what choices we have aren't ever really free
we're born into places languages broad themes
we're faced with cultural givens shared memes
the mass of leaves is really a great tree
its roots spread out from ocean unto sea
the bird that in its upper branches screams
is our projection comes from darkest dreams
its only vocables those that we decree
through bast and bark and branches we connect
each to the other but in modes allowed
by life and history each little thing we say
comes from our past in modes we cannot reject
each of us though single is a mighty crowd
and in our growth we share a common way
26 January 2007
daring to eat a peach
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5 comments:
No such thing as freewill?
Our choices are constrained by the givens we find ourselves in.
Of course, but that's not the same as what your first line seems to imply. Like Donald Kingsbury wrote in Pyschohistorical Crisis, his homage to Asimov's Psychohistory, our choices are indeed limited, but just because one can't build a house on the surface of a star doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other places where we can choose to build houses. That's not quite what he said, but that was the general idea, if I remember correctly.
Or, if you begin a poem on a specific subject using for a specific structure, that doesn't mean that ther's only one specific poem that'll come out of your head.
(Trust a computer programmer to take the subject of a poem and come up with such comments.)
I thought that was the point. I wrote 'aren't ever really free'. I wanted to suggest that we think we can make choices freely, but we confront constraints which restrict the kinds of choices we can make.
True, we are limited in our choices.
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