Chapter One: The Garden of Live Flowers (Janusian Self)
Through The Looking-Glass EXPLAINED
Through The Looking Glass begins with Alice as a White Pawn. Her dream is to become a White Queen, but it won't be easy.
Alice first encounters The Garden of Live Flowers, and the flowers greet Alice very rudely. If you listen closely, however, you'll hear that the Flowers are the wisest of all of the characters.
The Janusian Self
Although it sounds like the Rose is insulting Alice when it says to her, "It's my opinion that you never think at all," It's not necessarily meant to be an insult.
If you believe Sam Harris, Free Will doesn't exist, and therefore the Rose is technically correct - Alice never thinks at all, Alice doesn't exist at all, there is no Alice there is no self. As Sam Harris would put it, Alice's thoughts simply arise from the wilderness of her consciousness.
The concept of No Free Will or not having control over our decisions and actions is a very complex concept and one that has puzzled Philosophers and Priests for millennia.
To give up our notion of Free Will, for example, would completely change the way we treat criminals. Instead of punishing them, we would spend more time rehabilitating them because we'd recognize that if we were born to the same family with the same socioeconomic status, we would have become a criminal, too. If we were born in China, as it were, we'd speak Chinese.
But it's much easier to label people as evil and get on with the cleansing. Life's simpler that way.
Through The Looking-Glass EXPLAINED uncovers the hidden algorithms that underlie Lewis Carroll’s greatest work. Along the way, you’ll learn how you can go from a Pawn to a Queen, just like Alice does.