#invariable

source : @cheminer-poesie-cressant​

Je cherchais cette part de la ville qui ne connaissait pas les saisons, la ville fontaine d'un même élan durable, la ville sans feuillage ni fleur, la ville au cycle incertain pour le commun des promeneurs, la ville où l'hiver ne semble pas avoir de prise sur le pavé des voies régulières. Hors des saisons, la ville s'épanouie, éternelle, invariable.

© Pierre Cressant

© Pierre Cressant

Clé de l’orthographe 33 – Participe passé invariable – Sandrine Marcelly

Clé de l’Orthographe n° 33 Les vacances touchent à leur fin, les Clés de l’Orthographe retrouvent le chemin de leur clavier, et c’est reparti ! L’une des difficultés récurrentes dont nous avons déjà parlé, c’est l’accord des participes passés. Auxiliaire être ou avoir, sujet, COD… n’hésitez pas à relire la Clé de l’Orthographe n° 18 pour vous rafraîchir la mémoire si besoin. Mais vous le savez,…

Lousy Tumblr thinks “descension” isn’t a real word. Anyway, so it seems we’ve failed once again. Failed to uphold the virtues of old. Failed to be the better man. And once again, we wallow around in our own filth, get tired of the same old ritual and just barely make it out once more. It’s almost as if one is destined to repeat the mistakes of the past over and over again, in an effort to preserve the unchanging duality of man.

But surely something is different this time, otherwise the result truly is disastrously the same. Perhaps this time we see just how far we can double down even beyond our own limitations? Or maybe there’s a framing of the problem such that its impact truly is recognised as seriously foolish? The former always manages to keep surprising me, I will admit. Alas, the opportunities for such fripperies is fleeting, and time really is of the essence. After all, do we even remember the dream from five years ago? Man, long-term investments and far-off goals are such a pain to fulfill. But people keep saying “it’s totally worth it” or “I would do it over again if I could”, but I think they’re just speaking from survivorship bias.

To delve back into the underworld of questionable motives, what then is the underlying goal this time? Or perhaps it’s a retreat back to the “safe place” as it mostly has been? I think it’s always been the same motivation: the fear of missing out. After all, all the time and effort sunk into such things never eases off. And that makes letting go all the more difficult. So naturally the question turns into: Why is it so difficult to drop off all that invested time and effort into, what some would describe as, futility? There’s always that schizophrenic voice in your head that says these things should be preserved. But at what cost? And when does the quest end?

Well, I can’t say it wasn’t disappointing each time, knowing the inevitable failure of having to abort such ventures. And so the real question is: When does the madness truly end? Completing such foolish endeavours is never an easy task, but I think that’s partly the point -- the goal is to end the adventure such that we must accept its abrupt ceasing.

‘Til next time, young padawan.

Perhaps I should just make this statement upfront for those who vaguely know what I’m referring to: Abstinence is much harder than it sounds. Phew, now that’s out of the way, time to discuss some arbitrary topic on mind to mask the fact that deep emotional conflicts cripple one’s mindset.

As you mayn’t know, the idea of inevitability has come up a bunch over the last few weekends. And not to be confused with the idea of fate, that things come into fruition simply out of chance. But rather a predestination of sorts, versus a repetition of opportunities that only changes by the means of the people involved? Can the two even be distinguished anymore? In a way that reflects the approaches of blog posts past, perhaps we need to establish the ground rules for this analysis. Inevitability - The idea that an outcome would be fixed, no matter what you do. Having the said that, the means by which the destination is reached create other variables that spin off other events that may or may not have an impact on oneself, but those too could also be inevitable. Invariability - The idea that an outcome would repeat again and again without fail, regardless of what one tries to do to prevent it. You could say that invariability is a super-set of inevitability, since it deals with multiple occurrences of the same event. But can some occurrences be avoided?

Of course, these concepts rely on the notion that free will is a myth, as it were. Naturally, my stance would be that the objective truth is somewhere in the middle of choice & fixed outcomes, even if it is a difficult to grasp and understand. But what other options do we have? Believing in total free will dismisses the idea of a higher power, as oneself becomes to judge, jury, janitor and executioner of life itself. But believing in totally fixed outcomes means to say that from Day 1, one was already doomed to fail - there is no hope at all.

But how would you know if something is inevitable or invariable at all? A event could appear to be forced, but only because one was not willing to take action to change it. But if action was taken, and the event is not changed, was it because such actions were not drastic enough to influence said event? Perhaps this is “just my opinion, man”: Is changing the outcome of an event only important because you lose out when it occurs? Suppose we think on this odd example here: Two people are travelling on a road, and before they pass me, I give one of them a bottle of water. For the person who got the water, this is a fair decision - it was my water to begin with, and I just happen to choose one of the travellers to get it. A 50/50 chance as it were. But for the person who didn’t, they might see this as unfair - Why should one person get the water and not the other? Am I just exercising bias? Maybe the water should have been given on the basis of a certain metric, such basing such a decision on a personal quality or as answering a riddle.

What do we make of this scenario? Well, it is inevitable in the fact that the travellers had to go down the road eventually, passing me in any case, unless they deliberately try to avoid me, which would realistically be a bit unusual unless they really hated me for whatever reason. But it seems the invariability lies on my end: These travellers could pass me again and again, and I may choose the same person to receive the bottle of water. But once the outcome changes, the event no longer becomes invariable, and can never restore such a status.

Thus, what does this mean for ourselves? I suppose the only reasonable conclusion is that inevitable events can be sighted before hand, but the result can’t really be determined as inevitable or invariable until such a result has happened. So we really don’t know a whole lot about the future of events, other than the fact that things will happen.

‘Til next time, young padawan.

Henry David Thoreau Quote There rule more

Henry David Thoreau Quote There rule more “ There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau [ajax_load_more container_type=”div” css_classes=”load-more-posts” seo=”true” post_type=”post” post_format=”quote” pause=”true” scroll_distance=”-850″ transition=”masonry” progress_bar=”true”…