The Good God and the Evil God
The Good God and the Evil God met on the mountaintop.
The Good God said, “Good day to you, brother.”
The Evil God did not answer.
And the Good God said, “You are in a bad humour today.”
“Yes,” said the Evil God, “for of late I have been often mistaken for you, called by your name, and treated as if I were you, and it ill-pleases me.”
And the Good God said, “But I too have been mistaken for you and called by your name.”
The Evil God walked away cursing the stupidity of man.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
✏️ Longevity
The dichotomy of free will and determinism is one that has been pondered for millennia. To choose this or that profession, to act in this way or that way — the world is full of decision points where we are called to exercise our free will. The modern consensus is that all have access to free will, and in many ways, this freedom to exercise your willpower is a fundamental human right. You have the freedom to make choices, and these choices have consequences. This idea has its roots in Descartes, and before him Immanuel Kant. It is in congruence with our individual experience. We seem to feel that we are in control of our actions, that we can generate thoughts as we choose, and that we are the masters of our own fate. This presumption of free will is fundamental to our society, and the things it values — the virtues of hard work and honesty come about through voluntary acts of the human spirit. This notion feels right, and in many ways is right. It is, however, a pre-modern conception of the human experience, and needn’t be in contest with the idea of deterministic destiny from long ago.
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We should have wife, children, goods, and above all health, if we can; but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness depends on them. We must reserve a back shop (arrière boutique) all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude. Here our ordinary conversation must be between us and ourselves, and so private that no outside association or communication can find a place; here we must talk and laugh as if without wife, without children, without possessions, without retinue and servants, so that, when the time comes to lose them, it will be nothing new to us to do without them. We have a soul that can be turned upon itself; it can keep itself company; it has the means to attack and the means to defend, the means to receive and the means to give: let us not fear that in this solitude we shall stagnate in tedious idleness.
Michel De Montaigne, Of Solitude
Destiny exists, with or without free will. Sitting with oneself, one notices that there is in fact nothing but destiny. People enter and depart, but the soul rides alone until the end. To embrace this voyage, cherishing the memories and conversations and shared moments, is to accept your destiny. Life gives the illusion of choice. In reality, everything happens as it was made to.
Vae soli.
💡 Food for Thought
People with the most to teach live like they have the most to learn.
Tim Cook (1960-)
🧬 Paper of the Week — The French health pass holds lessons for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination
Citation: Ward, J. K., Gauna, F., Gagneux-Brunon, A., Botelho-Nevers, E., Cracowski, J. L., Khouri, C., Launay, O., Verger, P., & Peretti-Watel, P. (2022). The French health pass holds lessons for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. Nature medicine, 28(2), 232–235.
The passe sanitaire increased levels of vaccination, but to a lower extent among the most vulnerable, and did not reduce vaccine hesitancy itself, showing the importance of outreach to underserved communities and the potential limits of mandatory vaccination policies.
[…] joy comes from taking things lightly, which is to say, at their proper weight.
—Stephen A. Gregg
Cheers,
AT