You need some sort of organizing principle, something that gives your days a shape. Otherwise, you’re not really on vacation, you’re just being a bum.
My plan for the next seventy days revolves around the classical trinity of yoga, cycling, and pot. Although I should probably be abashed by the addition of that third element, I’m not. One need not take the cannabis consumption piece literally; it’s more about a certain sense of freedom. It’s not as if I’m actually expecting to be stoned at every hour of every day; it’s simply that I could be if I wanted to.
It’s entirely possible, after all, that free will is an illusion. It may be that we live in an utterly deterministic universe and that everything we do is just the playing out of physical laws ever since the dawn of time. In that case, the very idea that what I do with my days is up to me is absurd. Yoga, cycling, and pot might just was well be napping, skeet-shooting, and beef for all the difference it would make. Thankfully, if that is the case, then there’s nothing any of us can do (or could ever have done) about it.
I’m sympathetic to the philosophical position known as “Compatibilism” or “soft determinism.” According to the Compatibilist view, we can essentially set aside the question of whether the universe is deterministic or not because, in our own lives, at least, we can distinguish between choices that are forced upon on us and those that are not. I may be no freer in my decision to loan you five bucks when you kindly ask for it than I am when you hold a gun to my head and demand that I do, but it sure feels that way. Consequently, I can speak of my actions in the former case as “free” even if, technically, they’re not.
Thus, I am free to smoke a joint, even if I don’t.
My plan for the next seventy days revolves around the classical trinity of yoga, cycling, and pot. Although I should probably be abashed by the addition of that third element, I’m not. One need not take the cannabis consumption piece literally; it’s more about a certain sense of freedom. It’s not as if I’m actually expecting to be stoned at every hour of every day; it’s simply that I could be if I wanted to.
It’s entirely possible, after all, that free will is an illusion. It may be that we live in an utterly deterministic universe and that everything we do is just the playing out of physical laws ever since the dawn of time. In that case, the very idea that what I do with my days is up to me is absurd. Yoga, cycling, and pot might just was well be napping, skeet-shooting, and beef for all the difference it would make. Thankfully, if that is the case, then there’s nothing any of us can do (or could ever have done) about it.
I’m sympathetic to the philosophical position known as “Compatibilism” or “soft determinism.” According to the Compatibilist view, we can essentially set aside the question of whether the universe is deterministic or not because, in our own lives, at least, we can distinguish between choices that are forced upon on us and those that are not. I may be no freer in my decision to loan you five bucks when you kindly ask for it than I am when you hold a gun to my head and demand that I do, but it sure feels that way. Consequently, I can speak of my actions in the former case as “free” even if, technically, they’re not.
Thus, I am free to smoke a joint, even if I don’t.
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