JUD EVANS:
Hi Gary - you raise interesting questions. Who the 'Seattle suspect' is and what he feels 'troubled' about hasn't hit our media yet. Is it a man suspected of being a terrorist?

GARY. C. MOORE:
A Muslim walked into a Jewish Senior Citizen's Center, shot a number of people, killing several.

JUD EVANS:
'Can' is a word loaded with ambiguity isn't it? My dictionary amazingly only gives one meaning for the verb 'can' - 'Able to.' I can [sic] think of lots of reasons why I might be able to do some act, and many reasons why I would not be able to carry out some act. You have made it slightly more difficult by posing the problem in the form of a question - leastwise, American style you have tacked a question-mark on the end of a statement converting it to an interrogative. If you spoke the sentence presumably you would raise your voice at the end of the sentence?

    The bottom line is that we are only 'able to' if there are no concatenational restrictions rendering it possible or impossible. Seems a bit sad doesn't it? A bit of a downer, particularly to individualists like us? Here we are old men set upon enjoying the autumn years of our lives drawing upon the cache of intellectual nuts we have been busily polishing and burying in all our little secrets spots for years - and now what do we find? We find that we are not as free to enjoy our retirement as we thought we would. Every time we want to do something we find that this damn old' determinism bugger stops us and says - Whoa buddy! You can't go skydiving - your lungs wouldn't stand the sudden increase in pressure, and NO! you cannot go and make love to every pretty woman you see - your teeth are half-missing and you have hardly any hair left and your facial skin has dropped around your neck like the top of a rollmop-collar jumper.

   At our time of life - we have metamorphosed into moral mechanisms [talk about Kafka's insect!] that THINK we think and decide independently. In actual fact, let's admit it, we are kitted-out with so many internalised ethical scruples and old-fashioned principles, like offering our seat to a lady in a crowded train, handing over a wallet some old guy dropped on the floor, holding a door open that a woman or older person may pass through before us, and quietly placing our vote in the ballot-box - instead watching the bitch sway uncomfortably for an hour, slipping the wallet silently into our inside pocket, letting the door slam in the sucker' s face or driving to parliament and riddling the bastards with red hot lead. Such are the mean tricks of the existential imperative.

GARY. C. MOORE:
You have expanded what I said about a limited situation with general implications to make it personally about me! Admirable! That is EXACTLY what we should do if
'should' has any meaning whatsoever! The shooting was a 'moral' act of retaliation. All morality as I have experienced it in my overly long life is filled with moral vindictiveness. One thing I think we 'should' all agree with Nietzsche on is that revenge is not only the root of all morality but correspondingly of all real, business-like, exchange value, tit-for-tat evil. Ergo, to be moral in the everyday world, at least I live in, is to be evil. Everyone practices it, everyone expects it in return, no one does anything realistic to stop the ever continuous chain. I am not a good person and do not want to be.

    This constant lust, this absolute all consuming moral desire for revenge gets so much around me personally I get literally nauseated and feel ill for days. To hell with morality. It is worthless other than for killing and torturing people. That, in its actual material effects, is ALL that it FINALLY achieves. Hell on earth. What is the point of an afterlife of exactly the same thing? I had a very bad experience on jury duty recently where it was thoroughly demonstrated to me the Law, in Texas anyway – a very highly moral state – an accidental but appropriate religious/philosophical pun! – is motivated by the most blind lust for pure aimless vengeance possible. Deterrence, rehabilitation, punishment. Many on the jury right from the start said the defendant would not be there in the first place if he were not guilty. And then they were asked if they could fairly hear both sides of the case before making a judgment. O, of course!

GARY.C. MOORE:
'Permission' and 'freedom' in this context mean 'excuse', that is, lack of restraint on whimsical random emotion guided actions.


JUD EVANS:
This is it Gary - us old guys are not content to abide by the normal constraints imposed upon us by the physical facts of the way we are and the laws that society has developed to protect its citizens. We have also put together our own private portfolio of personal prescriptions in order to proclaim to ourselves and others our inherent
'decency' which also adds to the volume of semiliquid-stipulation that pisses on the lingering farewell-party of our twilight years. Yes, we are 'determined' all right - determined to have as much of a joy-free comportment towards death as possible. I don't know when was the last time I had a real good belly-laugh or ran down a hill shrieking with my arms flailing in utter happiness. My enjoyments are all experienced quietly now and in a dignified manner suitable to an old English gentleman - when what I REALLY want to do is to get pissed and urinate all over my neighbour's Geraniaceae ;-)

GARY. C. MOORE:
For its actual result I renounce all 'decency' since that means revenge, also, when carried out in act - such as the shooting at the center. The shooter was being
'decent' for the Muslims dying in Lebanon. So, to balance the scales appropriately and have proper justice we 'decently' kill more people.
But the statement of 'being troubled' intends PRECISELY the field of free choice is restricted. Therefore the person is both 'free' AND 'determined' at the same time. Eliminativist materialists do not believe in 'free choice'.

JUD EVANS:
I guess that by the time that an eliminative determinist like me gets to the age that I am, I will never change, because I do not wish to change, due to the fact that I am self-brainwashed into not wanting to change.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Ahh! You MAY not be able to change but you can analyze and clarify WHAT you are!!!!
There is no rational space where 'free choice', that is, literally causeless choice can operate.

JUD EVANS:
Afraid not old friend. This is it. As one robot to another I offer my mutual sympathy.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Marcus Aurelius and I totally agree with you. One may be forced to act and react. But one can also analyze, clarify, meditate . . . meditation is actually a very nice technique to objectify what is within oneself, separate by definition the many different parts of the self, to detach the emotion from its object, to discover what really composes our desires. A German expressionist dramatist once wrote a drama where he premised Socrates' philosophical bent came from a thorn permanently imbedded in his foot at the battle of Amphipolis where he saved Alcibiades' life. So his relief at dying from the hemlock was, at his most personal fundament, relief from the thorn that was never taken from his foot. Absurd as that may sound, making our inbuilt prejudices ridiculous – though I admit we cannot simply just 'rid' ourselves of them like taking a thorn from the foot since we have grown to love them so much – making them ludicrous does give us a detachment and objectivity to judge ourselves and others, including fictional others, more appropriately.
Causeless choice can be the only possible meaning of 'free choice'.

JUD EVANS:
I don't think that even 'causeless choice' exists either Gary - even 'causeless choice' must be 'caused' by some antecedent set of events.

GARY. C. MOORE:
But the linguistic statement does itself demonstrate to the very eyes the contradiction involved and that if you accept one concept you have to accept the other – which cancel each other out because they are, indeed, logical contradictions.

AT BEST, 'free choice' means 'choice' between rational alternatives about which we have limited knowledge of their appropriateness to the situation therefore leaving them approximately equal because of our ignorance.


JUD EVANS:
A good point! But the fact is that IN SPITE OF OUR APPARENT IGNORANCE our ultimate 'choice' is still affected by some past incidents that provide that little extra catenulate difference to swing us one way rather than the other.

GARY. C. MOORE:; At best. How often do we truly operate in such 'at best' situations?

JUD EVANS:
I truly believe never-ever.

GARY. C. MOORE:'Never, never, never, never, never.' Dactylic, not iambic, is it not, Richard? The unspoken imperative here is that we must act. Must we?

JUD EVANS:
Even the decision not to act is a catenulation - a 'mental,' antecedally influenced act, not to act.

GARY. C. MOORE:
No disagreement, but within the destined cache of our intellectual accumulations are some things that can be triggered by some process that satisfy us more than others. Other forces are already in place and active that are going to change the meaning of ANY action we take. Mere statistical chance in an UNBOUNDED situation means any action we take will, at best, be ineffective in that context, or, at worst, cause utter disaster - as in Seattle. In a logically boundaried and clearly defined situation, random interference will have less irrational consequences, therefore action has a statistical CHANCE of achieving its aim. In other words, it is a lottery whose outcome one takes voluntary responsibility for. It does not seem wise ALTHOUGH taking action maybe personally and emotionally satisfying. But that would be a purely selfish motive disregarding the consequences of the action upon others.

JUD EVANS:
Yes, some outcomes are predictable - though they are never certain. As Hume said [in another form of words] repetitive events are internalised by the brain and we quickly forget our original surprise [and perhaps delight] when we first fired the cue-ball at the stationary target and witnessed the outcome. They become 'predictable events' for us, until the day that somebody replaces the cue-ball with a small, round, fragmentation bomb painted red, which upon contact with the cue explodes and in doing so blows the billiard-hall apart and us with it.

GARY.C. MOORE:
The more restricted and knowledgeable action within a smaller field of more determined consequences has a far greater 'chance' of success while having a far lesser effectiveness than one would desire for an overall situation.
'Overall situations' per se mean a lack of knowledge and control.

JUD EVANS: Certainly - the more concatenational 'variables' involved the more likelihood of success or disaster. ERGO

GARY. C. MOORE:
No disagreement, but within the destined cache of our intellectual accumulations are some things that can be triggered by some process that satisfy us more than others. In other words, whatever the situation, 'choice' of action a greater or lesser degree opportunity for overall GREATER harm than simply doing nothing.

JUD EVANS:
Yet staying safely at home means we are not available in the pub when the 'love of our life' walks in?

GARY. C. MOORE:She is pure trouble, Jud, trouble. Sex is the disaster for the species. Doing nothing means other acknowledged harmful forces are already in place and active - much more powerful that the acts of a considering - and certainly MUCH more than a non-considering, that is, 'troubled' - person whereby THOSE forces determine the real outcome and meaning of that individual's act - which means it was never ever in their control EVEN IF IT HAS A BENEVOLENT OUTCOME.

JUD EVANS:
We are programmed to believe that there is more likelihood of harmful rather than benign forces lurking outside.
'Who and why would anyone wish to be kind or act benignly towards me?' we reason. 'I have no good looks or physical charms to offer, no huge amount of money to bequeath [or be robbed of] It is unlikely that I will bump into another person of sufficient intelligence to stimulate me. I would become bored very quickly. It is better to plump the cushion in my favourite armchair - reach for my beloved [and trustworthy] Tacitus or Shakespeare, arrange a carafe of cold water to mix with my honey-gold Irish Whisky and set Shostakovitch on low enough not to impinge upon my concentration level. That being done - the deterministic world out there can go to hell!

GARY.C. MOORE:
Are we 'better' because we do not act? Would being 'better' here mean personal emotional satisfaction?

JUD EVANS:
Depends upon the nature of the acting.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Once you act, the further consequences are out of your control and rarely open to correction. Therefore not 'the nature of the act' but 'the consequences of the act'. GARY.C. MOORE: Not if we do not act. Are we as troubled as they are?

JUD EVANS:
It depends upon the nature of the trouble. What you consider trouble I may view as a challenge. What I consider trouble you may laugh at and call me a fool.

GARY.C. MOORE:
Worldwide, the exact same grid of cause-and-effect effects every single person whether they know it or not.

JUD EVANS:
Yes, the whole of humanity lie enchained in the 'tween-decks' whilst believing that they are passengers aboard the good ship S. S. Choice.

GARY.C. MOORE:
The matter of degree of effect is merely temporal since, as any situation in the world changes, the degree of effect changes without our consent, control, or knowledge. Conclusion? Hell, I don't know.

JUD EVANS:
But you are driven to find out - and knowing you - you will.


GARY. C. MOORE:
'What we drive, drives us.' Consequences.

RICHARD SANSOM:
Here is a short quote from Heart of Darkness that seems appropriate after some of the remarks by Gary recently:

'Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself - that comes too late - a crop of unextinguishable regrets.'

Personally, I can think of no better statement of an anguished life that was too full of regrets to taste and embrace all that was not regrettable.


JUD EVANS:
Hi Richard: I share your taste here. It is beautifully put and speaks to me like it speaks to you.

GARY. C. MOORE:
Dear Richard and Jud, and Antonio if you have been to Florence and have sweet memories!

Though it is very nice to hear from Richard and that he is persevering in the reading of 'Heart of Darkness', it is truly icing to the cake to hear what Jud has to say!

Now, this quote, to get back to business – which is after all is the material framework that determines the very nature and meaning of time itself for me, something I have not thought about sufficiently but is true – that quote is beyond the point I have read too, or, like most people who read Thomas Harris, I read over it without registering what 'he' said.

I did not say at the time of bringing up the strangeness of Marlow as a narrator in my first and only 'slow reading' , a strangeness Richard has vaguely also alluded to, that in the very first of the story Marlow is NOT the narrator. There are four people present, the Director, the Accountant, the Lawyer and the totally inappropriate and rather disheveled Marlow who does not belong among these representatives of business. So who is narrating?

I assume the quote above is from Marlow's narration, is that correct? I seem to remember some morally outraged interruptions in his telling of the story by the Big Three, something reflected in Joseph Conrad's own censorship [?] of his story, but it is hard to see the quote coming from such 'Let us keep to proper business types' [I hope the irony on my part is not too thick]. 'Okie-dokie, let's get on with it' is more my style.

When the original Francesco de' Pazzi was thrown out on a rope from the Bargello Tower, Sunday, 26 April, 1478, I originally missed, showing I read badly, that he was thrown out with the Bishop of Florence [remember my quote of Rinaldo Pazzi thoughts, 'Honors again? Another chance to endure the archbishop's [promoted?] breath while the holy flints are struck to the rocket in the cloth dove's ass?'] also who must have also been in the conspiracy against Giuliano de' Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent. It seems the bishop in his death agony bit and chewed on Francesco. What a Sunday celebration!

I have never been up the Bargello Tower at the Palazzo Vechio, but I have seen it many times from the outside, including the view from the Loggia, standing beside Donatello's JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES. And if I had then – 1967-1968 – known about this story, it would have certainly enhanced a moment ' to taste and embrace all that was not regrettable' as Richard says. Florence is not regrettable to me, and that is the only thing, in the otherwise horrible film HANNIBAL, I do not regret but positively love!