spirit

Humans have a tough time conceiving of things that are neither deterministic or random, but some things seem to defy that sort of classification, for instance langauge. Descartes as read by Chomsky looks into this, but the basics are easy enough for anyone to introspect on: What you say is not random, it's generally appropriate to the context at hand. But it's also not determined by that context, you can say whatever you want in response to a question.

Now you might say that it actually is determined, just via countless things working in concert below consciousness, which gets to the heart of this as a free will issue. Free will is annoying to argue about. Its most ardent opponents simply presuppose that it can't exist, they presuppose that everything is deterministic or random. Chomsky says that it's phenomenologically as real as anything could possibly be and it's only a dogmatic insistence on determinacy and randomness that casts doubt on it. He considers it potentially something akin to a rat trying to understand the concept of a prime number: something our minds just aren't equipped to grasp.

blah blah blah, in short, I buy it. I buy it as much as I buy anything. Human free will expressed in language is a unique thing in the known universe and that's what drew me to study language in the first place, a sort of species chauvinism/narcissism/wonderment (that and jokes). The non-deterministic and non-random is in my opinion a source of wonder and an indestructible source of power. Whatever propaganda or advertisements or pr or intimidation is thrown at it, there's always going to be this force, protected by our profound ignorance, that we can't snuff out.

Still, the forces of propaganda etc work to a frustrating degree to distort and obscure that power and demoralize or numb people from realizing it. It sounds like new-agey bullshit, but I think trying to stoke and harness that power in people is a really beautiful and galvanizing thing to do. There are a ton of ways to do it, in my experience workers fighting the authorities over them is the best way. It gets right to the core of the issue, but I'll probably write about that later.