About to begin reading introductory material on “What is Connectivism?” and anticipating the next topic, “Rethinking epistemology: Connective knowledge.”

Trivia: There are around 1600 registered participants in this course.

Man is (not!) free, and (so, naturally) everywhere he is in chains.
In the land of illusion we can be free.

A really, really, really good way to upset someone is to tell them they have no free will, that they are not free, that they have no freedom.

But, really, why all the fuss?

Consider this:

1. The notion of free will is incoherent with what we know to be the current state of affairs in the world (physical laws, both Newtonian and quantum) and what we know to be our physical and chemical make-up.

2. Therefore, the only thing we possess when we say we have free will is the illusion of free will.

But:

1. We are reluctant to renounce our freedom despite the logical incompatibility of freedom and determinism because: Historically, the notion of freedom is what allows our code of moral responsibility to function justly. Also, freedom allows us to claim desert and distribute justice (Smilansky, Saul, “Free Will: From Nature to Illusion”, 2001). And it is freedom that allows us to live as active agents in the world, allows us to be creative, to form significant and valuable relationships with others, to fall in love, to live with dignity, and to be the rational and civilised beings we believe we are.

2. Also, despite the looming threat of determinism, we still feel free. When it comes to acting on our desires, we have a clear sense of choosing between two or more alternative courses of action and tend to deliberate between them, we consider reasons for and against, and when we come to make a decision to act, we feel that we have done so with cause, that it was up to us, and that had we chosen to, we could have done otherwise.

A brief history of thought on free will:

Plato and Aristotle defined free will as an attribute of any agent that also exhibits a capacity for intellect. Aquinas said the same. Hume stressed the ability to act or to not act based on one’s determination and will and Hobbes maintained that free will is a the ability to act without external impediments.
Compatibilists are the cool philosophers who admirably aim to reconcile free will with determinism by claiming, for example, a difference between being coerced or manipulated to act or will, and being constrained to do so. Our actions and choices and desires very often feel unconstrained even if they might be caused.

Other interesting and persuasive theories are Harry Frankfurt’s* hierarchical model of desires, where humans have the capacity to develop second-order desires, those desires which concern wanting the sort of will we want to have, and John Martin Fischer’s* reasons-responsive model where humans have the capacity to respond to and act according to certain reasons and rational considerations. These theories show that humans exhibit free will, albeit at a limited level.

Smilansky’s ‘accusation’ of shallowness!

Smilansky calls any view that seeks to make free will compatible with determinism “shallow” because, while perfectly valid at a functional and practical level, compatibilist theories always ignore the ultimate reality of our existence, that things simply are the way they are and our level of control over our actions and choices, while real and significant at the social and practical level, is actually very limited.
Why? Because determinism rules.

A brief word about determinism:

Determinism is the thesis that given the past and the laws of physics or nature, the present could not have been otherwise. Determinism is a fact of reality, as Newtonian mechanics show, and even when determinism is not a fact, as quantum mechanics often imply, the alternative, indeterminism, provides no relief, since this demands that things happen without cause and that they are therefore based on random chance. If our actions are random or based on chance then we no more choose them than when they are determined.

In a world where Newtonian mechanics prevail, libertarian free will is impossible. And where quantum mechanics prevail, libertarian free will is still not guaranteed, because as Barry Loewer* shows us, Bohm’s theory actually supports causality and Wignerian mechanics support chance. Both cause and chance deny agent libertarian free will, where an agent’s free choices must originate in the agent, and therefore offer “little prospect for gaining libertarian freedom from physics.”

Conclusion: It’s all an illusion.

Shallow compatibilism is cool in so far as it offers the “illusion” of free will, which is positive, practical and preserves the “moral and personal reality” in our lives.

But, we need to simply accept the fact that ultimately the only thing we possess when we say we have free will, is the illusion of free will.

This doesn’t mean that we are creating happy illusions, or that we prefer ignorance to truth. The point is that the illusion is already in place, and it is real enough in so far as it allows us to function as rational and dignified beings, who forge valuable relationships and perform creative activities, who may claim desert for their successes and talents, and distribute justice to those who do bad things. In Smilansky’s “land of illusion” we are able to lead the “free” and, therefore, civilised lives we cherish.
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*Papers by Frankfurt and Loewer can be found in Crane, T. and Farkas, K. (eds.), 2004 Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Summaries and references to their views, including Martin Fischer’s are excellently dealt with in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy’s entry on compatibilism.

I don’t know.

[Don’t say that, say something humble and brave, about wandering and not being lost and how I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Quote a poet. Or a philosopher. Do not quote Star Trek. Please.]

I know who I am but I’m not going to tell you.

What do you write?

I write long fiction and short fiction. But mostly short fiction.

[Say literary fiction. Ethnic! I write ethnic literary fiction. I write ethnic literary fiction and magic realism. And Indian Writing in English, don’t forget to mention that. I write ethnic Indian magic literary realism English fiction. Writing.]

Actually I don’t write long fiction at all. That was a lie.

Why do you write what you write?

I write what I write because I believe I can find a cure for dengue fever through short stories.

[I write what I write because I am a magic golden rockstar.]

I write what I write because if I don’t, nothing will happen.

Why should we read what you write?

You should read what I write because there’s usually an insect in there somewhere. Moths. Sometimes butterflies. Usually moths though.

[You should read what I write because it will make you smarter and enlarge some parts of your body while it shrinks others. You should read my writing because it will save the whales. Every time someone reads what I write, a kitten dies. I mean it flies.]

And bewildered men. You get insects and bewildered men, what better reason do you need to read something?

Is the world a better place because of what you write?

No.

[Yes.]

No.

Ok, yes. Though there’s a really good chance that my writing has made everything a little bit worse on a global scale. But that’s just being egotistical, no?

Yes.

–

Kuzhali Manickavel’s debut story collection Insects Are Just Like You and Me Except Some of Them Have Wings is now available via Amazon and Target.

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Previously on the Five Minute Interview.

A mass of fearons or is that leaptons trying to make sense of the world. No seriously I am just trying to make sense of the conflict that is life. We are given desires and dreams and then often the inability to make them real cos life comes along and makes it impossible. Sometimes I’d rather just be a fox.

What do you write?

Leaptonistra or is that fearonism? Dunno fiction trying to make sense of the world.

Why do you write what you write?

I have no choice though others would say dogpoo to that and that we have lots of choices to go where and do what we want. They should tell that to my uncommercial fingertips.

Why should we read what you write?

Cos it sounds pretty and if you let the rhythms work on you (on your leaptons that is you of course) the meanings will make you think as they sink into your brains.

Is the world a better place because of what you write?

Of course! It’s a trip; a journey an adventure into other modes and thinking - it takes you elsewhere for a few hours and with more lasting foundation than the latest Jeffery Deaver!

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Previously on the Five Minute Interview.

It’s only when I crossed 40 that I realized I should do the thing I love the most, to write. So you could say it’s only since the last few years that I have no hesitation in calling myself a writer.

What do you write?

At the moment equal doses of fiction and nonfiction. Some years back it was only fiction and I did get success but not in the amounts I craved. So, to not let despair overwhelm me, I also began to dabble in non fiction—features on places, peoples, events, wild life, and even that strange but perfectly satisfying exercise called creative nonfiction.

Why do you write what you write?

I think I have a viewpoint on things and people that would interest others.

Why should we read what you write?

You know most of us writers lug around this baggage of self importance, this deep conviction that what we have to say is of critical value to the rest of humanity. I am no exception. Except that sometimes I hear twenty or thirty voices in my head, howling with laughter, and asking me, so, you think you are indispensable, you think the world will stop turning even for a few seconds when you are gone?

Is the world a better place because of what you write?

In little ways, yes. My son who is an absent minded genius in computer software suddenly put down his beer when we were having dinner one evening, when he visited me after a long gap. “You know, Dad. I enjoy reading your articles.” That’s it. That was all he said. We moved on to other topics. Mostly about his recent struggles and successes.

Some of my neighbors have featured in my articles. They glanced through them and for about two and half seconds a light shone in their eyes and their cheeks went a little pink.

A lot of characters in my nonfiction–like snakes, cattle, crocs–haven’t had a chance to read my articles. But I suspect they would be pleased to know that one more writer has joined a few writers to write about their usefulness to the environment.
Years ago, a sister in law, from the Our Lady of Poor Sisters gang and a teacher in a reputed school in Mumbai, told me that she and her gang laughed non stop for about five minutes after they read one of my humorous articles in The Times of India (It was about my wife and Saddam Hussein).

Things like that.

Of course there’s this big dream that I will one day emulate Updike’s or Greene’s success. Maybe in another fifty weeks or years. But I will.

And thank you, Kathryn, for being patient with all this rambling.

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Previously on the Five Minute Interview.

Of course, tourism companies and museums shouldn’t feel bad about sustaining commercial interests in the fate of the Parthenon (a.k.a. Elgin) Marbles, but guilt has always been an underlying theme in this tug of war between historical rivals, the English and the Greeks.

Nikos Kazantzakis (acclaimed for his exuberant Zorba the Greek, but excommunicated for tempting his Christ) put it rather aptly when he referred to the illegitimate acquisition of the Marbles, “In her sooty vitals,” he wrote in his England: A Travelogue, “London stores these marble monuments of the gods, just as some unsmiling Puritan might store in the depths of his memory some past erotic moment, blissful and ecstatic sin.”

And pro-repatriation Christopher Hitchens echoed Kazantzakis when he wrote, “There is, in one of the museum’s priceless acquisitions, a repressed and guilty secret.”

Underlying much of the popular debate on the Marbles is the outrage and hysteria surrounding the original theft 200 years ago, but the most legitimate argument for repatriation is the motivation behind easyCruise’s support of the campaign and one that is in line with contemporary archaeological theory: that cultural treasures should always be displayed in their original context.

But why should the unity of the monument be more desirable than its disunity? Every monument from the past exhibits its history and the Acropolis exhibits layers and layers of it, a true palimpsest (to quote Kazantzakis) of numerous historical periods. We can never reclaim what was lost when the Byzantines converted the Parthenon into a church, or when the Ottomans converted it into a mosque, or when the Venetians bombed it, or when Greeks recycled its stones to build other structures. So why should we hope to reclaim what was lost to the British? History is full of such wrongs. So why make right this particular wrong? Why cleanse the “sin?”

The historical truth of the Marbles in London and the Parthenon in Athens includes all the illegitimacy, looting and plundering of the past. I say that this “guilty” history adds to, not detracts from, the beauty of the monument.

Kazantzakis might even have agreed with me.

When, in 1939, he travelled to England, he visited the British Museum countless times and conducted his own little debate: In the case of a great disaster – earthquake, fire, Barbaric invasion – which artefacts would he be moved to save?

He spent days on end examining his three most “stable loves:” the Assyrian reliefs, the Persian miniatures and the Classical Greek exhibit. Incidentally, Kazantzakis was able to do this because the British Museum offers a unique opportunity to experience the world’s cultures under one roof; just one more argument often cited against repatriation.

Kazantzakis responded to the Marbles just like any Greek would: with epic emotion characteristic of the most nationalistic Greek he praises the Hellenic miracle, the attainment of the “great secret of perfection in life and art.”

Reading his philosophically charged account of his museum visit with its heightened and patriotic tone, it seems that Kazantzakis would solve his conundrum by choosing to save what, as a Greek, he “must” save: the Parthenon Marbles, his cultural heritage.

And yet, he does not. “I would not choose what I ’should’ chose,” he writes, “I would chose to save the wounded Assyrian lioness, my sister.” The alabaster relief of a dying lioness was carved in 650BC as Assyria fell to Babylon.

Granted, it was a different world back, a world ready for war and Kazantzakian scholar Vrasidas Karalis, of the University of Sydney, tells me that Kazantzakis would have seen the “strong emotions” and “raw animality” of African art and not the “symmetry and harmony of Greek art” as better able to express the “the atmosphere of barbarism and imminent collapse experienced by Western civilisation.”

But what if Kazantzakis were here today? Would he bow to nationalist pressure for Greeks to support the cause and call for the return of the marbles?

I doubt it.

Let us remember that this is the man who saw himself as a human being first and a Greek second, this was the man excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church, the man who was loved more by non-Greeks than his own countrymen, the man who requested “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free” to be his epitaph, the man who knew that one must be at once “soaked in” one’s culture and yet removed from it so as to better see the truth.

I can only conjecture that Kazantzakis would keep things as they are. He would visit the divided monument in Athens and in London and be awed and astonished by the plundered history in one place and the guilty possession in the other. I too wish to be astonished by them, wherever they are. And as a Greek who does not live in Greece I am both soaked in my culture and free from it. Also, since I have no commercial interest or any other other interest in the Marbles, I can freely say to the British, keep the guilty secret; do not cleanse the sin.

This person had always lived in the country. Real country. Cows, vegetable gardens, tree chopping, no running water.

We began talking about country life versus city life, as you do. He had not been in the city for more than a few days and already he missed the country. We were having coffee and breakfast in a little apartment (a box, he said) and he disliked the idea of being so boxed and close to other beings. That he couldn’t raise a loud political point or play loud music or make loud love without the neighbours being in on it all too.

I had lived in the country too and missed the freedom living so far from a neighbour gave you.

Soon the conversation became uglier. I remember the same bias I developed when I was a country person. There was something almost sub-human attached to those who lived in the city. As though, a city dweller, could not ever possibly be happy, because he or she was so far removed from what was essential to human happiness: proximity to “the land”, to what is natural, to what is age-old, to what is simple.

My country friend knew how to be happy. But I was not convinced that happiness could only be found by going “back to nature,” or backwards in any sense.

I’ve been writing some short essays as my alter-ego, Diotima. (The essays will make up a book of essays called Diotima’s Digression. Here is a relevant one on Happiness and the City.

The city life. A necessary evil? Cities are chaotic, crowded, and even cruel. City citizens spend an obscene amount of time in traffic, pay outrageous money for housing and exorbitant interest rates on loans and credit cards, inhale polluted air, and suffer from anxiety and stress.

But despite its many evils the city offers a world of goods. The city offers opportunities for career enhancement, earning good money, and buying the best clothes, gadgets, and homes. There are intoxicating parties and clubs here, tempting dining and drinking dens, and the best in cultural and intellectual enrichment. The big city also offers the promise of finding true love. Yet, even with all these goods, city-zens remain notoriously pessimistic.

But many, many years ago, one man went to the city and he was happy.

The year was 306 BC and Epicurus was thirty-five years old. He set up house (the famous “Garden”), invited his closest friends to join him, became self-sufficient, analyzed-away the problems in life, and by doing so, spent his days in blissful ataraxia (or tranquility) until the ripe old age of 72.

Epicurus shunned the “prison” of city life: the economic temptations, the societal pressures, the petty politics of work and everyday life. He was solely interested in the pursuit of pleasure.

Modern city-zens are also pursuing pleasure. Pleasure in material possessions, pleasure in wealth, pleasure in food, drink, and sex. But while city people the biggest consumers, they’re amongst the unhappiest. Why? Have the teachings of ancestor Epicurus been forgotten?

According to Epicurus, there is natural wealth and there is vanity wealth. Natural wealth is easy to get. It’s just your basic nutrition, clothing, accommodation, transport, and social interaction with good friends. In short: simple life, simple pleasures. Vain wealth is hard to get. More than that, it’s a trap. Vanity consumption can never be satiated because vanity demands more; a better mobile phone, a newer car, a bigger television set, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

Buying and owning things do bring pleasure and a sense of happiness. True. But here’s the flip side: pleasure brings pain. Overindulgence in the city (drinking, eating, spending too much) often leaves a citizen with one bitter hangover (headache, stomachache, remorse over debt). Epicurus wanted pleasure more than anything, but he also knew that too much of a good thing ended up being a bad thing. As far as he was concerned, happiness was freedom from pain and fear.

Epicurus’s recipe for happiness is simple. Make personal happiness your goal. Simply make happiness your goal so that your happiness isn’t dependent on wealth, cars, villas, or fame. Instead, possessing things or not possessing them should depend on whether they will make you happy. It’s the slightest shift in thinking, a mere philosophical game, but it makes all the difference.

Epicurus believed that a philosophical outlook on life cured a troubled mind and increased peace of mind, or ataraxia. This meant freedom from pain and fear, which meant happiness.

But more than anything else, Epicurus observed, a truly happy life is one in which you are surrounded by true friends. True friends don’t judge you by your wealth, success, or status. True friends and true friendships exist for their own sake, not for mutual gain. Best of all, friendship, being a natural wealth, is free and easy to obtain in a city.

It is the simple life, and a bunch of true friends, that brings happiness.

Iris fell in love with George because he didn’t let cybersex interfere with his punctuation or grammar. He always typed with two hands and kept every finger poised over the keyboard as he’d learned in the touch-typing course he took prior to his doctoral studies. He’d taken the course to aid rapid drafting and redrafting of his research work and since remained chained to the robotic accuracy of touch-typing, even during cybersex.

Iris, despite having a PhD in linguistics, was quite happy to assume the grammar and syntax of sex…

If I could work that out, I wouldn’t write at all. I’m a hybrid in that I’ve lived for years in several different countries, including five years in Spain and more than eight years in Argentina. In a few days I return to a London winter. I’m Scottish, and was brought up in a small village in the Scottish Highlands. When I visited London for the first time, I found it intoxicating yet alien. I am a sociable man and dread the periods I have to shut myself away in order to write-during these bouts, it’s goodbye to camaraderie. My athletic life is also important to me. What else? I recently launched “The International Literary
Quarterly“. Regarding writing, I think this relates to seismic events I have been through and my attempts to synthesize these. My early years were privileged as my father was a successful businessman but my parents never married and when he left, we were plunged into real poverty. That stays with you.

What do you write?

I’ve just made my first foray into fiction-a short story called “Trip to Hell” which came out the other day in “Boston Literary Magazine”. The story is based on a relationship I had in Norway before I went up to Cambridge. Given that I had to write to a 1,000 word limit, it’s over-compressed, but I hope it nonetheless conveys the atmosphere of my year in that country. In fact, the town called “Hell” does exist. For a long time I have wanted to write fiction-prior to this I wrote critical articles, literary translations from Spanish and French and interviews. In addition to embarking on a number of journalistic assignments (I recently became a member of the NUJ) I’ll continue to write in all of these media and soon will write about the criminal personality-this subject enthralls me. Also, a radio play, with an interesting take on an aspect of William Gladstone, is in the offing.

Why do you write what you write?

As I said, I’ll continue writing in all of media but fiction will be my priority from now on. My next story will deal with paranoia. I am very interested in states of mind that border on madness or begin to be madness itself. The great love of my life-to date-went completely mad, an acute attack that proved to be total and, indeed, fatal. Anyway, my next story, and subsequent ones, will grapple with border-line states of mind.

Why should we read what you write?

I hope I will prove to be a strong narrator. In the end, this is the all-important thing. If the story line is not compelling, what’s the point of writing it at all? In general one can tell from the outset if the author has this button-holing quality-the first few lines say it all. Anyway, the writer is lucky to be read at all. There is so much literary competition out there and, apart from that, people have such busy lives, many things to juggle, so I certainly don’t take it for granted that people should read anything I write.

Is the world a better place because of what you write?

Not at all. I certainly don’t expect it to be. I am not a perfectibilian and I suppose we have to accept humanity with all its flaws. There is a murky quality to life which is chiaroscuro, with both light and shade. I have no literary agenda or axe to grind, and I fight shy of all literary “schools”. I do believe that the best writers are “amoral” in the sense that they can see a particular condition from different, and often variant, points of view. I tend to think that those who are dogmatic would be better– with their one-dimensional judgements– to give creative writing a wide berth. I would go along with Keats who gave primacy to “the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination.” In the end, what else matters?