FREE WILL IS PROBABLY AN ILLUSION
To be or not to be. That’s not really a question. However, the existence of free will remains a debatable issue. Do I make the decisions which govern my life or does someone / something else make them for me?
A great many of our decisions are made for us by the times we live in. Virtually nobody these days thinks it’s acceptable to be homophobic or racist. But that is not a consequence of millions of rational minds individually coming to the conclusion that prejudice on those grounds is illogical. While a few leading intellects might have realized the folly involved, the vast majority of people have simply accepted new cultural precepts and gone with the flow. Our characters, then, are products of the times we live in. Do we think it’s acceptable not to stand when a figure of authority enters the room? Or to heckle someone of a different race? These questions are answered primarily by our circumstance rather than our innate faculties for reason.
All sorts of social prejudices and customs also govern us. I would love to be a film maker, for example. Unfortunately, in this life independent film-making is incredibly expensive and there are very few positions available doing that type of work. Instead, because Law is better respected and the pay is considerably greater I have decided to pursue a career in the legal trade. Thus, the nature of the world has once again foiled my true self; I am coerced into doing something I don’t really want to do.
Another source of restriction, is our upbringing. According to George Bernard Shaw ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. Our formative years and the expectations of the world which we take from them are probably the single biggest determinant of how our lives will turn out. Expectations and results have an alarming correlation. Parents who demand that their children go to university invariably have children who go to university; those who have a burning love of books will often impart this onto their offspring. Our class prejudices, our life expectations and a great deal of the knowledge which shapes us comes from our parents and their values. And we have absolutely no choice over who they are.
One of the most intriguing ways in which inequality is driven into us is through expectations. Peter Mandelson, hardly a fan of Socratic dialectic, was philosophical enough to spot that in a just society ‘an equality of opportunity’ was not enough, what is needed is an ‘equality of expectation’. That is, people around you and you yourself need to have high expectations if you are to achieve in life. Being an excellent mathematician is not enough if you regard university as being snobbish and pretentious. Alternatively, parents who succumbed to alcoholism and drug-taking may be far more willing to accept the same traits in their children rather than enforcing a work ethic. What you are expected to be is usually what you become. If you are expected to get drunk at the pub on weekday night or leave school to take up a menial job – chances are, that’s what you’ll become.
The Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset noted this dilemma. ‘I am me and my circumstance,’ he said. Our class, age and nationality all make us act in certain ways. Gasset was quick to spot that this aspect of our own character was not chosen, nor was it biologically predetermined – yet it is inevitably going to change who we are.
A child born to a middle-class household with both parents at home is likely to enjoy a more prosperous and cultured existence than someone who is not. Just as the student who can draw on a wealth of financial and emotional support from home is likely to do better in their exams.
However this argument can be taken too far. Those who blame their circumstance are shifting blame away from themselves. When the law castigates someone for a misdeed it does so because each human is fundamentally responsible for their own lives and the course that they take. The suggestion that a character flaw is society’s fault rather than the individual’s is evidently invalid. Society is nothing more than a collection of individuals.
Even so, the individual and the aspect of society they are part of are entwined. That doesn’t mean we should condone violence on the basis that someone grew up on a rough estate. But through understanding what drives people and sections of the population to do certain things, we will be better placed to stop them doing wrong. Understanding and forgiveness are not the same thing.
Why people are who they are is also an important subject for politicians. If we judge where someone is in life solely to be a consequence of their own actions then we are unlikely to help them. If people are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough then state hand-outs and social security appear an injustice towards those who have done well. Alternatively, if we think people who have ‘failed’ in life have done so through no fault of their own then the inclination to give such unfortunates a wedge of cash for their troubles grows.
Thus how we think other people came to be should be as important as who they are.
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