The Reasonable Price of Free Will

A re-posting of an article I previously published on Medium in June 2020

It has been said life is suffering. The year 2020 would have a tall task to convince us otherwise. Before the virus we were facing climate change, over-consumption, and widespread inequality. Other more trivial matters take up precious mental bandwidth as well; keeping up with dozens of text conversations and online friendships, online bills and yet another username/password to remember, and not to mention family and children to take care of in the few hours remaining after work.

Surrounded by obligations and distressing news, it’s easy to wake up one day and feel we were blindly shepherded to a point in time, without any conscious choice along the way.

Dr Joseph Breuer shared this feeling of involuntary guidance during his ‘talking therapy’ sessions with Friedrich Nietzsche, illustrated in When Nietzsche Wept. Breuer was the most successful and influential diagnostic physician in Vienna—his money, recognition, and personal life envied by every man in the city—yet he still felt a void inside. It took him a chapter-long dream—strikingly similar to George Bailey’s nightmare in It’s a Wonderful Life—to realize what he’d taken for granted.

In classic Nietzschian rigidness, he thrust the commandment amor fati upon Breuer. Recognition of this Latin phrase, meaning “to love one’s fate”, can lead to powerful sentiments of acceptance towards our place and purpose in the universe. Breuer claimed himself free of his despair: “I don’t know what else to say except that, thanks to you, I know that the key to living well is first to will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed.”

The moment we adopt the belief that our choices are predetermined is the moment we fall prey to the internal illness of humankind. This potential for darkness and evil is in us all, as is the spark for light. To be human is to recognize this duality, grapple with it, and make a conscience choice of which shoulder angel to follow. This choice appears to come easier for some than others, but here’s a platitude for you—life’s not fair. The tougher the task, the sweeter the reward.

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden portrays this brutal truth, rivaled only by the book of Cain and Abel itself. Born of a mother, Cathy, who can do no good and raised by a father, Adam, incapable of evil, Cal Trask internally wrestles with his conscience. The desire to do Good is evident, yet wickedness flows from him like profits in a bull market—unavoidable.

Cal plays the role of Cain and his brother Aron fills in for Abel, but unlike in the Good Book, Cal has a savior in the character of Lee, the Trask family’s Chinese-American servant. Although he acts the part of pidgin-speaking foreigner, Lee speaks English eloquently and possesses a deep love for language, religion, and philosophy. He spent years studying ancient texts with other Chinese scholars, culminating in this conversation with Adam Trask and Samuel Hamilton.

“Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—’Thou mayest’ —that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’ —it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”

With Adam paternally absent much of the story, Lee raises and observes the two brothers’ tendencies as they age, and repeatedly implores Cal to make the proper choice. The following quote is Lee speaking to Cal, who feels the pull of his mother’s wickedness taking over him.

“You’ve got the other too. Listen to me! You wouldn’t even be wondering if you didn’t have it. Don’t you dare take the lazy way. It’s too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don’t let me catch you doing it! Now—look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do it—not your mother.”

As desperately as Cal wishes to choose Good, he feels responsible for his brother’s death and tormented by Adam’s condemnation. In the end, Cal receives his father’s absolution in Adam’s final breath and the single word—“timshel”. With that word, Cal is released of the guilt surrounding his brother’s death and free to live a life of choice, presumably for Good.

Photo by Marina Khrapova on Unsplash

Once the acceptance of our fate is made of our own volition, individuality and originality may take root and the human propensity for discovery and innovation may flourish. As Nietzsche would say “Become who you are!”—so long as you don’t hurt anyone else in the process.

Allowing peoples’ eccentricities to burst forth is the method by which humankind progresses and advances forward. Suppressing the differences among us, those which don’t impede others’ physical safety or emotional and spiritual well-being, only leads to stagnation. John Stuart Mill defends this essential nature of individuality in his essay On Liberty.

“Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”

Mill warns against the danger of confining human behavior to a limited and accepted set of actions and beliefs. Not only does it halt the course of human ingenuity, but it reduces any future attempt at achieving diversity in character. A society of individuals who all behave strikingly similar—like bees behaving under hive-mind instructions—becomes relatively easy to govern and bend toward a single purpose, whether that is for good or evil.

“If resistance waits till life is reduced nearly to one uniform type, all deviations from that type will come to be considered impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to nature. Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when they have been for some time unaccustomed to it.”

It’s worth mentioning that not everyone wishes for individual freedom and to live an eccentric lifestyle. The path of individuality means asking questions and pursuing your own answers. Such a path takes effort. But even those who don’t wish for individual freedom themselves should allow others to pursue it, and not condemn it, for anyone’s originality has the potential to teach and assist others.

There are endeavors of originality by men and women which concern only themselves and would have beneficial impacts on humanity, which are censored and disallowed. Mill goes as far as to classify Christian morality, which is deeply embedded in American values, as “essentially a doctrine of passive obedience,” one in which “‘thou shalt not’ predominates unduly over ‘thou shalt.’” On this Mill states:

“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.”

The presence of free will doesn’t have to take on a secular tone, void of God’s presence. My good friend and collaborator Abigail set me on a course of free will thought which echoed many of my pre-established, but ineffable beliefs. The encompassing canon became open theism—that God is present and set the original framework, but then fills the role of passive observer, pleased to let his children make their own choices.

A beautiful analogy, explained to Abigail by a Franciscan priest in South Carolina, is to think of the universe as a chess board. God created the board, chess pieces, and rules of the game, but left the choices of moves up to the players. I appreciate the presence of an omniscient God that still provides the comfort in knowing my actions are my own.

There is no correct answer to the debate of free will, but I do believe one is more rewarding than the others. For a time modern neuroscience argued against free will, as each neuron firing could be continually traced backward—each behavior or thought reliant on a previous one. There was even a theory suggesting our brain decides on actions before our conscious awareness, although this has been discredited. With the jury still out, my question is this: Where is the joy and autonomy in fulfilling a predetermined script? If there’s a choice between believing in a world in gray-scale and one with the entire spectrum of light, what’s the harm in letting in the color?

Perhaps my thoughts on this perpetual question are best summed up by John Steinbeck, again quoting from East of Eden:

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.”