April 22 8PM - 10PM (Berlin)
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What would Vimes think about NFTs?
Is @elonmusk fuelled by faith like Anoia and Offler?
Does Granny Weatherwax vote Republican?
Vimes would think NFTs are a scam. NFTs are definitely very Ank Morporkian though.
Not the deepest article, target audience is neither deep Discworld fan nor Philosophy major.
The Absurd
If… there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair [[From Existential Angst to Existential Hope]]
And did not Pratchett do this to
“For the absurd man, it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.”
Like Lu-Tze, we must embrace the absurd and always keep our ability to be surprised alive. This mindset for day-to-day life is perhaps Sir Terry’s first and greatest gift to the reader.
Pratchett does indeed I still a sense of wonder through his books. We are able to see the absurdity in the mundane on the Discworld, and are aware that it is mirrored in our world
Vimes’ reasoning can be understood in terms of virtue ethics, as taught by Aristotle, Mencius, or Confucius, which state that right acts do not depend on some outside set of rules or on their consequences in order to be right, but are inherently right because they are in accordance with certain core values we also deem right.
If you are in Groundhog Day, would you behave ethically every looping day? Or would you be tempted to do immoral acts that cause suffering, because you know they will be reset,deleted?
[[q.humans need fantasy to be human - to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape]]
“How can we know anything?”, “How can we know others?” and “How can we know ourselves?”—Pratchett answers confidently, again and again: Through the lens of fiction. Through stories.
While reading the discworld shorts I felt a warm fuzzy feeling of being home again. Read the Discworld novels from my late teens to late twenties. Waves of nostaliga. Even a few tears as it became cler not that Granny Weatherwax was right, but just how very right indeed she was (The Sea and Little Fishes)
It was a fine summer morning, the kind to make a man happy to be alive. And probably the man would have been happier to be alive. He was, in fact, dead. (p. 299)
Captain Vimes believed in logic, in much the same way as a man in a desert believes in ice – i.e., it was something he really needed, but this just wasn’t the place for it (p. 300)
This was the one that resonated most. It also made me realise (remember?) that the witches may be my favourites. Probably because both Granny and Nanny represent such clear, black-and-white, delineations in my own – and everybody elses – personality.
"Trouble beg an, and no t for the fir st time, with an apple." (p. 302)
"Fools rush in, but they ar e lag g ar ds co mpar ed to little o ld ladies with nothing left to fear." (p. 303)
"Ther e is nothing like a unifor m fo r allo wing o ne to expr ess one's individuality. A tweak her e and a tuck ther e ar e little details that scr eam all the louder in the appar ent, well, unifo r mity." (p. 305)
"'I beg your par do n?' said Letice. 'I said "but",' said Nanny, "co s so meo ne's g oing to say "but", r ight? This little chat has g o t a big "but" co ming up. I can tell.' She knew this was flying in the face of pr o to col. Ther e sho uld be at least seven mo r e minutes of small talk befo r e anyo ne go t ar o und to the po int" (p. 306)
Meetings in general feels like this... See also [[my short meetings]] (note on p.306)_
"The woman, she thoug ht. So that was ho w it was g o ing. It was the same in just abo ut ever y tr ade. Soo ner o r later so meo ne decided it needed or ganizing ," (p. 306)
"and the one thing yo u co uld be sur e of was that the or ganizer s wer en't go ing to be the peo ple who , by g ener al acknowledg ement, wer e at the top of their cr aft. They wer e wo r king to o har d. To be fair, it g ener ally wasn't done by the wo r st, neither. They wer e wor king har d, too . They had to. No, it was done by the ones who had just enoug h time and inclinatio n to scur r y and bustle. And, to be fair ag ain, the wo r ld needed people who scur r ied and bustled. Yo u just didn't have to like them ver y much." (p. 307)
"Gr anny was an o ld-fashio ned witch. She didn't do go od for people, she did r ight by them. But Nanny knew that people don't always appr eciate r ight. Like old Pollitt the other day, when he fell off his hor se. What he wanted was a painkiller. What he needed was the few seconds of ago ny as Gr anny popped the jo int back into place. The tr o uble was, people r emember ed the pain" (p. 311)
"Nanny could feel the sudden r elief spr eading out like a fan. The witches seemed to come alive, at" (p. 325)
"the br eaking of the spell that had never actually been ther e in the fir st place" (p. 326)
"Ther e was a br ief patter ing on the leaves, one of those ver y br ief shower s you get when a few r aindr o ps don't want to bo nd with the gr o up." (p. 326)
"Ther e was a sigh fr om Death. Space, he tho ught. That was the tr o uble. It was never like this on wor lds with ever lasting ly clo udy skies. But once humans saw all that space, their br ains expanded to tr y to fill it up" (p. 337)
"YOU ARE N OTHIN G MORE THAN A LU CKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYIN G TO U N DERSTAN D THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LAN GU AGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ON E AN OTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRU IT WAS. Fighting fo r br eath, the philosopher managed to say, 'Don't be silly.' THE REMARK WAS N OT IN TEN DED AS DEROGATORY, said Death. UN DER THE CIRCU MSTAN CES, YOU HAVE ACHIEVED A GREAT DEAL." (p. 338)
"Her mind wo r ked better her e. When she was down ther e among people ther e was the constant whisper ing of their minds. She co uldn't hear what they wer e thinking, except by dint o f enor mous co ncentr atio n. Even the owner s of the minds co ncer ned seldo m knew what, in the welter o f co ncer ns, emo tions, wo r r ies and hope, they wer e actually thinking at any time. Humans had the mushiest minds in the wor ld. It was a r elief to be fr ee of all that mental tinnitus." (p. 367) (this is from the appendix)
"'Dean! We ar e g oing to mo ve on and put this behind us!' Ridcully snapped. 'Excuse me, Ar chchancellor ?' said Po nder Stibbons, who was Head o f Inadvisably Applied Magic and also the Univer sity's Pr aelector, a position inter pr eted at UU as 'the one who g ets given the tedious jobs'. 'Yes, Stibbons?' 'It may be a g o od idea to put it behind us before we move on, sir,' said Ponder. 'That way it will be fur ther behind us when we do, in fact, mo ve.'" (p. 339)
"'Mr Pessimal wants to kno w what we do her e.' 'Do? We ar e the pr emier co llege o f magic!' said Ridcully. 'But do we teach?' 'Only if no alter native pr esents itself,' said the Dean. 'We sho w 'em wher e the libr ar y is, give 'em a few little chats, and gr aduate the sur vivor s. If they r un into any pr o blems, my doo r is always metapho r ically open.' 'Metapho r ically, sir ?' said Ponder. 'Yes. But technically, o f cour se, it's lo cked.' 'Explain to him that we do n't do thing s, Stibbons,' said the Lectur er in Recent Runes. 'We ar e academics.'" (p. 340)
"'And what was it about?' said the Dean. 'Oh, I don't think it was for r eading . It was for having wr itten" (p. 341)
"'So me o f them ar r ive thinking they'r e clever, of cour se,' said the Chair o f Indefinite Studies. 'Yes, but we so on disabuse them of that,' said the Dean happily. 'What is a univer sity for if it isn't to tell you that ever ything you think you kno w is wr o ng?'" (p. 341)
"Ig nor ance is the key! That's ho w the Dean got wher e he is to day!' 'Thank you, Ar chchancellor,' said the Dean. 'I shall take that as a compliment. Car efully dir ected ig nor ance is the key to all kno wledge.'" (p. 341)
"we ar e giving his sugg estio ns our ur g ent co nsider ation. Put it o n the ag enda for this time next year, Mr Stibbo ns. No , per haps the year after next. You can't hur r y ur g ency, I've always said so.'" (p. 342)
via:: [[II – Interintellect Salon]]