Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Brian Neuschwander <brian AT beachcitygas.com>]

Yes, Ken.   Percy's long lost cousin, Conscious Will, perfectly points
us to the crisis in ontology we have inherited from the logical
positivists.  When physicists reduce everthing to molecles in motion
with everthing deteremined at the big band, and when our sociobiologists
tell us that our morality is merely an illusion fobbed off on us by our
genes (found in a pocket of Will's jeans?) for our survival, it is hard
to argue that Bin Laden is wrong (or right) or that high school
massacres are tragic (and not merely curious).  American Beauty was the
raconteur of our cultural nihilism at the portal of the new millennium. 
But sadly it went over the heads of most people.  In fact it went even
deeper than the conscious will/determinism debate.  For even if we have
a conscious will, so what!