🆓 Is there really free will? Really? 🙀
Entry#92 on wondering what it means if there is no free will. Seriously, what if there isn't?
#92
I hate to be one of those people who recommends podcasts, but it’s kind of crucial to this entry.
Podcasts. I mean, who has the time?! Well, with work on the go-slow, I do.
Whilst gardening in this sun this week, I listened to Robert Sapolsky and Nate Hagens (on The Great Simplification podcast) discussing free will.
The brain, determinism and cultural implications - that’s the sub-title for this podcast episode.
To save a little time and keep you here, Professor Sapolsky summarised our mammalian existence like this:
“We are nothing more or less than the biology which brought us to this moment, over which we had no control, and its interactions with [the] environment that brought us to this moment, over which we had no control.”
He is a neuroscientist who studies brains, specialises in baboons, and teaches at Stanford University. His position on free will is long-held (since he was a child), well-researched and very, very firm. He says free will cannot be proven. There is not some separate self telling our biology what to do. We are not making conscious choices.
Even reading the blurb to his latest book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, gives you a sense of the enormity.
This is an extremely disconcerting and world-altering proposition to most humans. People get all kinds of defensive. Maybe you are feeling that way too.
But maybe, today, you are also feeling curious or up for some inquiry. If not, probably stop reading now and just chalk this up to one of my duds. If you are intrigued, read on…
Humans love to believe that free will and a sense of agency is available to us - and that we exercise it in the choices we make and the lives we live.
Sapolsky says ‘WRONG!’.
You are just a fancy mammal, living out a deterministic life. You didn’t get to where you are because of your own efforts and it’s not your personal fault that things are working out the way they are.
He is not saying we should throw up our hands and sink into a fatalistic slump, blame ‘them’, or go wild and burn all the guitars and libraries.
Let me share his example of cheekbones to make another illustration.
“The shape of your skull, how symmetrical it is, whether the zygomatic arches underneath your eyes that make your cheekbones a particular shape, it's got nothing to do with free will.
We know bone morphogenic proteins and all of that… it just so happens that in one realm, if you luck out and you have one of these nice symmetrical faces that counts as more attractive; people like you more, they treat you better, they unconsciously are more cooperative with you, they're more likely to vote for you.
So you get somebody who is sitting in the corner office and part of it is that they've got magnificent cheekbones, and whoa, there's no free will! Maybe you shouldn't feel quite so proud of all your accomplishments because your cheekbones are just the first of the zillion things that you didn't control.
But then in another setting, if you're sitting in a defendant's seat in a courtroom and you happen to have those cheekbones that are not of the beautiful type, you're more likely to get convicted. The attractiveness of a defendant influences, for the same exact circumstances with mock juries and experiments, the likelihood of getting convicted. People who are more attractive, African-American men who have less Afro-stereotypical features to their face are less likely to get convicted.
That's not [just] stop feeling so good about yourself, about your corner office. That's: you were more likely to get sent to jail because of this dumbass business about the symmetry of your skull. What kind of world is this?!”
So here’s a picture of a cute, but guilty-looking puppy to break the mood, but keep the justice theme. I bet a jury would conclude ‘not guilty’ based on symmetry and fluffiness. Interesting side note, they talk about a shared love of dogs in this interview as well…
Now, at this point in the podcast, my world was really turning upside down. I mean, Sapolsky was saying that I am nothing more than a cog slotted into a very complex machine with influences and levers acting on me that I cannot touch, let alone control.
He would say, of course you are a stubborn person Michelle, you are rebelling against your sense of responsibility from being the eldest daughter in the family.
He would say, of course the garden is a place of calm, you come from a long line of gardeners and growers.
He would also say, of course you have no criminal convictions or traffic offences. Your symmetrical face, white skin, gender and age mean that you move through society under a sort of invisible cloak that does not alert the authorities to your existence.
But, wait. He goes on,
“If you look at this, and this is depressing as hell, ‘oh my god? Maybe my corner office in my corporation and my sense of self-esteem that I've gotten from that wasn't earned because there's no free will…!’.
What a bummer. Maybe this leaves a big existential void.
If that's your response to there being no free will, you're one of the lucky ones. For most humans on Earth, their experience isn't being given credit for stuff that they really aren't worthy of being credited for. For most humans, it's being blamed for stuff that was out of your control.
A world in which people stop believing in free will is going to be a hell of a lot more humane.”
I’m quite interested in a more humane world. I have a lot to think about from this podcast. What comes up for you?
If we acknowledged our biological advantages and disadvantages as unearned (and did the same for others), would that be the end of judgement? Would that be the start of a more empathetic, neutral era of society? Would we just get on with fixing the broken things and enjoying the good things?
If you take the time to listen to the full episode (recommend) then let’s chat. I’d love to know which bits jumped out for you.
Here’s the episode again…
That is all for today. As always, I look forward to hearing what you heard, saw and felt when reading this.
With love,
Michelle xx