• 0 Posts
  • 6 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 4th, 2023

help-circle


  • I’ll cheat the question a bit.

    I’d like all critics to have standards and to hew to them. I don’t mind if each critic operates by different standards, so long as all critics can articulate their standards and are consistent in their application.

    Most movie critics, for example, are offering their reactions to movies. They may review a movie. But nearly all of them are utterly inconsistent (hypocritical?) in their work. They explain their bad review of a film because of X and then praise another film despite it being just as much X as the film they loathed. If they address this conflict at all, it is with a great deal of handwavium - “This film makes it work.”

    If critics had standards, it would be possible to really compare the things they critique. Without those standards, each thing gets its own bespoke write up. Very entertaining, but useless when we want to know which is better or worse.




  • No.

    I think that people are attracted to the idea of a soul because they would like to think that there is something unchanging about them. A desire for constancy in an inconstant world.

    What I have experienced is wild changes in my own behavior, thoughts, desires, fears, drives, and whatever-might-have-you. Certainly, I am not the same person I was when I was an infant or when I was a child or when I was a young man or - I suppose in a more subtle way - I will be after I finish posting this and get some lunch.

    I argue with myself. Blame myself. Bargain with myself. Pump myself up. All as though there are different selves within me at all times. By this I conclude that I don’t really have a self, but more of a collection of personalities, characteristics, and traits that are more or less dominant at any given moment. I am large, I contain (thank you Walt) multitudes.

    I am comfortable with my inconstancy and inconsistencies. Generally at peace about having selves rather than a self.

    I see no evidence of a soul. And I haven’t the need for one that would drive me to delude myself into thinking I have one nonetheless.