Free Will

At a stress reduction clinic in a local teaching hospital which I attended after an episode with my heart about 20 years ago, I was exposed to an antidote for guilt which goes something like this: If I could have done it differently I would have, the proof that I couldn’t is that I didn’t. This statement suggests that everything is exactly as it should be, including our decisions, and we have no free will. Somewhere in my travels I was also exposed to another notion that: Everything that was in place prior to this very moment was exactly as it should be. However, we have a say in what happens in the next moment. I would like to rephrase the later statement. Once an action is taken, the results of that action are exactly as they should be given the action. And all of the results of actions throughout the Universe are exactly as they should be given all the actions throughout the universe. However, going forward we can make choices and participate in determining what the Universe will look like tomorrow. I want to explore the second statement. The first part of the statement is obvious. If I hit a piece of granite with a hammer in a specific spot with a given force, it will shatter. The way is splinters is precisely the correct way (by correct I don’t mean intended but as it should, given the circumstances). If I struck the granite with the same hammer in the same place with the same force using the same trajectory and it being in the same space at the same temperature, it would fracture the same way. Actions leading up to the fracture of the granite determine the mode of splintering and the splintering is precisely as it should be given the actions. Today there is a saying that reinforces this. Lunacy (or something like that) is defined as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. However I am not sure I agree with the second part of the statement, going forward we can make a choice and participate in determining what the Universe will look like going forward. The granite has certain inherent physical properties which makes it granite, that determine its basic characteristics, like its chemical composition, strength, etc. These will be contributing factors to in how it will splinter. Other elements in how it shatters are, within the family of granite, its unique characteristics that make it this specific rock. These will determine things like the nature and locations of impurities imbedded in it along with the various local bond strengths. Beside this it also has a history that will contribute to the mode of shatter. How long ago did it break off from the mountain? What temperature cycles did it see over the period of its existence? How much water washed over its surface? How did it tumble and fall as the earth moved? Then of course there are the external conditions like the nature and weight of the hammer, the velocity and direction of the hammer head, the orientation of the granite and the precise location of the impact. All of these, its nature as a rock, its unique structure, its history and the external conditions at the time of impact, will contribute to determining precisely how the rock will shatter. This premise should be relatively easy to accept. Now let’s replace the piece of granite with a person and the nature of the splinter with the decision at a crossroads to commit a crime or not. As in the case of the granite, the person has an inherent nature possessed by all human beings. She is conceived through the merger of a sperm and egg, struggles to survive, seeks pleasure, grows, decays and dies. Then there are factors driving her inherent individual characteristics, traits specific to her that she was born with. Broadly speaking, these are her DNA determined by her ancestry, the culture and life style of her ancestors, and the mother’s environment during pregnancy. What did the mother eat and drink during the pregnancy? Was she a drug addict? How much stress was she under? What kind of prenatal care in general did she receive? These factors will determine the color of the skin, hair and eyes, her height, much of her physiological and psychological makeup (nature), her propensity for diseases, and her general health upon entering this world. As with the rock, she will also be influenced by her history. Was the family under stress during the first few years of her life? Did she grow up in a loving environment? Was there someone available to comfort her? Was there a good role model available? Was the family intellectually curious? Did she live in a violent neighborhood? Did she receive adequate health care? Was she educated? What was the religiosity of the parents if any? What roads did she travel during her life? What people crossed her paths? What joys and sorrows did she face? This history also contributes to her physical and psychological makeup (nurture) and will come into play when she is making the decision. What are the externalities at the moment the decision is made? Is it cold out? If poor, are poor people stigmatized, in her environment is such a crime acceptable behavior? So when she comes to a crossroad and needs to decide to commit the crime or not, like the way the rock splinters, that decision has already been predetermined. Is she a good or bad person? That may not be the right question since it suggests she had a say. The more appropriate thing is to recognize that circumstances beyond her control have led her to this point and the question should be what kind of a member of society and community is she. Should she be forgiven? Yes. If the crime is a serious one, should she go to jail? Yes. Though what she does is predetermined, society’s laws should apply, if not to rehabilitate her then to discourage her and others from committing that crime again. (The philosophy and effectiveness of incarceration is whole separate discussion.) This gets us back to the antidote to guilt. If I could have done it differently I would have, the proof that I couldn’t is that I didn’t. The older I get and the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to think that statement is true and there is no real free will for us as individuals. Since there is no free will for individuals, does society, being the sum of its individuals, travel along a predetermined path also? Are we just actors on a stage following a script? If so, the bigger question then is where, when and how was the script written?

"You Didn't Build it Yourself"

A comment President Obama made during the last Presidential campaign got a lot of attention. It even inspired the slogan used at the Republican Convention. Picking up on a response to a question Elizabeth Warren made early on in her campaign which went viral, the President reiterated her point that to succeed a business needs more than the ingenuity and hard work of an individual businessman but relies also on things provided by the population at large like infrastructure, education of the workforce and the system of governance established and fought for that allows for such success. He ended his comment saying “you didn’t build it yourself”. The conservatives took the last part of the statement out of context and used “you didn’t build it yourself” to attack the President. This attack of the Left by the Right points out a fundamental difference between the Right and Left emphasis on individualism and collectivism. The value of individualism, though an admirable trait, has diminished over time. Early man made his own tools and weapons with which he gathered plants, hunted and fished. Later in his development he also planted seeds and bred livestock. This continued over tens of thousands of years. As families formed tribal units and further expanded their societies, man started to rely more and more upon his neighbors and soon, to improve efficiency, started to specialize until full blown distribution of labor brought about the industrial revolution. So when frontiers were first settled by individual families separated by miles if not tens of miles, as in the prehistoric times, families had to fend for themselves. Today we romanticize about the strong, self-reliant individualist with a pistol in his pocket and rifle over his shoulder relying on no one but his own strength, cunning and courage. We overlook the fact that the pistol in his pocket and the rifle on his shoulder were made by someone else who got their metal from someone who mined it with equipment made by someone else. So even as independent as he is, he still relies on others for his survival. As the population grew and technologies evolved, the skill and efficiency with which we interact with each other as opposed to individual behavior becomes ever more important. As a practical matter, with today’s technological complexity, if all communication and information storage devices broke down we could not survive because we have become so specialized that no individual or small groups of individuals have sufficient skill to make even the most rudimentary item. (OK, OK, the primitive tribes who have not yet embraced any of the modern technologies may be able to survive, but only maybe.) I suspect that there are a number of causes including propaganda, underlying the different value placed on individualism and collectivism. Some of them may even be biological. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist was quoted in the Huffington Post on 1/4/13. “To use a powerful metaphor, we have two magnificent information-processing machines inside our heads. Our right mind focuses on our similarities, the present moment, inflections of voice, and the bigger picture of how we are all connected. Because it focuses on similarities, in my mind she is compassionate, expansive, open and supportive of other. Juxtaposed to that, our left brain thinks linearly, creates and understands language, defines the boundaries of where we begin and where we end, judging what is right and wrong and is a master of details. Because it focuses on our differences and specializes in critical judgment of those unlike ourselves, our left brain character tends to be our source of bigotry, prejudice, and fear or hate of the unfamiliar.” I believe different individuals are more inclined to use the right side of the brain others the left. Artists are right side of the brain people and accountants left. (We may have mislabeled the political right and left.) Getting back to “you didn’t build it yourself”. The left leaning people, using the right side of their brain more, and intuitively recognizing the connectivity of things, may by nature be more predisposed to giving credit more broadly and would have little problem with the notion that a business was built with many inputs by different people and society as a whole, not to mention a touch of luck. Yes, building a business did indeed take an effort of an individual, but it also relied on past and current efforts of others.