If you see me driving around town, then now you know why I sport this license plate. I find this to be the funniest passage in any of the Harry Potter books and it is just odd and obscure enough that I thought it would be a great choice for a personalized license plate that only those in the know would possibly get.
And that is all I've got to give you this week. I've had family visit for Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas decorations, and several other tasks in the last few days. I'm sort of tired and there is no way I'm going to successfully convince you NOT to watch football during Rivalry Week.
So, I'll just say Go Bucks! and good night.
And . . . remember . . . no one cares whether your favorite player has the most pairs of Gold Pants of anyone from your Alma Mater.
See you . . . well, I guess I'll see you when the playoffs are set and the big games are ready to go? Thanks for sticking with me during all of these weeks of Football Counter-Programming.
I find that I have LOTS of draft ideas floating around in my WWYG?! dashboard that were started and not finished. Sometimes they are rants that I typed in anger and saved for a cooling off. Looking back on them, I find that I need to delete and move on. Sometimes the drafts are simply the start of something that didn't engage my attention and needed to be dropped because I lost the thread.
And sometimes the drafts are just unfinished movie reviews of The End of the Tour that I couldn't get around to writing. (Short answer? I liked it. Let's all move on.)
But this . . . now the photo above is something that needed to be finished. Not just because the Thanksgiving/Christmas nexus is almost here and this is the time of year to be quoting It's a Wonderful Life.
I can't remember what motivated me to start this idea back in early January of this year (2016). But maybe I AM afraid of success?
(But not to the degree that I would kill myself to cash in on the life insurance money, don't worry.)
What do you think? Can you decipher why I might have started this post? Does this post in any way divert your focus on big rivalry football games this weekend? What sort of ideas do you have that never get completed?
I decided to make another video this week to save the time typing. (But now I'm typing anyway . . . especially to explain that the Endscreen links didn't work, and I don't yet know why. But I didn't want to reedit the video to fix that issue.)
Anyway, sorry about the delay in posting. I recorded the video this morning and then got involved with painting the kitchen and didn't get back around to it until now.
And remember. No one cares what color your kitchen is painted, as long as your playoff-bound team definitely beats an underdog.
We are in the second half of the counter-programming season and that means that I am sometimes as a loss for what to write each weekend. So, this week, I turned to social media to get some ideas.
What should the subject of Football Counter-Programming be for Week 10? Here is your chance to order me around! #fb
And you guys didn't disappoint.
One of my friends suggested that I explain the GDP of Denmark. And while I did not choose that particular suggestion for this week's post, I am looking into it.
I also got some other suggestions over on Facebook and I will look into those for future weeks and give them due consideration. But . . . as remarkable as this might seem, I decided to tackle the suggestion of my friend Dean. Since he frequently Guest Blogs for me on WWYG?! I guess I have a soft spot for his suggestion. Sadly, his suggestion was not an easy one.
@dtm1971 what is the nature of free will? Is it merely an illusion as determinism would have it? How do you solve the mind-body problem?
The last time I tried tackling philosophy topics in any serious way was back in my Georgia Southern days. I found the topic frustrating and difficult to follow. So much of it seemed like a great deal of rhetorical word play and hypotheticals. But I do appreciate the topics being discussed and I do think the themes are often fascinating. But I am nowhere near an expert and will not be able today to really dig into this topic with much depth and foresight.
First, I did a bit of research. I happened to know that my (second) favorite online educational resource--Crash Course--has a great deal of videos on Philosophy. So, I went to see if they had a video on the Mind/Body problem that Dean brought up. And, not surprisingly, they did:
Now, the question here is can you separate the mind from the body. Is the mind distinct from the physicality of yourself and if that is true, then what does that mean? And when we are talking about "mind" here, I think we are talking about personality. And so we are also talking about what is more important--our physical selves, those limited parts of us that are driven by genetics. Or the ephemeral parts of us that we imagine and suppose it us. And it is also asking . . . can we overcome our physicality? Can we be more than we are?
I think we can. And this leads into another part of Dean's question above--the vexing question of Free Will. If we can be more than we are, if we can overcome the limitations of our physical selves . . . are we choosing to do that or was that choice always Determined and we are working within the plan for us that is the sum or previous choices, causes and effects, as well as our biological experiences?
For me, these philosophical questions are inescapable from religious influences. Not every philosophical questions needs a religious answer, maybe, but religion is always a part of the equation for me. I am a spiritual person and I do believe in the idea of free will. I do not think that God set everything in motion and simply watches from above, letting it all play out as was ordained.
As with most things in life--be it politics or religion or life or whatever--we need to seek a middle ground. I think that our biology (our physical selves) play a very significant role in our lifestyles, our social outlooks, our opportunities. I am a white male with a tinge of physical handicap stemming from the circumstances of my birth. As such, I am extremely privileged in a great many ways and I do have some limitations in other areas of life. And yet, I have NEVER believed, nor have I ever been told that I am hampered from doing almost anything that I choose to do in life. I have been privileged to know people in my life with far greater handicaps than mine and I know they face limitations I never will. Yet within the sphere of our own biological realities, we can make choices.
The choices we choose to make are also influenced by our non-biological experiences (our Nurture). I was taught to believe in myself and to work hard. I was never put down or made to feel less than anyone else. I was surrounded--and am surrounded--by comfort, success, and all the necessary ingredients for good living. There have been no psychological or social impediments placed upon my or taught to me. And so, I act accordingly, identifying what I want and working to achieve it--never doubting that it can be possible for me to achieve. Had I been nurtured differently, my menu of choices in life would likely have been narrowed or directed toward different paths. But I would still be selecting and choosing those pathways for myself.
So, where is all this word salad getting me? I fear (and am sure) that I've not really answering Dean's question, What to do about the choices between Free Will and Determinism? I guess . . . I want to say that we have determinations placed upon us by our biology and our experiences. But we are free to adjust those outcomes (to the best of our ability and desire) on our own. I do not think that I am incapable of making choices, but I recognize that the choices I make are shaped by a lot of factors that I don't appreciate--or that it takes a harder/broader view of the world to factor in accurately. As Dean would say, that makes me a Soft Determinist.
And what about the other question--what about the Mind/Body issue? Are we bound by our physicality or are we MORE? I think, in this case, we are more than a unique collection of atoms within a water sack. Why are we more than this? Now we are edging into religion. And maybe that is a topic for a different day.
But, what do you think about these questions? Watch the videos and see if Hank's words make more sense to you than they did to me. Leave a comment and explain what you like or don't like about these issues. And give me heck for evading the questions.
And finally, remember . . . few outside linemen take philosophy courses. But the one's that do can still knock you on your butt if you don't spend enough time in the weight room.
