignorance of what atheism actually means and is.

Unfortunately, organized religion depends first and foremost on trivializing the concept of self, and, more importantly, self-esteem, despite what constant reminders that Jesus Loves You would seem to indicate. That the United States was founded on principles that do not recognize the value of the individual and in fact seek to eradicate the concept of self, that associate the ego with all that is evil, is a lie too monstrous to imagine, and yet the perpetuation of this lie is literally on the to-do list of a frighteningly large portion of the American population. The problem stems from laziness on the part of people who like their religion in easily digestible bits and pieces. These are people who have paintings in their homes of Jesus sitting on a bench surrounded by children, his loving arms outspread, the great protector of all that is good and pure and innocent. What they don't know or simply refuse to acknowledge is that Jesus taught that there is no such thing as innocence, at least where human beings are concerned. There is nothing good or pure in us. In fact, we are all born corrupted, filled to the brim with Original Sin. People focus on Christ's love for them, on his death on the cross, without examining what the whole story really means. Christians are obsessed with the idea of forgiveness. One of my favorite poets, William Blake, was himself obsessed with the notion of Christian forgiveness. The irony here is that the atonement is not about forgiveness. If God simply forgave people for their sins there would be no need for Christ's atonement on the cross. The truth is simple, and clearly elucidated in the bible: God does not forgive you for your sins. All sins must be paid for. Christ's job was to make this payment in full, by being tortured and executed. Christ pays for your sins, and thereby satisfies God's sense of justice. Your job is to believe the story, confess Christ as your Savior, that Christ was nailed to a crucifix because of the sins that you have committed or that fester in your heart, and even more essentially the Sin that is an inherent part of your nature, that he has taken the punishment for you, that he has paid the price in your stead, to allow you to come clean (read: punished by proxy) into the kingdom of heaven. At no point is there any forgiveness.

If a friend of mine hurts me in some fashion, I can either forgive him or not. If I forgive, I do not require that he be punished in some way in order that my forgiveness be actualized or justified. I simply forget the hurtful act and hold him unaccountable for it. God does not do this. If he did, there would be no need for Christ's sacrifice. The notion of God forgiving us our sins is predicated on a gross misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine. The one good thing I can say about Calvinists is that they understand the Christian doctrine and preach it in full, without any of the warm fuzzy stuff that waters down (and renders nonsensical) the teachings of other denominations. They offer up a fire and brimstone Jehovah in all of his Old Testament anger and power, and as far as people are concerned: they are sin-infested vermin who deserve nothing but to suffer in everlasting fire. We are less than shit under God's heel, to paraphrase one Calvinist I encountered on the net. It isn't that what the Calvinists believe is not nonsense, only that it's consistent nonsense.


However, and even more unfortunately, the most vocal opposition to religious revisionism comes from the somewhat radical Left who are to a very discomforting degree attached to the very same mechanism of bad ideas as their theistic counterparts, the same mechanism that fueled the rise of communism and fascism, and to some extent, the kind of ultra-loony militarism of which WWII era Japan was an example. At the very heart of this mechanism, and without which it wouldn't function, is the notion that the self is either non-existent or that it is decidedly subordinate to the collective. Tyranny is not possible unless that first step be taken: the systematic erosion of the concept of the individual and, along with that, the concept of rights. If there are no individuals, there is no need for rights, indeed there is nothing to which a right can be accorded. Rights apply to individuals, not groups. If it seems far-fetched that people would actually believe that there is no self (which would mean that a feeling of self-esteem would have to be symptomatic of some kind of mental disorder, or delusions of grandeur), here's just one thread in a highly-trafficked secular board where I post occasionally (there are many more with similar ideas expressed):

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=264373



As you can see, it isn't stretching the truth at all to say that many people believe that the self is an illusion, or at least a highly debatable concept. At the heart of this belief, however, is an infatuation with materialism and a basic misunderstanding of what most people mean when they refer to a self. On one hand the self is in fact something concrete, in that it refers to the totality of a person as a physical entity, an object; but on the other hand it refers to subjective experience, to consciousness, to abstractions. I don't want to go into the discussion of whether or not the self exists. I take is as manifestly obvious that self-recognition, a sense of identity which is distinct from though not wholly different from others, exists. In fact I would think it pointless to argue otherwise. I'm also inclined to believe that they who do are attempting to justify certain political feelings which are probably not in everyone's best interests.

Ayn Rand, that much-maligned author and philosopher who gained great fame and infamy in the last century, spoke of the Mystics of Spirit and the Mystics of Muscle. She argued that such people essentially occupy opposite sides of the same evil coin. She did an exhaustive job of explaining her views and I agree with them, at least in regard to the subject at hand. She was one of the greatest champions of the concept of the individual and of the concept which exists to defend and maintain it, the concept of rights. I have many disagreements with Ms. Rand on a variety of other topics, and I am not an Objectivist; but I do think that her writings on the dangers of collectivism and the value and sovereignty of the individual are second to none in recent times.

Before I lose track of my initial reasons for writing this, let's go back to the topic of self-esteem. Self-esteem and Self are related of course but are not the same thing. One can not possibly have self-esteem without a sense of self, but one could certainly have a sense of self while possessing virtually no self-esteem. This is a crucial distinction. A sense of self is prior, and self-esteem is contingent upon that. Now, it bugs me to no end that the people who run an online writer's workshop I was once involved in, called The Poetry free-for-all, seem to be waging an all-out war against self-esteem. The problem is, what they frequently call self-esteem isn't really self-esteem, but something else. These folks aren't bad people at all and in the main they have good intentions (or at least so I hope). A writer's workshop, and particularly one that takes place on the Internet, where anonymity gives all sorts of people the courage they wouldn't have in the real world, cannot function unless its participants are willing to accept criticism gracefully. The ability to thank someone for telling you that your poem is a pice of shit is a cardinal virtue in such places, and with this fact I have no problem at all, though it may seem so. Because of the traffic this site gets, it is heavily moderated, and anyone who has had experience with un-moderated bulletin boards or newsgroups knows the value of moderation. Along with this the board is set up with graded forums where people are encouraged to post according to their level of skill. Moderators will move pieces from higher fora to lower as they deem fit. As you can imagine, this results in all sorts of hurt feelings, tirades, and outright defiance. To handle such nastiness there is a place called Outside, where such altercations are dealt with. So far so good.

The problem is, PFFA has managed, over the years, to attribute virtually all bad behavior on its premises to laziness, ignorance, or an over-abundance of self-esteem (nurtured in the classroom where children are rewarded and praised for mediocrity). If someone posts a poem in a forum which is above their level of competence they are frequently accused of being either lazy, ignorant, or bloated with undeserved self-esteem: lazy for not reading the guidelines, ignorant for not knowing what constitutes good poetry, and full of self-esteem for thinking the drivel they typed even constitutes poetry at all. A few moderators are rational and even kind in their demotions, but these acts of rationality have been dwarfed to near non-existence due to one moderator, Howard Miller, who out-moderates the other moderators in truly stellar fashion.

What bothers me about all this is that self-esteem, which is an important and vital part of being a healthy person, is lumped in with all of the other, genuinely unproductive, character traits such as laziness, ignorance, insolence, arrogance, and self-centeredness (yes, one can have self-esteem without being self-centered). The ego, which is nothing but a person's recognition of himself as an individual entity, distinct from but not different in kind than others, is not only equated with all those other nasty traits, it's thought of as their source. I can guarantee that this is not a mistake which any intelligent person ought to intentionally encourage other people to make, and yet that is exactly what the people at PFFA are doing. They have proved this beyond a shadow of doubt with their new announcement, printed in red, at the very top of their home page. Naturally the whole thing is mostly tongue-in-cheek, an exaggerated reaction to the criticism they receive, or at least one would hope; but underlying that pie-in-yer-face, up-yours spirit, which is basically healthy, is the reality of what actually goes on at PFFA. All I have against it is how it serves to equate self-esteem with the antics of every moron who opens his silly trap in those forums. It is a terrifically bad idea.

If anyone thinks my problem with PFFA has anything to do with me thinking that molly-coddling children in school is a good thing, then they haven't understood a word I've said. Egalitarianism in the classroom can not possibly foster self-esteem. The only thing it can do is destroy it in those who deserve it, and create a false and undeserved sense of pride and self-aggrandizement in the rest. Moreover, I don't give a rat's ass about some Eminem-addled teenager having his or her feelings hurt on the Internet. Some feelings deserve to be hurt. Some people truly deserve a good, virtual kick in the ass. Just stop implying, however indirectly, that all workshop stupidity has its source in self-esteem. This is obviously not the case, and the failure to distinguish between rational and irrational behavior, between actual self-esteem and the petulant mimicry of it, can have nothing but negative effects in the long run.

angryfloof removal stage 1

all gone.

Fireflies of the Dusk

The stories I posted at my wordpress site for short fiction [site defunct - 3.12.17] so far will eventually - hopefully - be part of a collection which when complete will be called "Fireflies of the Dusk". I intend for the stories to all hang together in some fashion - some more closely than others, as in the ones about or referring to Noah Crowley, the central character - and for each story to be able to function independently of the others. The last one posted, entitled "The Prisoner", should be thought of as a work in progress. I thought I had it finished, but as it happens it doesn't sit well with me, for a number of reasons. Instead of deleting the story as it is and re-posting it when I have something different, I'm going to leave it up. For one thing, it could very well be that I won't be able to get the story into better shape; secondly, if the work becomes much longer, which I think might happen, it will be easier to add to the post as it is at present than post another much larger, or somewhat larger, file at some future date. Posting big files is a tedious affair, and the bigger they are the more difficult it is to go through and edit them. No work is ever really finished as long as their author is still living, and there are no existing prose texts anywhere that cannot be at least in some measure improved, I don't care where you look.

I chose the over-all title for the work from a poem by Charles Reznikoff, an untitled piece, as most of that poet's works are, which, in its entirety, goes thus:

I will write songs against you,
enemies of my people; I will pelt you
with the winged seeds of the dandelion;
I will marshal against you
the fireflies of the dusk.

To me, this is one of the finest poems ever written. As a contrast to what I just said, this poem is perfect as is and I doubt that it could be made any better. It's good in so many ways and says so much I can't possibly do justice to it here. In those five lines weakness and strength, impotence and true power, go hand in hand. It's important to note that Reznikoff was Jewish. Noah Crowley, my anti-hero, is half-Jewish, not because of this poem, but because the historical Jewish struggle against every sort of persecution and prejudice affords a symbolic background for Noah's struggle for a sense of purpose and happiness in the world, which, unfortunately, he doesn't find. I thought of the title for my collection of stories, from the final line of this poem, well after the Noah character was well established in my mind and in the writing of his story. So, the title was sort of an afterthought, or a mid-thought, and it fit nicely, at least so I think. The main thing now is to make my stories live up to the title I've given them, which is a daunting task which I may be unable to do.

I could go on for a good long time considering how and why Reznikoff's poem provides such a good touchstone and reference point for my stories. First, the poem is a sublimely passive response to the aggression it speaks of. The characters in my stories are passive to a fault, they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as a matter of course, and do nothing to fight back, or fight impotently. So far I have only one character, Ed from "The Grange" - more or less my version of Iago from Othello - who doesn't fight impotently but in a cowardly and underhanded fashion. He is the oddball thus far, but his main purpose is to tell us a little about Noah in his final year of high school. In that story Noah is a minor character and is hardly involved at all. A long time ago I saw a great film, adapted from a play by Tom Stoppard, called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which takes two minor characters from Hamlet and makes them central, and in which Hamlet is reduced to a minor role. I had that in mind when I wrote "The Grange". I also had in mind certain poems, by Auden and Williams mainly, written about a Breughel painting depicting the fall of Icarus as a trivial incident in the background which goes all but unseen by the main figures in the painting. Here is a way to make art even more multi-dimensional, so to speak, to present major literary characters or incidents from a completely different point of view, to set them in the background or off in the distance. What I envision with my stories is along these lines: to make who ought to have been minor characters into main characters. But it could be that Noah, in a certain sense, turns himself from minor to major, which is to say tragic, by taking - or suffering - the final action of his life. Suicide is often a cry for attention, a last ditch effort to lift one's self out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary. It's pathetic but true, at least in some cases. But just as a suicide doesn't justify or romanticize a life half-lived, or lived badly, neither does suicide turn an uninteresting character into an interesting one, at least not by virtue of that act alone. I had no intention of killing Noah while I was writing "The Viaduct". I don't necessarily believe that Noah intended to do it. He was in great despair, and he was very drunk. When he went over I was somewhat surprised. As silly and grandiose as it may sound for me to say it, it's pretty much true. In a very real sense I still think it might have been an accident. He was drunk and ruminating and clinging to the side of the trestle. He even considers how bizarre it would be if he fell accidentally, because everyone would conclude that he had killed himself. He thinks those very thoughts while he looks for the creek which he thinks has to be down there. [edited out something 3.12.17] Is the author of the work an omniscient party in regard to the actions of his characters? Common sense says yes, of course; but I have to say it's not absolutely so in Noah's case. The silly little bastard might have been thinking about jumping but not really intending to do it. He could have simply had an accident. It's up in the air, if you'll excuse the pun, whether I like it or not.

After Noah died I thought it best to give him a life. "The Viaduct" was written first, and in a blog, which is why each section is one large paragraph dealing with a single idea, theme, or incident. Each section was initially composed at one sitting. It was a lark. I was heavily influenced by Henry Miller, and I was drinking Wild Turkey while I wrote most of it. Despite its tangents and superfluous material, it was heavily edited. Many sections which were originally there were dropped. Several sections currently included should probably be dropped, but I have yet to do it. Maybe the whole damn thing should be dropped. I've written some poems that people thought were successful, and I've published a handful, but I'm a greenhorn when it comes to prose. My work, though it makes me happy in a lot of ways, is no doubt riddled with incompetence and on the whole just very bad writing. At this point I can accept that easily. It doesn't matter anyway.

More to come on this, I think. Maybe not.

Definitions of God IIDB post

It isn't the atheist's job to define God. All we do is examine the multitude of definitions for God which are put forth by theists and point out whatever we discover in them which seems to be illogical, immoral, or just plain nonsensical. Speaking for myself, I don't think the god or no-god argument amounts to a damn thing except how it shapes a person's political ideas. I'm a weak atheist, since to be completely honest I don't believe that there is no god. I think it's probable that there is no god, but I don't believe it. I have no faith whatsoever in the proposition: there is no god. I say this for the rising tide of theists who have lost faith in faith and seem dead set on turning what was for centuries a cardinal virtue into a condition of mental depravity and happily attributing it to atheists. But while I'm a weak atheist, I'm a strong secularist.

There are literally thousands of definitions of God up for offer. Even among Christians there are thousands of definitions of God, and hundreds of thousands of sub-definitions. Since God remains unavailable for any sort of analysis, the definition of God remains highly personal and subjective. For this reason it's laughably incorrect to suggest that the Bible is an objective, authoritative basis for any sort of political ideology. How could it be when people who make this very claim have been at each other's throats for more than two thousand years? The Bible, purportedly the word of God, has been a miserable failure as a source of moral and peaceful co-existence among human beings. I'll concede that no political system is without fault, and that certain non-theistic approaches to the problem of creating civil societies have failed just as miserably, but what I can't understand is how so many people feel that the problems with the world today are the result of a falling away from God's law, or God's commandments, or what have you, when two thousand years of bloody conflicts, witch-hunts, inquisitions, crusades, and holy wars have never brought about a time of peace, have never brought about a happier society, have never done a thing to improve the human condition?

Has any definition of God been sufficient to produce any positive effect in the world? Of course not. In fact, quite the contrary: the inability of theists themselves to arrive at a plausible and universal definition of God has had nothing but negative effects. The fact is, humans are prone to disagreement and discord is inevitable, and history has demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that no definition of God, no religious doctrine whatsoever, has altered this fact.

And yet many Americans, - to speak of my own particular tribe - completely ignorant of how their country was founded, and a good deal of them equally ignorant of the Bible, believe that America is an example of God's law in action, and the only example. Many Americans believe that America was founded on a Judeo-Christian worldview, or "values", without realizing that there is no such thing as "a" Judeo-Christian worldview, or that one Christian's "values" might be diametrically opposed to another Christian's. They blissfully forget that certain Christian "values" once caused other Christians to be imprisoned, tortured, even burned alive, or that the Book that these so-called "values" were founded upon is the very same Book which they believe gave birth to ideas of political freedom and human rights.

If you're a theist and don't feel that religion and politics should mix, then I don't care in the least about what you believe. You can believe whatever you like and I hope you have a happy life, sincerely; but if you're a theist and you believe that your definition of God is the correct one and that it should be the basis for public policy, well now I'm deeply interested in you. If we're talking metaphysics or epistemology, I can be civil and friendly, but if we're talking ethics and politics, and if your ultimate intention is to deprive me of my rights as a human being - which means my right to have, or not have, whatever religious feelings I damn well please, well now we have a problem.

It's one thing for people to put their heads together and come up with laws that intend to make society more secure, and it's no surprise that people, who are by no means perfect, should create imperfect forms of government; but it's quite another thing for people to claim that they have been given the means of forming a better society by a supernatural being with whom no one has had any kind of direct contact, a being who has been defined in thousands of ways, a being who is eternal and changeless but whose followers have changed dramatically over a relatively brief stretch of time, a being who openly declares favoritism to a particular group of people, a being who is described as perfect in every sense but who cannot exist without the constant praise and the endless humility of entities of far lesser magnitude, entities who are so corrupt that this perfect being cannot accept a single one of them to his breast without forgiving them for their imperfections, a being of incomprehensible magnitude who enjoys the smell of roasted animal flesh, a being of absolute knowledge and intelligence who doesn't know that some women do not have an issue of blood when they lose their virginity, a being who promises to spread excrement on the faces of certain people who displease him, a being who decides to put his word in a certain book which is intended to act as a beacon to humanity and which is nonetheless interpreted a million different ways by the very people who trust in it completely and which either directly or indirectly causes conflict and war and widespread human suffering. If theists expect to influence government policy I suggest that they do the one thing they haven't been able to do: come up with something that works better than what we've tried so far. But remember, we folks with our eyes open already know that a return to God's law, if by that you mean Old Testament law, would spell certain disaster today just as it spelled disaster in times past. And by disaster I mean witch-hunts, inquisitions, crusades, holy wars, dark ages. If theists couldn't agree on crucial doctrinal issues at any time in the past sufficiently enough to keep from cutting one another's throats and burning one another at the stake, what reason do we have to think they'd be able to do it now?

And just to add, in fairness: I'm a secularist much more than I'm an atheist. A theist can be a secularist, in fact many theists are secularists. I am just as opposed to depriving people of their right to worship God as I am to making god-belief a civic duty. The attempt to stamp out religion by force is just as misguided and stupid as trying to establish a theocracy by force.

If God Himself or Herself comes and tells me to shut up, I'll shut up. But not until then.

Clarification and thank-yous

I just want to make a note about why I've started and deleted several blogs for my poems and why I've disallowed comments on this blog and on my current poetry-blog, Ignotus. I think that essentially I'm antisocial, I'm not comfortable with the whole idea of networking, and I'm totally unable to self-promote. In over six years of activity online I've successfully blended in at only two places. The first was at an Iwon chat group where I became somewhat popular with the name IkilledElmo. Eventually I got bored with chat-rooms - although they allowed me socialize like a normal person for a little while - and discovered the world of Internet bulletin boards. I've joined probably well over a dozen of these places but became pretty well-established at only one of them: The Poetry-Free-For-All at everypoet.net. Bela Selendy, the generous man behind everypoet, started a thing called the Amplifier which allowed members to have a little place of their own in which to post poems, pictures, what have you. I got something going but gave up after a while and deleted my spot, twice. There didn't seem to be much point in doing it.

This was before the blogging craze. I started a blog or two at MSN and deleted them both. Then I got one going at Blogger until a very kind soul, Rob Mackenzie, from PFFA, discovered it and told a few others about it. He linked to me and I linked back to him. I linked to several other blogs run by fellow PFFAers and was linked back to by one or two others besides Rob. The majority of people I linked to did not link back to me. They were either not aware that I had linked to them or they didn't wish to return the favor for whatever reason. Before long I decided my blog wasn't drumming up any interest, despite Rob's valiant efforts on my behalf, and I deleted it. I started up another which was again discovered by Rob and linked to by him. I made a few comments at his blog and he left one or two at mine. This felt too compulsory to me, too much like protocol. I visited other blogs and made a few comments, but by and large I thought the whole thing was pointless. So I deleted my blog yet again. At this point Rob realized that he was wasting his time trying to get me into the loop. I wasn't going to get into it and that was that. I'll grant that I'm anti-social and a bit paranoid, but it seems to me that what drives the blogging world is self-promotion. If you can't self-promote you will fail, unless you are inordinately talented. I can't self-promote. I'm not humble, mind you, just insecure, hypersensitive (yes, Rachel), neurotic, and passive to a fault. I want to make that plain.

I keep these two blogs at Blogger going mainly because it offers a professional-looking format in which to put my stuff. If someone stumbles on something I've written and likes it well enough (or hates it enough) they can send me an email. I don't see the point in allowing comments since the majority of comments I've received are spam: a little soap to my back and a nudge: hey, soap my back too? How pointless.

I'm not afraid of someone disagreeing with my ideas or finding my commentary stupid or offensive. I participate at Internet Infidels, a secular board where I post as WilliamB, and most of what is contained in this blog was posted there; indeed, many of my posts here are lifted verbatim, with minor alterations, from that board. I'm perfectly willing to defend my views and have done so, in public and in private. The same applies to my poems. Some of the stuff on Ignotus was posted at PFFA or Eratosphere. I am not afraid of harsh, objective critique and have deliberately sought it out. But if I allow comments at either blog and begin the whole process of networking via comments and links once again, I'm certain that I would regret it. I'm just no good at that sort of thing. And, to be completely honest, I find most blogs boring, even those whose subjects are similar to my own. For this reason I expect people to find my blogs boring as well.

Before I forget, I want to thank Rob MacKenzie for his efforts to drum up interest in my poems. At this point he remains one of three people who have gone out of their way for me. Timothy Murphy and David Anthony, from Eratosphere, are the other two. I'm not complaining. After all, I never expected anyone to go out of their way for me since I've gone out of my way for exactly no-one (net-wise that is). These three gentlemen are quite successful and have published poetry to critical acclaim, and I'm grateful to them. Rob's blog is one of the most successful blogs going. I sincerely don't know how he does it, but I wish him all the luck in the world. Not that he'll need it.

More on Freewill/Determinism IIDB

I believe in freewill but I would never say consciousness was "uncaused". My consciousness couldn't exist without my brain, so it appears the immediate "cause" of my consciousness is my brain, which is not magical at all. By the same token, physical bodies (people) who have brains are made (caused) by the sexual union of other bodies. (If one wants to say that robots or machines might have something called "consciousness", that's fine, and no one would say that such was uncaused.)

And furthermore, the facts that 1) I am alive and 2) I am conscious, are both caused; but to say that these facts were "determined" seems to me to suggest that I somehow "had" to be born, which I don't believe to be true. My parents could just as well have chosen not to have children.


I think there might be a problem with definitions in regard to the words "determined" and "caused", at least for some.

'Determined' has connotations which 'caused' doesn't have, for instance to say something is 'determined' could mean "to limit or set boundaries, to fix conclusively, to fix beforehand, ordain, regulate, decide" (Merriam-Webster).

'Caused' doesn't have those connotations. It mostly boils down to: to "cause" is to "effect". Merriam-Webster's online dictionary says, "to effect by command, authority, or force." There is nothing to suggest that to 'cause' something is to necessarily limit or set boundaries, ordain or decide anything, just "effect".

Another problem is that the word 'cause' is being used as a noun and a verb. As a noun, a 'cause' is a reason, a motive, or an agent, "something that brings about an effect or a result" (Merriam-Webster). But again, nothing suggests that this effect was "determined" (see above) in any sense, just "caused".

In an online dictionary of philosophy, there's this:



Cause: (Lat. causa) Anything responsible for change, motion or action. In the history of philosophy numerous interpretations were given to the term. Aristotle distinguished among:

1. the material cause, or that out of which something arises,
2. the formal cause, that is, the pattern or essence determining the creation of a thing,
3. the efficient cause, or the force or agent producing an effect; and
4. the final cause, or purpose. Many thinkers spoke also of
5. the first cause, usually conceived as God.

There's no entry in the dictionary I searched (Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942) for 'Determined', just 'Determination' and 'Determinism'.


Determinism: (Lat. de + terminus, end) The doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law.

and further down in the entry:


The doctrine that all the facts in the physical universe, and hence also in human history, are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. In psychology: the doctrine that the will is not free but determined by psychical or physical conditions. Syn. with fatalism, necessitarianism, destiny. -- J.K.F.

So it seems to me that the determinist is saying that everything is dependent upon and conditioned by their causes, while the freewiller is merely saying that everything (at least that which pertains to his own decisions and actions) is "effected" by their causes: dependent on them only to a degree, not absolutely; and not necessarily "conditioned" by them.


From Merriam-Webster again:


Main Entry: conditioned
Function: adjective
1 : brought or put into a specified state
2 : determined or established by conditioning

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This "motivator" that causes us to make decisions and do things is You, and Me. We are the motivators, since we are the sum total of all these "memories and emotions" going on inside us, plus a myriad of other factors which make up our individual personalities and identities. And your reply in no way accounts for the fact that what you basically suggested was that the body makes choices, not the conscious mind, or at the very least that the conscious mind plays a decidedly subordinate role:

"I think the decision is *made by the body* as a preponderence of mitgating factors involving memory and emotion and our consciousness makes thoughts out of it that seem like choices."

Your post, once again, reminds me of the Calvinists, according to whom everything goes according to God's will, and nothing can go against God's will. God not only has foreknowledge of our destinies down to the last detail, he has foreordained our destinies, which will unfold exactly as he has determined and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We will either be saved or damned, and God is the sole arbiter and "motivator" in every single case.

Then the Calvinists turn around and say that the damned deserve their punishment, despite the fact that they are given zero capacity to save themselves, and despite the fact that God intentionally and with forethought blinds their eyes and deafens their ears to the only means that are available to ensure their salvation.

Your worldview is virtually the same as Calvinism, without the mythology. Instead of God you have these hazily defined impulses and "motivators" which dictate what we will do in every situation (which sounds eerily like Original Sin, by the way), and you seem dead set against granting any free agency to a conscious, intelligent human mind.

And yet at the same time you claim that people who commit crimes ought to be held accountable for their actions, actions which you claim are pre-determined and fixed and over which these unlucky individuals have zero control. It isn't necessarily that a moral judgment is made against them, nor is it that they are to be held "responsible" in any clear sense. Instead you suggest that these people ought to be made examples of, not as a means of punishing wrongdoing, but as a means of ensuring less wrongdoing by others in the future.

And so poor Mr. Smith is to be a scapegoat, punished for no better reason than to be an example to others, despite the fact that he couldn't have done otherwise, just as the condemned sinner, in the Calvinist's view, is damned as a means of demonstrating God's "justice", despite the fact that he couldn't have done otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, I fully believe in people being held accountable for their actions, but only to the extent that they are free agents who could have acted responsibly but elected not to. If I believed that the way you describe things is accurate, I'd advocate removing murderers and criminals from society but my conscience would insist that they be treated with the utmost kindness being that they had no real control over what they were doing.

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...that's exactly what free will means to me: the ability to make decisions based on what kind of life I want for myself. It's the knowledge that actions have consequences, and that it's infinitely wiser to take actions and make decisions which have beneficial and positive consequences, and conversely to avoid taking actions or making decisions which bring about the opposite. Free will to me is the understanding that ultimately I determine which course my life will take, though obviously I don't have absolute control over things I interact with or which act upon me. I know that I'm not a superhero: I have a limited course of action to chose from in any given circumstance. I'm not omniscient either, and since I know that my knowledge is limited I'm aware that sometimes I can only make a best guess as to what the most beneficial course of action will be in any given situation. I can make mistakes and often do. And given the unpredictable nature of any number of external things going on around me at any given time, sometimes even the most practical and well-informed actions or decisions will have negative consequences: shit happens.

I shouldn't have used the word "enslaved" in my last post. To be a slave, at least to my mind, means having no options, having no choices, which isn't the case for your garden variety criminals or derelicts, or for responsible people. I don't believe that because our choices are influenced either internally or externally they are therefore "determined", at least not as I define the word. I take "determined" to mean outside the province of choice, not a choice which is arrived at by virtue of simply having a reason for making it, whether that reason be a simple preference or a strong disposition. If the argument is: our choices are determined by virtue of the fact that they are influenced by a whole bundle of factors such as personal tastes, habits, memories, predispositions, predilections, not to mention external influences such as the actions of other people, accidents of nature, environment, peer-pressure, legal obligations and limitations, social mores, well then I agree to that, but I agree only that our actions are influenced, sometimes heavily influenced, but not "determined" in the sense that these influencing factors are so overwhelming as to make our "choices" merely mechanical and automatic responses.

To me, the word "choice" itself often entails having to make a mental effort, having to weigh all sorts of various influences together and come to some sort of educated decision. Naturally some choices are trivial and easy and some are extremely difficult. But a choice made without any influencing factors whatsoever isn't a choice at all. It seems to me that to be completely free of influencing factors one would have to be unconscious, or dead. If free will is defined as a will which is totally uninfluenced either internally or externally, then I don't believe in it either.



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V**: It seems to me that he's arguing against determism simply because it's harsh. I'm just saying too bad. That's life. No problem.

This is incorrect, as I stated in another thread somewhere on this freewill subject when something was said to the effect that certain people might just not like the idea that they are not free agents. I said that, well, I don't like the idea that I am going to die someday and go back into oblivion, but I argue for that position anyway because I believe it to be true.

And don't forget that saying something like, "You argue against determinism because you just don't like it" is strikingly similar to the typical theistic response to just about any atheistic argument: "Aw, come on now, you argue against God because you just don't like the idea of God! Admit it!" The user j** typed this very same sentiment a thousand times.


I argue for what I think is more believable, period. Whether I like something or not is not a consideration. And what's more, I don't think determinism presents a world that is any more harsh than the world as I currently see it.

And all I'm trying to do is point out that responsibility and accountability are awfully hard to justify in the context of determinism. It's very simple: if a person has no real control over his or her actions then that person shouldn't be held responsible for what they do. That's why I asked the question about the insanity defense.

Do determinists think an insane person ought to be held to a much lesser degree of accountability when they commit a crime? And if so, is it because we agree that an insane person is not in control of his or her behavior? And if this is the case, then shouldn't the same leniency be granted to any and all in a deterministic world?

If the answer is, "well of course not, we need to ensure a stable society after all, we can't have these criminals running loose. And besides, punishing wrongdoers will discourage others from doing the same..." then my reply to that would be: Despite protests to the contrary, to worry about the interests of society, to actively work towards ensuring the security and prosperity of society in the future, is to project more than one possible state of affairs on the future. It presumes that there are things we can do and ought to do in order to prevent society from falling apart, and it presumes that failing to do these things could very likely have negative results, which means: the choice is up to us. But If we aren't free agents as individuals, then we aren't free agents as a collective either.

I didn't get a chance to read the comments that were deleted. Feel free to send them to me via PM, if you choose.


**And, in case there is any misunderstanding, I absolutely DO NOT advocate being kind to murderers and hardened criminals, since I believe that people are responsible for their actions, barring only very special cases. But if I were a determinist I would be forced to think differently, since I would believe that people acted in response to internal and external forces which were beyond their control.


D**: Did you notice that in William B.'s post he responds that if he were to believe that choices are made by the brain, he would advocate treating criminals with the "utmost kindness" since they wouldn't be responsible for what they did?

Wait a sec. I already believe that choices are made by the brain. Maybe this was a typo, or I am just missing the boat here? Is the brain being thought of as somehow separate from consciousness? If it is, I don't agree with that. Not that I believe that consciousness is material, only that it resides in the brain, is an "emergent property" of the brain, is wholly dependent on the brain, whatever.

I do believe in free agency, which is why I feel comfortable imputing culpability to people who commit crimes, being that alternatives are possible. What I did say was that if it could be definitively shown that people were not in control of their actions I would advocate removing criminals from society as a practical measure, but I couldn't see why we should be cruel to them, since in my view they wouldn't be responsible for what they did. When my old computer stopped working right and started to be a major pain in the caboose, I didn't render a moral judgment against it, I just put it out in the garage in the corner where it wouldn't cause any more headaches. I could've tried to get it fixed, but it was tax-season and I used my refund to buy a new one...

While I still hold he position I started out with, I'm more fascinated with this whole subject than I was before, though I can't get too excited about how the future looks in regard to criminal justice. Unless I'm mistaken, isn't eye-witness testimony holding up a lot less in court these days? And couldn't this be at least to some extent the result of so much doubt being cast on the reliability of the senses? It bothers me to no end that a woman who has endured being raped could potentially stand less and less of a chance of being trusted to identify her own assailant. Add to this what you guys have just been talking about, like:



D**: ...whether personal responsibility can remain fundamental to Law.


Maybe I'm making too much of it, but it seems to me that criminals might be dancing in the streets for joy in the not-too-distant future.

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I am sympathetic to a lot of what you said. But I think I've gone past the point where any of this freewill/determinism argument causes me anger, mainly because I suspect that the reason this particular argument is one of the mainstays in philosophy is because, quite frankly, a lot of people use terminology carelessly and loosely, on both sides that is, and most of the time what's being argued over isn't so much a drastic difference in how we view the world so much as it is how we define certain terms and how we integrate those terms into our arguments. Aside from that is the fact that there is too much we don't know about how the brain works---or, let's just say for now that there's an awful lot that I don't know about how the brain works---, which means that there is a lot of presumption and speculation involved.

I don't want anyone to think that I'm caving in, mind you. I'm not remotely convinced that determinism, in the strictest sense, is true. I very strongly believe that human beings are causal agents, some to a much greater degree than others, and that human intelligence can and does interfere with and manipulate physical laws to affect change; but at the same time I'm fine with this being just a strong belief, and as such I consider it susceptible to change depending on what there is to be learned, and depending on my capacity to understand it, which admitedly is not very great.

As for meaning and purpose: No one can tell me my life is meaningless or purposeless, I don't care who they are. I decide what my life means to me and what my purpose is, no one else. And it's really nobody's damn business anyway to tell someone else what their life means and what it doesn't. People who do that are annoying and pretentious whether they are theists or atheists, or anything in between.

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rosy tetra: You mean humans possess some sort of Maxwell’s Demon?

Or something akin to the “dust‿ or dark matter that settles on humans and brings free will to the characters in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials‿ trilogy?

No, I mean that we're conscious. Why do you think an extra entity of some kind needs to be added to the mix in order to explain will and volition? I don't; and even if I did, it wouldn't be anything supernatural, since I don't believe in the supernatural. I also don't believe in destiny or fate, or that rocks avoid rolling uphill.

We might not be able to explain how consciousness, including will and volition, works, but it's like others have been trying to say: just because we don't fully understand how something works is no reason to suggest that it's either an illusion or it's magic. We thought rainbows were magical at some point in the past; we now know what causes rainbows to appear.

We interfere with and manipulate natural processes all the time. That's how we've survived. Medicine, surgery, farming, the building of dams, digging of canals, electricity: we use nature to our advantage, make it work for us, exploit it, harness it. That isn't to say that we can change physical laws, only interfere (as in alter or instigate an action caused by those laws, not the nature of the laws themselves) with them and manipulate them to our advantage. Sometimes we do it in an ugly way, I'll admit. And sometimes we screw up.

I think some determinists are just uncomfortable with the ideas of freedom and autonomy, much as certain theists are. The more I think about it, there are quite a lot of similarities between determinists and theists.

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m**:You just presented a list of things entirely consistent with deterministic law following. Did you have another argument?

It wasn't so much an argument for something as it was a response to rosy's humorous suggestions that I attribute volitional consciousness to some sort of outside agent, or supernatural internal agent. Why this is not completely obvious to everyone eludes me.

And, as it happens, my post is also competely consistent with the idea of volitional will and free agency. I basically described how we go about interacting and sometimes interfering with nature, at will, and not through recourse to a tiny demon in our heads or anywhere else, or any other fantastical thing. My post was a response to particular questions asked of me.



m: (By the way, the argument against counter causal free will is not: "we don't understand it", so you might want to work on that point too.)

If I understand you correctly, I've never argued for "counter-causal" free will. I've gone out of my way to explain that I agree that nothing is uncaused. All things, including human choices and decisions and actions, have causes; but what I don't believe is that something being "caused" and something being "determined" is the same thing. There are crucial distinctions: "determined" implies that something is ordained, decided, fixed conclusively, set; "caused" doesn't have those connotations, at least not necessarily.

So I suppose what I am saying is that: If we don't know exactly how intelligent humans can act as causal agents, that shouldn't mean we ought to rule out the possibility that it might one day be sufficiently explained.

I'll very gladly take your advice on working on any and all points.

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rosy tetra:When you said that “… human intelligence can and does interfere with and manipulate physical laws…‿ it sounded to me like you meant human intelligence molds, controls, alters physical laws.

Not at all, as far as molds or alters. 'Molds' would imply some authoritative creative process:


Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: mold
Function: transitive verb
1 archaic : to knead (dough) into a desired consistency or shape
2 : to give shape to
3 : to form in a mold
4 : to determine or influence the quality or nature of
5 : to fit the contours of
6 : to ornament with molding or carving

Note that 'influence' above refers to the quality or nature of something. We can't influence natural processes in that manner, we can only influence how those processes act in a specific situation, as in the making of a dam, or an electric light bulb.

Here's what Merriam-Webter's has for 'manipulate':



Main Entry: ma·nip·u·late
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: back-formation from manipulation, from French, from manipuler to handle an apparatus in chemistry, ultimately from Latin manipulus
1 : to treat or operate with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2 a : to manage or utilize skillfully b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
3 : to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose

I was using the word in the sense of 1 and 2a. Naturally the word has negative connotations as well, and depending on how one views humanity's technical progress, you could say I was using the word in the 2b sense also. The third definition has no bearing on my use of the word, since this seems to be refering to outright deception and deceit, as in the manipulation of documents or evidence or something like that.

As for one of the words you used: yes, I am arguing that human intelligence can exert some degree of control over natural processes. Medicine, the use of electricity, farming, even an atrocity like the atomic bomb, are all examples of exerting control over physical laws. Note that doesn't suggest that these laws can be altered or changed insofar as their nature is concerned, only that we can control those laws in regard to their action in a specific circumstance.

I try to use words carefully and I don't mind any criticisms if I've used them carelessly, and when I do I'll own up to it, as I did in a very recent post. But in this case I think you took the words interfere and manipulate the wrong way because you might have preconceptions of what the freewiller's position is, or maybe because some people on this side of the FW/D fence really do believe that the human mind has some sort of authoritative creative powers in regard to natural processes, physical laws. I'm not one of those people.


I'll also grant that it's very possible that I am just not getting what your position actually is. On the surface you seem to be pushing for the idea that there isn't a great deal of difference in regard to human consciousness and an unconscious life-form such as a tree, or even an inanimate object, like a rock. I find that too fabulous a view to entertain, and I have to think that my phrasing must be inadequate in describing what you are really trying to say.




r.t: Certainly we can do things that affect our surroundings. I know you must mean more than just that, because all things living and non-living use natural processes that affect their surroundings. Certainly we do things to affect our surroundings often according to intentions we have.

Yes, I do mean more than that and hopefully by this time I've gotten it across. Now, is it just me or is there not a marked difference between the phrase: "do things that affect our surroundings", and "use natural processes that affect their surroundings."? Using things (even if we allow that non-sentient things can be said to "use" anything in the true sense of the word, and I'll allow it since I don't feel like quibbling over every word) that affect their surroundings" is clearly not equal to "do[ing] things that affect our surroundings." Can you see the difference? And even if certain living things behave in a way that increases their chances of survival to some degree, can it really be argued that what they do in comparison to what humans do is significant enough to trivialize the fact that humans build cities, write books, heal the sick, compose symphonies, fly to the moon?




r.t: If you just mean that I feel an intention to do something, while a rock does not feel an intention, then why not just say that humans feel intentions?

If I did, what would be the reaction in a discussion like this? "Hey, we humans feel intentions, therefore we have freewill." Obviously it's a lot more than that. For one thing, these intentions vary from person to person, and they vary greatly. Even if you could prove that a tree intends things, can you show me that there is a variety of intention among individual trees, or groups of trees? Some animals? Sure, I suppose they might have varying degrees of intentions, but I would bet only to an almost negligible degree. In short, just saying humans "feel intentions" fails miserably short of what our species has managed to do.



r.t: If you say that humans can choose what intentions they will feel, and their choice is not determined by their physical state, their DNA, their environment, etc, but by a will that is free from all that, it sounds like we’re back to a Maxwell’s Demon.

I think we're back to the importance of clear definitions. In prior posts I've given my position in regard to the words "free" and "determined". I'll admit that my position could be all screwy, but bear with me. I don't think 'free' means free from all those causes you mentioned, as far as the term freewill is concerned. In the reading I've done I haven't seen anyone suggest that this is so. Free, in the context of freewill, means not forced to one option and one option only, it means having options: real options, not the illusion of options. But any and all options as they pertain to choices and decisions are limited to reality, and by the impositions and boundaries of the natural world. We can't talk out of our bellybuttons, we can't turn into horses at will, we can't do anything magical. It just means that given option X and option Y, we are actually at liberty to choose either one. At liberty doesn't mean that all those causes you mentioned are suddenly out of the picture, or don't factor in somehow. It just means that those causes will no doubt contribute to and influence the choices we make, in some cases very powerfully so, so powerfully perhaps that there is virtually no decision process going on. But the bottom line is that, in fact, it is in our power as creatures of volitional consciousness to choose X or Y, and that contingent on this power is the fact that choices have consequences. If it makes it sound any better, freewill is also the ability to make truly disastrous decisions.

The way I see it, freewill is the belief that choices are influenced, but not determined - determined connoting that something is fixed conclusively, set, ordained, decided - by their causes; whereas determinism (or at least it as I understand it, and as it pretty much says in most definitions) is the belief that choices (and everything else) are absolutely determined by their causes.

As I see it, freewillers aren't arguing against the fact that the universe acts deterministically, just that consciousness creates a degree of causal agency within it, the wherewithal to move at will as an example, whereas inanimate objects can only move as they are acted upon; and, in the case of human intelligence, freedom of choice and freedom of action, neither of which exempts us from having to obey natural laws and processes but which merely gives us the capacity to control our environment, and those laws and processes, at least to the degree that our interests and desires are served. No magical powers, no carte blanche to do whatever we damn well please, just leeway.

I guess what it boils down to is that I don't think freewill cancels out determinism. I believe the two co-exist and cooperate a good deal of the time, at least in intelligent human beings. I do believe that higher intelligence means more control, less susceptibility to internal and external influences, more will.

All I want to do at this point is clarify whatI believe. My beliefs could very well be wrong, and I wouldn't be devastated at this stage of my life to learn that they were.




C** wrote: If you are "not forced or compelled to one course of action", then you tend not to take a course of action. If I choose something, something must have caused me to choose or I wouldn't have chosen.

By "not forced or compelled to one course of action I mean not one course of action in particular, and only that one. So I would argue that we can and very often do make decisions without being forced to one alternative to the preclusion of another. (I will admit that "compelled" was a poor choice of words on my part.) In your second sentence you seem to be using "caused" as if it were synonymous with being forced or compelled, which I think is a mistake. As I suggested in a post somewhere else, according to most definitions a determinist believes that all human decisions, are absolutely dependent on their causes, whereas a freewiller believes that all human decisions, are effected or influenced by their causes, but not absolutely, which just means that we don't believe that all of our choices or decisions are "determined". Caused, yes; determined, no, or at least not always. Determined connotes that limits are set, that outcomes are fixed conclusively, ordained, decided. Caused doesn't have the same connotations.



r.t wrote: If by “free will” people simply mean “conscious,” then why not just say “conscious”?

Because determinists believe in consciousness also.


r.t wrote: When people say that free will means a person could have chosen differently if he wanted to, this does not seem to mean anything except that people have desires and act on them. All living things do this. Unless you narrow the statement and say that you’re only talking about human desires and the sorts of human thoughts and feelings that happen when humans do things. Well, that leaves out rosebushes then, doesn’t it?

Of course. Rosebushes aren't conscious. The level of free (or volitional) agency increases in proportion to levels of intelligence and mental health. Animals might have some degree of limited, instinctually-biased free agency, but probably not much. Geniuses probably have the highest levels of free agency since it's evident in their work that they exert a greater degree of control over certain thought processes like concentration, focus, imagination, creativity. It takes a much greater control of mental processes to write "Paradise Lost" than it does to change a tire or make a grilled cheese sandwich, a much more powerful force of will.

N** wrote: The term [free will] is somewhat coopted by arguments over determinism. In this case it seems to be used mostly to mean "a choice not tracable to a cause".

I would say a "free" choice is one which is influenced by a cause or causes, but not absolutely fixed and determined by a cause or causes. A choice "not traceable to a cause" would be meaningless. For instance, if someone holds out a bunch of playing cards to me and says "pick a card, any card", and if they're evenly spaced and all appear identical, there will be a definite degree of randomness as to which card I select. Let's say for the sake of argument that there either is no real "cause" for picking one card over another, or that we just don't know what it is. We still wouldn't be able to say that my choice was not traceable to a cause. The action of picking a card was dependent on many factors: being at this boring party, sitting on a sofa beside the annoying aspiring magician, lying and saying I enjoyed card tricks, etcetera. So, even though all of those prior causes were necessary for me to pick a card at that particular time, when it came time to actually pick a card that particular choice at that particular time was not "determined" by those other "causes", which means that while the fact that I'm now sitting here looking at a group of playing cards was dependent on prior causes, none of those causes have anything to do with which card I actually pick. If I pick card X, that choice is traceable to a set of causes; if I pick card Y, that choice is traceable to the same set of causes, and so on.

N wrote: If we can prove that all of our choices derive from an indentifiable causal chain, then we do not have free will.

That sounds like 20-20 hindsight to me. The reverse would be true: if we could predict a causal chain going a fair ways into the future and get good results, that might help to cast doubt on free will; but humans, completely unaware that they are being observed or that they are involved in an experiment, must be present in such a chain or it wouldn't indicate anything except what we already know, which is that the universe runs according to certain fixed laws.

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