Before end-credit sequences, people always walked out as soon as the cinema screen faded to black (or before, depending on the quality of the film those credits followed!). As this blog doesn’t have a Marvel logo, and concerns a fairly hefty topic, I’ll say thank you for reading at the start, for anyone who decides to read on!
There’s something of the frenetic Toad of Toad hall in a determination to pick up a new idea every time I’m tempted to continue an old one. Heaps of proverbial boats, motor cars and fashionable waistcoats (definitely the least believable…) lie unattended, as the next big concept appears round the corner. In fairness, this is certainly a big one!
Before getting vaccinated, I was asked by an understandably weary-looking volunteer whether I had any questions. Pausing for a moment, I thought of a quip: ‘recent developments in neuroscience and behavioural psychology have increasingly undermined the idea of free will. The centrality of that tenet to our justice system, among other areas, appears to be more and more unstable’
My next thought was that they’ve probably had a long day, and don’t want to hear some pseudo-witty remark after five hours on their feet directing members of the public to one line or the other. So, after a delay that I imagine made me seem slightly deranged (an increasingly accurate impression), I replied, ‘about the vaccine, no’, they smiled slightly and I joined the queue indicated.
The issue of free will is seen by many as largely philosophical concern, and not worth the time thinking about, as it’s just too complicated, difficult, and/or of no practical relevance. Scratching the surface though, the ideas of responsibility, duty of care and criminal liability are embedded in the idea that the individual could have acted differently, but chose a path marked in law and, often, social norms, as unacceptable.
There’s an obvious parallel with mental health, both in the idea that we are in some way responsible for our own circumstances, and that we might find a way out if we think happily enough, are sufficiently determined or positive in our outlook. This will find its home in a different piece of writing.
Hamlet’s speech, toward the middle of Shakespeare’s play, spreads many of these ideas upon a vast conceptual canvas. It’s an astonishingly beautiful piece of writing, and placing it around my own words is something of a painful comparison, but at least gives them something to aspire to!
“I have of late, wherefore I know not, lost all of my mirth. And indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the Earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’er-hanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire. Why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! How like an angel in apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me: no, nor women neither. Nor women neither.”
The soliloquy is both deeply solipsistic, pertaining to the prince’s experience of deep psychological fractures through the course of the play, and enormous in its conceptual scope, placing man below the firmament of the sky, space itself and everything therein. The incredible achievements in science and art, literally incomprehensible to those in generations that came before, are simply staggering in the depth and breadth of their impact on our world, and how we have come to understand it.
It is, perhaps, one of the most powerful articulations of the baffling disconnect between the incredulity we find in our conscious apprehension of the world, the vastness of detail we can find in a forest in springtime, a busy train or a football stadium, replete with brashly competing emotions and a cacophony of noise, and the knowledge that it comes from, and returns to, dust. Every one of us has access to this experience, and a window into how enormous the world inside our heads can appear, filled with ideas, hopes, dreams and fears.
It’s a feeling that we all experience on a daily basis, a potentially illusory phenomenon that we might freely select Häagen-Dazs or Ben and Jerry’s, and the philosophical basis of the free market, that this choice matters, and might be influenced.[1] That we place our moral sense of self in the rightness, or wrongness, in the decisions we make opens less a can of worms and more the door to Frank Herbet’s Arrakis[2].
Some opposition to thinking about free will is perhaps founded in the idea that these fundamental elements of what it is to be human come from the choices we make, and the paths we decide to follow.
It finds its roots in everything we’ve built as a society, and yet loses its foundation without anything real on which to build. When you try and break down the origin of where, if anywhere, free will might be situated in the mind or the brain, you’re left clutching at the straws of initiation of volitional action, perceptions of choice and the ineffable feeling that autonomy simply must exist.
It might be a stretch to say that it compares to the idea of belief in a god, but there are disquieting parallels. It is, certainly, infinitely more comfortable to be able to believe there is some existential reward waiting for us at the end of our lives, and that someone is there watching out for us. One problematic conclusion, to which I have no answer, is that it simply may be better to be able to believe this, whatever the truth might be.
A good friend and much wiser person that I said something in a conversation that stayed with me:
“Pursuing absolute truth at the expense of what you know works comes at a very real personal cost, believe me.”
As enthralling as the problem of free will is, it may be a poisoned chalice. To return to absurdity, in one of my favourite episodes of Friends, Joey puts his copy of Stephen King’s horror ‘The Shining’ in the freezer when it becomes too much to handle. There’s an appeal in placing such ideas on hold, and getting on with the everyday stuff we really should be taking care of, and simply not worrying about it.
Stop reading here, unless you choose not to!
However, I fundamentally believe that’s a morally selfish approach, and that we owe it to ourselves as thinking beings to seek an answer to the most difficult questions available. There is simply too much riding on the answer to ignore it. That said, the personal cost of having a mind that won’t stop asking such questions is, perhaps, not worth the occupational hazards.
I’ve spent enough time rambling for today. Having not written anything for so long, I’m happy just to have put pen to paper again, and finally put some thoughts out there. Strangely, having had one of the best years of my life from summer 2020 until last year, despite the lockdowns and global circumstances, I hardly wrote at all, and when I did, it was still, to use the technical term, ‘a bit of a moan’!
There’s a lot of happiness there, and, having unfortunately left it well behind, it might do well to pick a little of it up again over the next few months, and reflect on how I might rediscover it. Thanks again for reading, and especially for getting to the end!
[1] Influenced, of course, by whether we’ve tried salted caramel or not. The existence of this Häagen-Dazs flavour is the most compelling evidence I’ve yet discovered for the non-existence of free will…
[2] The short version is that it’s a planet full of giant worms that live in sand. The long version is about seven books, and disappointingly light on details on what, I’m sure, are the rich subterranean social worlds of these huge creatures.
theanthropologuy 