Communication

Contributions from readers who didn't object to having their email published in Vagabond Pages.

Dangerous Universe..., Determinism..., Serbs..., Stan Wotring's Poems...

Re: "Dangerous Universe" (October 96 issue)

Dear William,
Subsequent to our phone conversation yesterday, I took another more careful look at your 'dangerous universe' (in Vagabond) comments. I see now that the title is meant to be sarcastic, that in your view the only dangerous things in the universe are the viewpoints of people who feel there might be something dangerous in the universe. Perhaps a more appropriate title might be 'don't worry, be happy', the title of a song popular a few years back.

You might want to give an example of at least one person who is 'immune to tobacco and alcohol', when either is taken to excess. After all, the question of excess is the whole point -- almost anything taken in moderation, even arsenic, nicotine, chlorine, and 'internet surfing' poisons are not overly dangerous and might even be beneficial, as recommended in the approach of homeopathy to disease.

Then again, defining 'excess' with respect to sometimes noxious substances and practises is not always the same for everyone or for every type of organism. If you define 'freedom' as an absolute value, then you may feel that there can be no such thing as 'excess.'?

Sincere Regards,
Russ --R&M JOURNAL
#1405 - 99 Howard St.
Toronto, Ont. Canada M4X 1K1...
Subscriber supported R&M JOURNAL (founded 1992) is published bi-monthly in Canada by Morphology Institute (founded 1988). R&M JOURNAL invites clearly written and properly edited, creative, comprehensible and insightful articles that convey the authors' or artists' examination of fundamental questions regarding reality and meaning.

Re: Determinism (February 96 issue)

determinism is something a good number of my friends and i have done much debating on, and, to a point, this essay gels well with our ideas. the one glaring problem is the use of the term 'free will' near the end. in true determinism, such a thing cannot truly exist. we are programmed machines left to run on our own, interacting with other machines and trying to duplicate ourselves as best we can. all of our actions, however random they may appear to others, or even ourselves, are entirely predictable to a being who knows the exact position of every particle and subparticle at the time of the Big Bang and the laws which govern their interaction. granted, this is beyond the scope of the average joe, but simply because we can't grasp our destinies, doesn't mean they don't already exist. [[this is the weakness in quantum physics based arguments against predeterminism. they all derive from the fact that we cannot determine two different factors about any one particle because the act of measuring one changes the other in an unpredictable way. but the simple fact that we can choose which factor to know means that both of them do exist, even if only one can be known at a time.]] reality, when viewed from outside is like a sculpture, each person moving along a path from birth to death and the particles which comprise that person continuing on their paths both before and after these human landmarks. we cannot ever truly understand the depth of this because we are inside the sculpture. our thoughts, the very things that give us our sense of self, are simply part of the roles we have to play. free will, like most other things we find ourselves believing in, is no more than a trick of perception. this knowledge can be dangerous, though. yes, it can lead to a heightened sense of responsibility, but it can also lead to a collapse of morality. if you had no real choice but to do what you have already done and you have no more choice over what you're going to do in the future, why not just do what you like and get on with it? not that this is necessarily bad. moral decay is just another side of the story. there must be villains so heroes can rise to stop them. there must be hell that there might be heaven. and without these elements it wouldn't be much of a story would it? not much of a sculpture, either. anyway, i've rambled a good bit here and most of it is probably incoherent, but if you think its worth a reply, i'll be waiting.

Well, even if everything is a silly game we have no other choice than to follow the rules because we're a part of the game. What good is it to be a judge with no power to make a decision? So, if we have to play the role of exercising free will, we should do it with conviction, as all good actors do, otherwise we harm ourselves not the game. The puppet cannot judge the puppeteer, the actor in the middle of his role cannot afford to judge the author, the fish cannot judge the ocean... In daily life we exercise free will from scratching ourselves to signing a check without even asking ourselves if it's an act of free will or not. Even this discussion -- is it an act of free will or not -- who cares? On the more abstract level we cannot even ask rhetorically if we are craftsman, craftsman's tool or craftsman's product. There is no answer possible. As for morality, for me personally it's all resolved on the epidermal level because I have a strong sense of empathy. WM

Re: Serbs

Your article regarding the Serbs is pathetic. First of all the Serbs do identify themselves with a power, and that is Russia. If it wasn't for the Russians, the Serbs would have been destroyed by the Austro-Hungarians during WWI. The Serbs even have a flag with the same colors and shape as the Russians. And if it weren't for the Russians the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims would have crushed the Bosnian Serbs. In addition there is no reason to identify the Serbs with a power is because they are not a nation to begin with. They are part of the Slavic nation, they are not distinct as are the Jews, Aryans, or Chinese??????

AMOBASHERI@bear.com (ARDAVAN MOBASHERI)

There were intimate connections between the Serbs and the Russians, mainly because of their common Orthodox religion, but I wouldn't go so far as to claim that the Russians saved the Serbs during WWI. In the recent Bosnian war, the Russians didn't help the Serbs; they couldn't afford it. Slavs and Aryans are not nations. Slavs are an ethno-linguistic group which includes Serbs, Russians, Czechs, Poles, and others. Similarly Latins are a group which includes French, Italians, Spaniards... the Germanic group includes Germans, English, Dutch, Scandinavians... All these groups belong to one ethno-linguistic family called Aryan or Indo-European. The Jews prior to WWII in Europe were a people, meaning having their own cultural personality with roots in the past. Since the annihilation of European Jewry by the Nazis, the Jews have become communities scattered around the world. Israelis, like Americans are not a people but a nation of communities: there are Moroccan Jews, Polish Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Russian Jews, etc. It takes generations to build a homogenous people from heterogenous communities. WM

Poems

Stan Wotring's Poems
from Works in Progress
volume 02 issue 029
December 16. 1996
© Copyright 1996

Stanley H. Wotring, Jr.
wotring@ix.netcom.com

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William Markiewicz