This is a fine appreciation. I read about half of MwQ many years ago, and I keep meaning to go back to it and finish what I started (even if the author didn't). The essayistic nature of the book is one of the best things about it (and tends to run contrary to how we're "supposed" to write fiction nowadays). As you noted, there's a lot of humor, and this helps.
Knowing I'm unlikely to predict the next calamity and knowing that If I were unencumbered, I would be unlikely to do great things, is not really knowing. From experience, that indeed, neither are certainties, is strange comfort, but the comfort of inaccurate prediction. If we are looking, we have inklings. We have inklings of inklings - recursion of the mind. There is your soul, an emergent property of feedback. ;-)
This is a fine appreciation. I read about half of MwQ many years ago, and I keep meaning to go back to it and finish what I started (even if the author didn't). The essayistic nature of the book is one of the best things about it (and tends to run contrary to how we're "supposed" to write fiction nowadays). As you noted, there's a lot of humor, and this helps.
Knowing I'm unlikely to predict the next calamity and knowing that If I were unencumbered, I would be unlikely to do great things, is not really knowing. From experience, that indeed, neither are certainties, is strange comfort, but the comfort of inaccurate prediction. If we are looking, we have inklings. We have inklings of inklings - recursion of the mind. There is your soul, an emergent property of feedback. ;-)
The mind perceiving itself — we have always looked for something there.