Free Will

I've not been posting much because, well, I guess I'm not quite sure what I want this blog to be about. Recently I've been really struck by how much material there is on esoteric topics of all kinds, and I've become uncomfortable adding to the information overload -- which has its upside, to be sure, but I also think it's a problem that I'm uncomfortable contributing to. But for now, I guess I'm going to set that aside and see how it feels.

My next series here is about the concept of free will. By free will, I am referring to the idea that we each have the ability to choose for ourselves what we do. Philosophically, this idea is often taken for granted, especially in the Western world. It should go without saying that not all worldviews share this particular idea.

The most extreme views on this matter generally seem to come from spiritual outlooks, which probably shouldn't be a surprise. On one side, we have the New Age idea that we are all responsible for everything in our lives. I've heard this idea a lot, I'm not even sure who its most prominent exponent is. Esther Hicks comes to mind. The underlying principle is that we are all far more powerful than we realize, and in fact we are co-creating our realities and the universe itself. Thus, whatever occurs to a person is his/her creation. Consequently, the victim is also the perpetrator in all cases. More on this later.

The other extreme seems to be the belief that we are controlled by our surroundings in all respects, living out essentially mechanical lives from start to finish. To them, nothing we do can break away from our destinies, subjective appearances notwithstanding. We are small parts of the larger cosmic machine and free will is illusory. U.G. Krishnamurti was a particularly interesting character who seemed to hold this view.

With respect to the first extreme, as I said, its most rabid followers in the West seem to be coming from the New Agers. A friend's partner once wrote a story in which the protagonist killed a New Age guru who held this view -- which was sarcastically served as "proof" that the guru wanted to be killed. A similar outlook seems to form part of the basis of Western society's punitive institutions. The criminal chooses crime, thus proving that he/she has decided in favor of evil... I'm sure we can guess what follows.

The second extreme has its own problems. It can lead to pitfalls of non-involvement or justification for any course of action. For example: "I can harm others in whatever way I see fit because my actions are a result of forces beyond my control. I have no true freedom, therefore whatever I do is inevitable and not my responsibility."

And this brings me to why I decided to write on this topic. It's not that I'm inherently interested in whether or not free will exists. I am not. I think the question is ultimately unanswerable, and I'd rather not waste too much of my time chasing after rainbows.

Why then does it remain an important topic to me? Because we have all made some assessments, whether consciously or not, about whether people are ultimately responsible for their actions, and when. This means that we posses internal models for dealing with this matter which affect how we interact with others in the outside world.

Anecdotally, a relative of mine (a fundamentalist Christian) has long held the view that our emotions and actions are all choices we make. At the time I was interacting with him most, I regularly had insomnia. If I complained about poor sleep, he would tell me (sarcastically), "Good choice." This was not in the least bit helpful and subjectively it also didn't seem to be true. My suspicion is that in this circumstance, his model of the functioning of "free will" had overridden his natural better sense.

What I'd like to do is present a slightly more flexible model of how this works, and I guess with any luck someone will find it useful.

I'll start with another anecdote. A few years ago, I started to develop hay fever at certain times of the year. It is still not entirely clear to me what exactly I had become allergic to (wattle?), but it became so severe that on certain days I was put pretty much entirely out of commission. Going outside was very stressful if not impossible because my nose was constantly streaming and sneezing fits were so extreme that it became hard to walk or even stand. The whole experience was really quite miserable. Even strong allergy medications only helped up to a certain point.

After a certain time, I had begun doing a lot of careful self-observation combined with a few techniques for calming down tensions. When I started to become a bit more skilled in these areas, I suddenly realized one day that I had become capable of catching a sneeze before it happened and calming it down, so that my allergic reaction didn't kick in. With a bit of practice, I became better at this, and partly for this reason, I haven't had comparable allergies since, though my control over the matter is far from perfect.

Now, if someone had come up to me when my allergies were bad and had told me that I was making a choice to be so allergic, I would have told that person to fuck off. But on a certain level, one could argue that the "free choice" model was correct, since later on I demonstrated the ability to make it stop. The problem with this idea should be obvious. To give me a hard time about that would have been akin to yelling at a healthy newborn for not being able to walk. That capacity develops later, and with effort. The newborn does not somehow "choose" to be incapable of the normal functioning of an adult. Likewise, I don't think I should expect anyone else to be able to just stop sneezing.

The "newborn" analogy is not perfect, though, since the ability to walk will certainly develop in a normal human being whereas the ability to catch a sneeze and stop it before it happens will not. This brings up another common problem: The tendency to expect that others should be capable of everything we are ourselves capable of. This tendency is maybe a bit of a tangent to the main "free will" idea, but it's related in that often the unspoken model for how we judge ourselves and others is something like, "Whatever I can do could be done by you if only you really wanted to. Whatever I cannot do is forgivable because I just can't do it." That is, your inabilities are related to your failure to exercise free will as I have. My inabilities are related to the hand that fate dealt me. This double-standard seems to be a pretty common trap and should be guarded against vigorously.

Back to my sneezing anecdote, it should be noted that my ability to stop sneezing did not develop out of any sort of prayer or blind application of some hazy notion of "will power", as though it were an arm-wrestling contest. It did not develop out of any dogmatic notions regarding the capacity of free will or choice. In fact, it did not even develop out of a desire to stop sneezing. The primary practices that led to its development were the practice of extending my self-awareness and the practice of alleviating my natural tensions. I emphasize this point both because I think it generalizes for control over many other aspects of the mind and body, and because some people seem to adhere to the "arm-wrestling match" model of free will at times when other models are probably more appropriate to the development of greater freedom.

And speaking of "greater freedom" -- now we're touching on what I think is the heart of the matter. Gaining a greater control and understanding of some function of one's being -- emotional, physical, mental, whatever -- does not necessarily imply total control over that function. Likewise, it does not necessarily imply anything about one's degree of control over other functions.

This is another common pitfall. Using my sneezing anecdote as an example, it does not mean necessarily that I can be expected to never sneeze. It also does not mean that I am any good at controlling my flinch response.

In terms of "free will", however, it might be clearest to say that I have been able to extend a greater degree of free will into one particular aspect of my physical being. Some people might have seen me write elsewhere that "free will is not a boolean value." This is what I'm trying to get at. Whether there is any true free will in the absolute sense is not my concern. However, I now appear to have a choice where previously I appeared to have none.

One related thing I want to note: Robert Anton Wilson, when talking about Timothy Leary's Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness, has made the point that from the point of view of each successive circuit, those who only function on the previous ones appear to be unthinking robots. That is to say, each one on some level represents a certain degree of relative deautomatization. The overall view is not "once you're here, you're free," but rather, "from this point of view, you appear more free than you previously were." This distinction does not always occur to the experiencer of a new state of consciousness without some external source pointing it out.

What do I hope the reader will take away from all this this? I guess a few things, but these three in particular:

1. Free will is not a boolean value.

2. Judgment of others is a tricky matter. What functions does the other person have real control over, and to what degree? You do not know. Know yourself first.

3. You (yes, YOU!) (YES! YOU!) do not have control over the mechanisms of your being. You function largely as a reactive biological machine (just like how you think all those other stupid people work). This is true regardless of your education. By increasing your awareness and calming yourself down, some aspects of this condition may be partially alleviated.

The methods for doing so are laid out in a variety of esoteric traditions. If you're looking for somewhere to start, personally I think Crowley's Liber E is an excellent resource.