Dumbledore's Unspeakable Word (going OT)

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> wrote:
> 
> It doesn't haunt me and it never occured to me at the time that it 
> might haunt me, because I too was a clockwork mouse and
> didn't think about any alternatives. So I am a little confused on the
> time-line. When, if you don't mind my asking, did you think about 
> what would have happened if you'd gone by?
> 
> 

Kneasy:
OK.
What I hope are the last words on the subject. It's amazing what one
is willing to reveal to total strangers on the web even though I've never
talked about it at home. The event in question was thirty years ago
so the immediacy has gone and hindsight, that wonderful medium
of rationalisation has had a chance to produce 'reasons' if not total
justification. Except it hasn't. It happened the way it did and there is 
no logical explanation of why.

The 'maybe I shouldn't have done it/could I have done nothing?' 
thought surfaced briefly a day or so later - after the driver had died,
together with a severe dose of the shakes at the thought of what
might have happened.
In effect my actions were of no consequence  (quite literally) and in 
retrospect it was very likely that the scene could've turned into a 
fireball producing a Kneasy-shaped charcoal briquette. It does tend to 
make you wonder 'what the hell did you think you were doing?' 

I agree with Neri, it wasn't an 'intelligent' thing to do, it wasn't even 
evolutionary advantageous (sadly there were no admiring throngs of 
gullible females to inflict my progeny upon). Evolution is not kind to
those who take outrageous risks, the odds ensure that it never becomes
habit-forming - as the Darwin Awards demonstrate. (For those not
familiar with with the DAs, they're a recognition of those who have
improved the human gene pool by removing themselves from it,
usually by an act of mind-boggling stupidity.) Maybe that makes me
a candidate-in-waiting because I'd feel compelled to act similarly
in a similar situation. Sorry, no logic, no smart justification, it's just
the way it is.


> > Kneasy:
> > 'Life is a mystery' - belongs right there in the Dept of Mysteries,
> then.
> 
> Pippin: 
> But if life is considered as a natural phenomenon, how is it not one
> of the forces of nature? 
> 

Kneasy:
A force of nature and a natural phenomenon are cause and effect IMO.
The moon exerts gravitational pull on the earth - a force of nature.  This
produces oceanic tides - a natural phenomenon. It is entirely predictable
once the physical laws are known. Can you say the same about life? Is it
predictable, both advent and progression/diversity, the result of as yet 
unelucidated universal imperatives? Or is it something of an entirely
different order? Nice question.