Lovely paper on the importance of gatherings as sources of fatefulness: journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117 (via … ironically published in '19!)
"Social occasions are more likely than other kinds of time to house events that unexpectedly shift the trajectory of individual lives."
Conversation
I would like some more fatefulness in my life please!
I don't know how to square this with a strong sense of self-efficacy, etc: like, I don't exactly *want* to be tossed around by the winds of fate! And yet it's hard to sail a ship with just the wind from one's own lungs…
Replying to
Interesting to consider why video hangouts don't produce the five effects the author describes.
1. "A special world set off from ordinary live": nope, still on my couch, looking at my laptop, but now it's showing a different rectangle.
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2. "The electrical charge… generated when people assemble together": video chat really doesn't generate that emotional spark for me—but I don't know why.
3. "Worlds colliding": harder to casually meet new people with typical limitations on polyphonic/spatial conversation
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4. "Forced public rankings": video calls feel relatively low stakes; you're not offering up precious seats around the Saturday night dinner table.
5. "Complex choreography (while everyone is watching)": the medium distorts everyone's social grace in n-way chats, lowering stakes
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Replying to
Interesting...would you prefer to be fated to journeys or fated to destinations? It seems to be that 'fatefulness' has a propensity toward the latter...that it may be better to arrive at a port even if it is the wrong one (rather than never at all).
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That's a fun question! I think the former, though I can make a case for both.
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Replying to
Do you like to read philosophy? C. S. Peirce, an early American pragmatist, is wonderful in this regard. He avoids determinism by seeing life as a balance between chance and habit. His paper “The doctrine of necessity examined” could be a good place to start.
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Thank you, will add to my queue!
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