Thoughts

Heidegger and Laplace. I can't remember the exact quote, but Laplace said that if we knew the initial conditions and the equations of the universe, we could predict everything for all time. This is a commonplace now, capturing the stance of much of social science, and the physical scientists who haven't heard of chaos and stochastic non-reversible processes.

1. Taking such a view might be an attempt to claim mastery, in a weird sort of way. I think we see it in the way economists and deterministic sociologists and deterministic psychologists cite "science" and talk about their disciplines.

2. It is wrong - humans (and many other critters) are oriented forward, trying "open up possibilities" for themselves. At the very least, nature randomizes itself when it gets backed into a corner (the heat proteins creating mutation, the curiosity of felines, etc.)

"Free" competition. It is funny that a certain version of economist sees behavior as absolutely free competition; in fact, without a huge amount of structure around rules of the game, sportsmanship, etc, such competition would be utterly impossible. (1) The state does the structuring. (2) It is very, very sophisticated, with a huge payoff to getting such structuring right. It is really, really hard to allow for competition on one level, while fighting corruption and nepotism on another. Certificating makes this easier, but the whole structure is really quite impressive. (3) Such a structuring allows for class differentiation on a population level, with fuzzy edges at the class boundaries, even while it allows for freedom on an individual level, although a highly constrained freedom. (4) For naturalization, it is beautiful! Combine a structure like this with the common presupposition (Fairclough) that all important choices are individual (Kant) and voila you have a capitalist society without a bunch of whiners!

Familiarity, the congregation, and social action. If a person wants to change society, such a person can probably only do stuff if they are in a context of general social action, a context which gives familiarity and a stock of possible futures with which to assemble new futures. I haven't got this quite figured out, but it is interesting how being at Cal made opened up a different future for me. I also think about the woman who wants to start the skateboard park but who doesn't think that social organizing is worthwhile; her possibilities would be utterly different if there were a weekly downtown meeting of business owners or an Oregon Skateboard Association. And I think the best model for such base-level organizing is the American Protestant congregation; like a Baptist minister told me - get them together three times a week and magic (or the Spirit) can happen. And, finally, I think that a strategy of modern capitalism is to curtail these "congregations" (in a generic sense), because they are so powerful, unless, maybe, for people who have bought in already.

Aphorisms? I wish I could write a dissertation of aphorisms - if I was only evaluated such a genre, I would have been the start of 240A!