Not Exactly A Lost Weekend

 I started this post on Saturday with these notes.

Move over Middlemarch! Readers’ top 100 novels:

Ultimately, even the longest list will prompt thoughts of what we might have included had we been making our selection on a different day, in a different mood. Even a top thousand would result in regret, because the greatest thing about books is that there are an awful lot of them; too many to read in a single lifetime, too wildly various to contemplate in a single frame of mind. Called on to isolate what they think of as the best, readers often feel a flicker of panic – how to whittle it down? – followed by the deep pleasure of contemplating all this evidence of roiling creativity and imagination. We know that the world won’t leave us in peace long enough to read everything we want to – but that doesn’t deter us from the attempt. If lists such as these can never be complete, nor perfect, then they at least remind us that we’ll never run out of reading material.

The list itself. Still a bunch I'v enot read, and several I never had any interest in reading.

Here's an idea: that for all we promote John Locke, secretly we are all Hobbesians.

Finally, a Unit of Measurement for a Certain Kind of Moral Depravity… 

 The Trouble With Narrative History argues that history has no purpose; that is, it doesn't point to some goal that can explain existence. Okay, I can agree with that. That history would lead to a particular destiny put me off Marxism. Whig history with its belief that history showed humanity progressing towards a more moral future would have appealed, but me knowing 20th-Century history, But I am troubled by Alex Rosenberg's essay. He makes much of The Gulag Archipelago  not bringing down the USSR. It might not have, but it did have an effect on people's thinking, Perhaps what bothers me are the claims made for narrative history as the explanation for humanity when it is only an explanation. For I do agree with him about life being an experiment.

So, what should we rely on to cope with the future if not narrative history? The same resource we employ to cope with the biological, climatological, ecological, agricultural, demographic, and medical future: experimental science. We need only figure out how to apply the empirical tools that, with ever-increasing success, have enabled us to cope with nature to our psychological, social, economic, and political futures.

Stories are for children and for the child in us all. Nothing will ever stop us from loving them, at least not until natural selection radically changes our neurology. Narrative historians, like other storytellers, will never want for an audience. But we will all benefit by recognizing what narrative history at its best and most harmless actually gives us — not knowledge or wisdom, but entertainment, escape, abiding pleasure.

 However, I disagree it does not give us knowledge. Histories are the record of the human experience. What we make of that record may be knowledge and wisdom, but that depends on the reader. Where science cannot explain, art might do the job.

 I worked on my research project, went to Payless late in the morning. I wanted to go over to the Farmer's Market but I did not think I could walk over there. The aching was a bit too much. I made it through some movies on Netflix using the Edge Browser. With that browser, I can open Netflix, have it running and alongside it I can have a window open with reading material. I gave up working fairly early in the night. Then I kept waking up throughout the night.

I woke about 7 AM and had trouble walking. Just worn out and hurting. I did not go to church. Later, I spent time reading, writing, and generally being lethargic. A trip to the convenience store was all I could manage. I gave up around 7 p.m.. 

I read part of Persepolis in prison, now Marjane Satrapi, creator of Persepolis and acclaimed French-Iranian artist, dies aged 56. The reason is a shocker.

It is 4:18.  I have a dentist's appointment later today and am not sure what to do between now and then. 

I watched Blonde on Netflix and was impressed. Ana de Armas surprised by being a damn good dramatic actress. I have never been a Marilyn Monroe fan, but watching the movie and remembering some things Joyce Carol Oates said about Monroe, I realized I find the person more interesting than the actress. That whispery voice grates on me.

There I will end this post.

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