You’re walking fast, late for work. The line into the subway is barely moving. A man is walking very slowly, holding up everyone behind him. You’re annoyed. And then you catch a glimpse of him. He’s walking with the shuffle of the very old. You’re inclined to be a little more tolerant; after all, he can’t walk any faster. You look again—no, he’s not old, just drunk. It’s too late for him to sober up, but, it occurs to you, it was once up to him not to be drunk. And now you’re annoyed again.
But why stop there? There are bars everywhere, and billboards advertising the pleasures of spirits. The days are getting colder, and you live in a cold country—a cold country and a decadent one. Everyone drinks; how could he do otherwise? But, again, why stop there? Generous soul that you are, you wonder if he had a bad day, or week, or year, or life— one marked by the kind of suffering from which the bottle promises respite. Can you be sure that he doesn’t come from a long line of alcoholics, helpless in the grip of their compulsion?
You might go further. Perhaps all this was simply meant to be. Recall that old French polymath Pierre-Simon Laplace and his omniscient “demon.” If the demon knew where every particle in the universe was at a given moment, he could predict with perfect accuracy every moment in the future—which is another way of saying that the future is wholly “determined” by the past. The demon, of course, merely illustrates a thesis that can be stated in more sombre terms: everything that happens is the inevitable consequence of the laws of nature and what the universe was like once upon a time. We’re bound to do what we in fact do.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 13, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 13, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.
