At heart, man is changeable in Various Endearments

We have always known that we are fighting something, when we strive to be noble. I have no patience for the despair at the biological/neural drives behind man's action. The Greeks knew that a man fought his inmost nature in order to be noble, moral, a man who lead 'the good life.' We know more about that inmost nature now. Our desires, our most basic actions, are products of our programming. Why this should render ethical goodness meaningless or pointless is beyond me. Maybe people just want to feel despair (as if no one believed until now that we were driven by something), and beyond that, they want to be able to do whatever they like with impunity. Only fools have ever believed that the individual lives in a vacuum of his selfdom. The individual, in order to have substance, must be shaped by the world. In a way, the discovery of neurological determinism is a discovery of man's internality, his ipseity. his guiding interiority. Shouldn't we be pleased? Self is regained via the relationship between the chemical and the rational irrational (the brain driven to acts of illogical/non-self-serving morality).

A part of us wants to be good, or to be good things. Heroic, just, wise, blameless, in-the-right. The good guy, or the bad guy with the only reasonable motivations in the entire story. I'm right. I am right. See that I'm right. Maybe we want God, or a god, on our side. Maybe because we want our pedestal erected. Maybe because we very desperately desire adoration. Maybe because our wiring has determined that this is the most profitable way to be via conduits of moral winding-up. There's nothing wrong with that. Aristotle says we should be moral in order to lead good lives. Morality has always had a semi-pragmatic bent. Only now our drawers are in a bind because we understand how man can "go against his nature." He isn't: his nature is just a natural at rationalizations. Whoopdee doo.

Sorry, not being very coherent. Discussing DeLillo with Willow.