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January 05, 2007
With Apologies to Pete Townshend, and to Libertarians Everywhere
I distinctly remember the looks on my college classmates' fresh faces as we sat around the conference table in the honors seminar course on Ethics, and I announced that, after having read the latest assignment, I was well on my way to being a Determinist.
Several of them, most eloquently the college president's son (now a lawyer and general counsel to a related institution), gallantly argued their opposing viewpoints, but I could not be swayed. Several other "Free Willies" had no more sound argument than "God gave me free will, so therefore I have it." I don't remember which particular essay had been given us, but I do know it helped shape a major part of my thinking. (The name Immanuel Kant comes to mind, but I'm not sure.) It's been almost two decades, and I remain highly skeptical, to say the least, of the concept that we actually choose our own destinies.
But wait! you cry. Joe, how can you respectably describe yourself as a "liberal libertarian," a phrase that doubly invokes the concept of freedom? How, even, can you comfortably identify as an American, when the birth of our nation was, to many, the embodiment of individual liberty?
Well, first, it's not a simple thing to be me. But seriously, I think there is a pragmatic engine behind some of the apparent conflict. To participate in the free will illusion is to encourage behaviors compatible with evolution. Plus, we nihilists of a cheerful bent (or am I just postmodern?) are not out to destroy all hope and love. We want the creature comforts, including the social ones (some of us less than others) -- we just recognize that we don't choose what it is that we want. (And, for the record, I'm no Clarence Darrow. You may not have had much of a choice, but you are responsible for those unlawful acts. Sucks to be you.)
There's much more to write on this topic, but you'd get even more bored. I even like flirting with the concept of a "soul" and the idea that there is a cycle of life in which certain segments occur outside of what we know as the natural world. It makes for interesting thinking. When it comes right down to it, though, all of that mystical meandering is like the effects of of nitrous oxide: for the briefest of moments, one "sees" the meaning of the Universe in all its shimmering, interconnected glory; and then the vision fades again.
For more, and much better, reading, here's what got me thinking about the subject:
A recent New York Times piece, courtesy of The Dilbert Blog
Lyrics to "I'm Free" located via Wikipedia
Nature | By joe lance | 10:41 PM