I) Imagine you wake
up in a white box outside of conventional space-time. A drip feed is
keeping you alive by pumping nutrients directly into you, with
absolutely no waste products. What would you do? How would you decide
what to do? Nothing you do would have any context; there would be no
means of discerning one choice from another. For eternity you would
be trapped. Perhaps the only choice available to you is whether to
tear off the drip-feed and wait to die, or hold out for the hope of
escape (which is of course futile, as this is an evil analogy!)
A less evil analogy could
be as follows. Imagine you have been invited into the control centre
of the universe by an omnipotent being. Before you is a vast computer
containing a million switches. There is no way of knowing what any of
the switches do, and no way of seeing the aftermath of pressing them.
Again, there are no meaningful choices to be made here, and you may
as well leave.
A final (slightly more evil
than the above but less evil than the first) analogy could be as
follows. Imagine you are a sentient mind in a vast box the size of a
star, with thousands of liquid-metal tentacles spiralling out from
your core. The universe is now your oyster, but would you return to
Earth? Would you seek out other creatures like you? What would you
do? How would you decide?
II)
Context
is necessary for meaningful choice, and thus for freedom. We cannot
choose without a context to act within. This context is not only our
environment and space in the narrative of the world, but also our
physical limitations. We understand the universe through our bodies.
We are creatures which were generated out of the cosmos and this puts
us in common with other creatures. We are human beings, and though we
may take this obvious fact for granted, it is an essential part of
how we choose and what we choose. Simply put, choice
is not something “pure and detached”, but “messy and involved”.
The context common to all
of humanity, for all of history, is that we are in relation to
nature. The natural phenomena of Earth is a gift which exists before
we do, and which we have played little part in generating. We have
followed plants and animals through time, and they have intrigued us,
given us something to fear, impressed us, or all of these things at
once. We have always lived in a world with nature.
A
world without nature would be disastrous in and of itself, but also
for its effect on us. It would deny us the intuitive pleasure gained
in just observing, say, a tree, with no conscious
purpose
as to why. We cannot articulate why it feels meaningful, but this
does not deny its meaningfulness. It demonstrates the remaining
mystery of our being, that we are not only the mind which perceives;
there is more at work inside us. If we were to destroy nature in its
entirety (a scenario which is possible as our technology and greed
grows exponentially) we would be destroying the background of every
human civilization in history.
III) We are forced
into the world, naked and hungry. We are forced into the small
personal narratives of our day-to-day lives and the meta-narratives
of breathing empires, woven so tightly together that without
intending it we can effect distant narratives. We are forced into a
language, which creates for us a boundary, or foundation, of
word-thoughts. We are forced into a morality, absorbing the values
drummed into us whether we like them or not. We are forced into a
world-view consisting of all the information we uncritically absorb
in our pre-philosophy days. As children we make decisions despite our
lack of understanding, and this is our original sin, not some
spiritual fall, but our immature actions.
None
of this means that our personality is decided for us, nor our
choices. For if you accept that context is necessary for there to be
meaningful choices, and thus some form of choosing will, the fact
that we have circumstances is what grants
us
freedom.
The
fact that we cannot decide entirely what our “fate” will be, that
we cannot immediately overcome subconscious forces and bend the world
around us is all a necessary part of our freedom. Our will to choose
may be messy, it may contradict itself, it may be ponderous and take
time to unfold, but it is
there. Indeed, it is precisely the time that it takes our choices to
manifest inside a context that makes our choices meaningful. Rapid
choices which are instantly fulfilled run against our nature. Rapid
choice, like rapid change, eventually exhausts all possibilities and
leads to a stagnation from which nothing good might be salvaged.
IV)
What happens in this nightmare scenario of too many choices, too many
entrances, all of them leading nowhere? What happens when we have
infinite expectation, no boundaries, no real communities? We
are living it.
It
is known as Consumerism, although this is a euphemism for
materialistic nihilism. Obsession with commodities, rampant and
endless desiring, with no meaning
even
within oneself. This mindless hedonism is divorced from any
narratives, it is atomizing, separating, and fundamentally
unrewarding. It is fleeting, empty, unattached, and nothing sticks
inside the soul. It is the bad form of individualism, an unhealthy
individualism where the individual is defined by what they can have
and not what they are, a mark so staining that it makes all
individualisms
seem wretched. Taken to extremes it destroys all connection to the
past and all concern for the future, all meaning divorced from its
context. The worse it gets the more powerful it becomes; this
goallessness is what keeps the wheels of consumerism turning; it
thrives on the void inside us and spins an illusion of symbolic
rewards to account for it. It is the destroyer of narratives, the
generator of irreverence, whose war-cry is “I
don't care about anything but my own little buzz”.
It is a negative form of
nihilism, where all paths lead nowhere, and there is not even a
personal notion of truth. If we say that free will needs to be
utterly free to be called free, then we are paradoxically left with
the destroyer of freedom.
V) True freedom,
therefore, requires a narrative, individual self-discipline, patient
cultivation, a rock to push against, harmony with nature, a community
to belong to, a great but not infinite variety, a little wildness, a
cause to fight for, a truth to seek, a foundation to stand upon,
and, of course, a lot of philosophical thinking.
Selim 'Selim' Talat
