A Hard Determinist

  I realized that I was hard determinist in my third year of college while I was fulfilling my philosophy/psych requirement. Philosophy 101: Basic and Grand Concepts (I think) met in the far end of the main academic building at 9 in the morning, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I remember that part because the registrar’s office would never schedule a Senior or graduate level seminar at 9 o’clock.

         It had always seemed to me that people were given far too much credit, and by extension, far too much blame and too many expectations for their behavior. Free will never convinced me as a stand-alone argument for action; one had to want to act first and the wanting part didn’t seem like a choice one made. Christ couldn’t help but be Christ. Charles Manson couldn’t help but be Charles Manson. Manson didn’t choose to feel no remorse for his crimes; he just didn’t. Its something like dominos really, everything happening because of a reason, but not for one. The idea is also, the irony is not lost on me, Christian-like: we are all sinners, “the spider over the fire” held up by a God that hates us, but may forgive us yet. Why shouldn’t It forgive us? It made us this way, limited and not capable of better in the first place.

         So it was another irony to me, that the wall to which I have pressed my metaphorical face, is akin to the one logic challenge to hard determinism: the path of least resistance. The donkey stands between two large bales of hay (the donkey’s synonym the ass could still be applied in my case) and sees that the two bales are exactly the same. There is no way to decide which is better, so the animal can’t decide which bale to eat, standing there until it starves to death. There are books that are piled on every flat surface of my living room, den, and library. Books follow me; I collect them like lonely spinsters in short stories collect cats. Looking at them all after I’ve set them down, they all have qualities to recommend them, which translates to nothing recommending them at all, at least not in particular over the others. So I sit there looking at the books I promised myself I’d read, to use to make myself better. I can’t figure out which to pick up. I don’t pick up any of them. I sit there until I starve.