Thinking, Part Three

 Waiting to start work - the taxi arrived early - trying to rev myself up on nicotine snd caffeine while standing outside the convenience store next to the restaurant, and thinking of David Hume still. 

This is the sun coming up:

I need new shoes, a new belt, a cheaper place to live, a laptop to revise my manuscripts, but two thoughts predominate. First, a hot bath to soak away the pain in my joints. Secondly, causation.

I googled David Hume and causation and found this from.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

ing what our impression of necessity amounts to. As causation, at base, involves only matters of fact, Hume once again challenges us to consider what we can know of the constituent impressions of causation. Once more, all we can come up with is an experienced constant conjunction. Of the common understanding of causality, Hume points out that we never have an impression of efficacy. Because of this, our notion of causal law seems to be a mere presentiment that the constant conjunction will continue to be constant, some certainty that this mysterious union will persist....

Seems to me we edit our impressions of reality as we edit a piece of writing. The editing could be to fit within our prejudices or it could be limited by our imaginations or or it could be our limited knowledge imposes restraints. Why else have revisionist histories or multiple perspective narratives other than the limitations of our own perspectives? I look back on my life seeing a swirl of chaos - something  I actually welcomed at one time for a long stretch of my life - where others want to impose a simple narrative. We fear chaos. I see it now as a precursor to a nihilism that begets despondency.

I cannot deny the several paths that got me here. Doing so feels like I validate what I deny and by validating give permission to repeat those actions.

Time for work.

sch