Finding Freedom

Hey there. How about some FRESH reading material? Usually I'd try really hard to impress you with well written, completely formulated lines of thought, but, eH!  Instead, I'm going to keep things loosey goosey and just take a few ideas and run with them.  Enjoy.

Dear Friend.  Dear Family Member.  Dear, um, Fellow Human Being;

You and I are products of the environments we were born into.  The places we've been, the people and things that have surrounded us, are all a part of who we are today.  If we could somehow be someone else, we would still be the product of the environment that that someone else was born into.  We'd most likely consider ourselves muslims if we were born to muslim parents and raised in Islamic communities.  Likewise, there's a better than average chance that we'd be poor farmers in a third world country if we were born and raised in, er, Nicaragua...

I'm a big fan of some of the top post-punk, new age bands from the 80s and 90s... not because I decided one day, after giving every artist from every musical genre an equal listen, that the Cure was objectively the best band EVER, or that ONLY Morrissey wrote songs that spoke to me as an individual.  No, I didn't carefully decide my musical preferences much like I didn't decide to be raised Mormon.  It just so happened (conditions were set) that I was born in the mid 70s, and that in my formative years (aren't they all formative?) bands like The Cure and The Smiths were big and appealed to young white kids who were exposed to their music in places like Salt Lake City where "Alternative Music" radio stations like KJQ kept new tunes transmitting on the radio...new tunes that young white kids like my older brothers would listen to, then buy the albums, and play them at home where their younger siblings (me) would be playing legos or G.I. Joes or something and think to themselves "awesome!"....  Pshew.

See?  Lots of conditions were in place.  I was not born to like The Cure-it was not divinely predetermined.  The Cure-the fact the band existed-along with dozens of big factors and a million tiny factors all came together to make me a big big fan.  I'm the product of my environment and my genes, just like you and you and you.

The acceptance of this simple idea promotes understanding, empathy, and some kind of solidarity towards people who are not like us.  It suppresses feelings of superiority and exceptionalism.  But the acceptance of this idea accomplishes more than that:  It erodes the cult of personality promoted by Christianity.  It cuts short the narcissistic celebration of religion's fundamental concept of a soul garbed in a cloak of absolute free will.  We are not unique, singular works of art conceived by a loving God whose sole intention is to give us free will so that we can choose to be cradled in his arms for all of eternity.  Sorry to disappoint.

Let's move on.

Dear friend, family member, and/or fellow human;

We are also the blossoming of our genes.  We did not choose our complexion, our height, our proportions, our skin or breast cancer risk, our brain chemistry, our overall hormonal balance, etc...

(Isn't its funny how much responsibility/pressure we place on ourselves for characteristics we did not consciously choose for ourselves?)

We are reigned in by behavioral norms and taboos which are a part a culture which is, in turn, a part of the society we happen to live in.

A special blend of natural and nurturing conditions have compelled us to behave in ways that are social-behavior which has helped us find security and comfort among friends, family members, coworkers, and peers.

Again, free choice is not absolute.

We cannot, of our own power, fly into the air, or swim freely into the depths of the ocean.  We cannot leave Earth's atmosphere and roam among the planets.

We can only see as far and as much as our eyes (and the objects in front of them), optics nerves, and brain allow.  Similarly, all of our senses fall short of what is possible within the animal kingdom.  We should be embarrassed by how common house flies, minnows, worms, and countless other creatures out perform us in myriad ways.

Most significantly, our intelligence (we could call it our sixth sense) is severely limited.  We can only think about one thing at a time.  We cannot command our brain to recall any/all details that it has absorbed.  Our intelligence is limited to the knowledge our brain can store, analyze, and recall.  We simply do not have access to all the information we need at all the times we need it.  Apart from cursory validations from the internet and other second-hand sources, we have very few tools at our disposal for determining whether or not something is true or false, objective or biased.

If we are the products of our genetic makeup and our environments, if cultural and social forces bind our hands and hold our tongues, and if our choices are so constrained by the reality of our conditions, how can we possibly talk about individuality and free will with any seriousness?  Are we deluded when we think (or feel) that we have freedom, or when we value our "uniqueness" and character?

Friends, family, everyone else....

This awareness of our own condition is our ticket out of it.  Free will may (or may not) be a man-made construct, a delusion on par with religion's soul; but awareness of the barriers to freedom shall, at the very least, allow us to escape from fate, from the will of others, from the shackles that bind.

Something happens when a person says "I am a muslim because my parents were muslims" or "I am a Mormon because my parents were Mormon" or "I yell at my kids because my parents yelled at me" or "I like country music because my dad listened to country music".  The realization is made that a personal choice was never made.  New questions arise: "How do I make a personal choice? What should I consider? Are the things that others say are true, really true? What can I really know to be true? How do I feel? What do I want?"

Freedom and free will comes from questioning, which brings us closer to the truth, which allows us to discover all that we don't know, and allows us to ponder all of our choices.

Freedom and free will comes from knowledge.  Simply knowing more widens our understanding, maximizes our choices, and ensures that the choices we make will be the best for ourselves.

When we realize that so much of what people commit themselves to is based on unsupported, unscientific claims, and when we become aware of the specific ways we are compelled to believe things that are not true, we become able to free ourselves from such commitments, view the universe through a wider lens, and act on behalf of all people (as opposed to one narrow sighted cause).

Let's take a break from the sermon...

I've talked about free will several times before.  I'm motivated to find a positive spin on our severely limited freedom.  I guess to me its a very positive thing to shake off the ties that bind (if I can use some popular cliches).  A slave who escaped his chains still had the same universal limits on absolute freedom that you or I have (as discussed above), but the relative freedom he gained was enough to cause him to cry or sing for joy. The freedom the slave gained and the freedom we gain in small parts when we are empowered to make our own educated choices are cause for jubilation.

So let's not get ahead of ourselves and think that we can save the classical religious/philosophical notion of free will from other philosophers who have attacked it.  Everyone should be able to concede the basic point that free will is, in the least, severely limited/retarded.  In essence, in my mind, those philosophers have won the argument.

Instead, let's continue to fight the physical and intellectual enemies of freedom.  Simply put, this is the liberal cause:  To maximize individual freedom whenever, wherever possible.  And to oppose forces that seek to impose unscientific, anti-rational, and anti-humanistic ideologies on the freedoms and rights of the individual.

While we're at it, let's continue to look for creative ways to win back free will from the intellectuals who have so little regard for it.