The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom by John N. Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Self-Help Delusion

In our era free will inevitably gets tangled up in the libertarian idea of freedom of choice. But of course even the most ardent neo-conservative will append the qualification “within the law,” thus justifying the most overwhelming constraints on that very choice. This is Gray’s opening gambit in what is an intriguing survey of relevant literature about what free will is and what to do with it.

Traditionally, Gray points out, freedom is a spiritual concept referring to the state of the soul, a freedom from internal conflict, a peace within oneself and with the world. As he summarises: “What those who follow these traditions want most is not any kind of freedom of choice. Instead, what they long for is freedom from choice.”

The source of this aversion to choice is not mystical or aberrant but a matter of common sense. Choice implies uncertainty, not about the facts but about what criteria, what values, should be applied in any factual situation. Those values come from elsewhere - families, one’s social circle, etc. - and are subject to judgment about which apply and in what combination. In turn that judgment is inevitably influenced, usually determined, by desires of various sorts. Without desire judgment would be unnecessary. So desire is inherent to choice. And desire comes from elsewhere, either provoked by others to a mimetic envy, or as a primal urge originating in one’s genes, hormones, or random life-experiences.

Consequently the empirical evidence for free will, or even its desirability, is scanty and consists primarily in illusory metaphysical tales. Most of these involve evil as a character actor - the Demiurge of creation in Gnosticism, the Devil as God’s rival in Christianity, the Sitra Ahra, the Other Side, as the realm of ill-meaning demons in Cabalistic Judaism, the Iblis in Islam which exploits human weakness incessantly, and the Karmic force of predestination in Buddhism which directs and demands re-incarnation.

Despite the variations, all these tales agree that evil is irresistible by the individual. Freedom can only be achieved by sacrificing, submitting, or escaping free will itself with the assistance of whatever higher power is available. Thus the possession of free will implies its absence, while its loss makes it present, but paradoxically without choices on which to exercise it. The concept of free will simply evaporates except as a linguistic premise. It is self-contradictory.

These diverse traditions belie the dominant world-views of our time: the Scientific view of the world (that it can be improved by human thought), and the Romanticist view (that it can be improved by strength of human will). Essentially these tales have cherry-picked from ancient wisdom in a manner which turns freedom into a buzzword for violence and exploitation. The issue is not that these tales are illusory but that they claim privilege over other tales and exclude the others from human consciousness.

The Scientific and Romanticist tales can be maintained only by ignoring the overwhelming evidence of human corruption. What the Scientific and Romanticist tales have inherited from those of perennial wisdom is their tendency toward dogmatism and prejudice. Science pretends to be doing good in the world by increasing knowledge, for example. But most of what Science produces is either wrong or dangerous. And Romanticism has generated a plague of idealisms - the political, technological and social ideologies of the large scale; and personal ambitions on the level of the individual. These are causing untold suffering and planetary destruction.

It is obvious that neither Science nor Romanticism can credibly claim to be grounded in freedom. Nor can they claim to increase freedom as personal peace and harmony with the world in any meaningful way. The combination of the two, frequently within the same mind, have created a toxic mix of delusion, that is to say corrupt illusion, which promises to create a new species of humanity - better, smarter, longer-lived, and more socially adapted than at present.

The eradication of evil and the creation of inner peace through a dedicated technological commitment to an improvement in the species is the order of the day. But there’s a glitch: “Eradicating evil may produce a new species, but not the one its innocent creators had in mind.” Transcending oneself is a risky venture. We don’t know how to do that either through machines, therapies, or genetics. Some might suggest that it is an act of hubris fuelled by that very common evil of human pride masquerading under the banner of freedom.

Like all metaphysical presumptions, free will is a self-confirming hypothesis. Affirming it makes it so because we act as if it were real and attribute the consequences to judgment rather than to the desire which dominates judgment, or better yet to the desire which determines what we find necessary to judge at all. Any such presumption becomes harmful when it is treated as more than an illusion. It’s also awfully hard to overcome.

Illusions, like the language in which they must be expressed, are necessary for the self-reflexive consciousness of human existence. Our ability with language means that we are compelled to live within it and the illusions it facilitates. We have no choice in the matter. In any case we would likely end our lives if we didn’t have them to buffer our suffering, the suffering we cause, and existential dread we cannot confront.

So the issue of free will is really a red herring according to Gray: “What seems to be singularly human is not consciousness or free will but inner conflict – the contending impulses that divide us from ourselves.” Free will distracts us from the ethical and psychological lessons contained in ancient wisdom about the limitations of human ability. Perhaps our greatest step toward resolving that inner conflict is an ‘unknowing’ of many of our most precious illusions.

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