"To try to put this clearly, if there is a ‘true’, ‘moral’ framework separate from and superior to those who it works on, that is determinism. It differs from gravity and the Newtonian mechanics of bullet only in how long and complicated of a process occurs before the preordained consequences of a given act within that construct levies its penalties.""Midwesterner", serial commenter at Samizdata, remarks at February 11th, 6.55pm, on this discussion of the free-will or determinism question. I pick this quote out not because of an interest in the philosophical question itself, but because of the act of comparing a chain of physical consequences (e.g. eventually bringing about the collapse of a badly designed bridge), to a chain of moral consequences (e.g. the social disorder eventuating from badly designed institutions).
The comparison ought to be rendered in aesthetic terms, and serendipitously, I came across this video below set to the old BoC track "Chinook" (there seems to be some dispute as to whether the Tacoma bridge was brought down by aeroelasticity, or by forced resonance but either way it's inclusion at 0.40 is apt for my purpose here)....
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