Friday

Five o'clock mornings: you don't want to get up, but you cannot sleep either.

"And a good mid-morning nap."

Oh, yeah.

Friday

"You have a regular Game Central going on today with both the chess and the cards running."

I decided to take the better part of the afternoon off from my serious reading and using the time to whipping up some copypasta from online essays, and while I am doing that, I can give more of my attention to chess, as well as fritter away some nervous energy on Solitaire. It makes for an easygoing day. I am enjoying it. This might become a more regular thing. I have a number of links to favored essays stacked up.

"It makes for a very quiet day, too."

Yeah. It's just, uh ... you know, it's just so calm and simple, there's hardly anything worth mentioning.

"But you know how you are: when you lay off, it gets easier for you to just forget about trying to write altogether."

True enough.

"Maybe you can make a point of giving weather reports every two or four hours, just to keep the writing habit warm."

Heh, it's a thought.

"Or, if you want to try to keeps things a little more interesting, maybe you can comment on what your are reading."

Umm, well, I don't want to turn this into another quotation-fest, but ... if I keep it in my own words, that probably would be better than mere weather chatter.

"Let's try a little of that now. What were you reading today?"

Plato. His "Gorgias". He was convincing Polus, one of Gorgias's followers, that it is better to have wrong done to you than to do wrong. It wasn't one of his most convincing arguments, as he lubed it up with some sophistry.

"How so?"

Oh, you know I'm not really that smart.

"Just try a little bit. You don't have to be Plato reincarnate or anything."

I think he took advantage of some cloudy ambiguity in what should be understood as the consequences of one's acts. For instance, it would be one thing to stab somebody to death and take his money and nobody else be the wiser, but it is another thing to kill and rob and being found out and stigmatized.

Plato, I think, wants to make an absolute moral argument: good is good no matter what. However, I don't think that he really frees himself from consequentialist concerns in his proof.

He makes a beautiful argument, mind you, kind of Christian-like really. It's why I admire Plato. It's just that he doesn't give the 'real world' its full due. In the real world, might can make right.

"LOL Wait, I don't think I get it. Are you saying you would rather kill and rob?"

Well, in comparison to being killed and robbed. It's not an attractive thing to be a killer, especially for a few bucks, but certainly there is more of a future in it than to be killed.

"I get what you are saying, but ... no matter what, I know that I cannot kill anyone. Not for anything."

Okay, but the issue is whether that is the better position.

"And I am not convinced that Plato is wrong."

Maybe. I don't know. But this is as far as I can take it. Sorry!

"No problem. That was a lot more interesting than talking about the cool evening."

I can agree with that. But it does take more work.

"You can use the exercise."

Yeah, but I have never demonstrated any appreciable self-discipline. Sure, it would be better for me, but can I muster the will and the energy? That's the critical question.

"But you have just now demonstrated that you can do it. And it is obviously worth the try, wouldn't you agree?"

Yes. It is worth trying. Just cannot guarantee that I will be able to come across. But we'll see.