Thanks to my son Sam for coming to visit for
Memorial Day Weekend and bringing along a
couple of books that everyone should read:
#1 The War on Normal People ~ published 2018
by Andrew Yang (b 1975)
Yang's central thesis is to promote the Freedom Dividend, which has received his mother's vote of confidence -- "If you think it's a good idea Andy, I'm sure it's a good idea" (endearing!) -- plus a thumbs up from my son Sam. And if Sam thinks it's a good idea, I'm sure it is! As Yang explains it:
"With the Freedom Dividend, money would be put in the hands of our citizens in a time of unprecedented economic dislocation. It would grow the consumer economy. It’s a stimulus of people. The vast majority of money would go directly into the economy each month, into paying bills, feeding children, visiting loved ones, youth sports, eating at local restaurants, piano lessons, extra tutoring help, car repairs, small businesses, housing improvements, prenatal vitamins, elder care, and so on. . . . most of the money would be spent locally and quickly" (168, 172).
"When I was a kid I just wanted to belong. As a smart person I was taught to leave others behind. We have to snap out of it and start remembering our own humanity. We're all the same people we were before we got sorted and socialized. We're all mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers above all who want the same things for ourselves and our families. We're running out of time. In coming years it's going to be even harder to forge a sense of common identity across different walks of life. . . .
One could argue that it is essential for any democracy to do all it can to keep its population free of a mindset of scarcity in order to make better decisions. A culture of scarcity is a culture of negativity. People think about what can go wrong. They attack each other. Tribalism and divisiveness go way up. Reason starts to lose ground. Decision - making gets systematically worse. Acts of sustained optimism...all go down." (99, 108).
Similarly, from Sam Harris: "Speaking from personal experience, I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics -- by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck. . . . My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future" (Free Will 45 - 46).
to determine that twice two is four.
That's not what I call free will.”
~ Dostoevsky ~
Notes From Underground
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#2. Free Will ~ published 2012
by Sam Harris (b 1967)
Harris is sure that "Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. . . . We do not have the freedom we think we have" (5).
I was prepared to resist this concept and felt unconvinced by a number of the dilemmas that Harris uses to indicate a lack of free will: to write a book or not, to exercise or not, to have coffee or tea, one cup or two, to maintain a healthy diet or not. E.g., "The soul that allows you to stay on your diet is just as mysterious as the one that tempts you to cherry pie for breakfast" (12). Okay, that made me laugh! But, really, do any of these things matter much?
Then a couple of his examples gave me pause:
A. "We are conscious of only a tiny fraction of the information that our brains process . . . utterly unaware of neurophysiological events . . . By merely glancing at your face or listening to your tone of voice, others are often more aware of your state of mind and motivations than you are" (7).
B. "From the perspective of your conscious awareness, you are no[t] responsible . . . for the fact that you were born into this world. . . . You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome . . . Where is the freedom in this?" (34 - 35, 41).
True! I had to admit -- on both counts! Thus, as I finished the book (really just a 75 - page essay that you can easily read and should reread in one setting) that's what I kept coming back to. Whenever I started to feel skeptical or defensive, I simply reminded myself that I had not chosen to be born, and suddenly Harris's insights, of which there are many, made a lot more sense. Here are a few of my favorites:
Sam Harris: "If the laws of nature do not strike most of us as incompatible with free will, that is because we have not imagined how human behavior would appear if all cause - and - effect were understood" (11).
James Morrow:
"Science does have all the answers . . .
we [just] don't have all the science"
(from the novel, Only Begotten Daughter, 90, 187).
[Nor do we have all the imagination,
but we may, at some point in the future!]
Sam Harris: "You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm" (14).
William Stafford:
"COMFORT:
We think it is calm here,
or that the storm is the right size."
Sam Harris: "There is no question that our attribution of agency can be gravely in error. I am arguing that it always is" (25).
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.:
"We just can't seem to help feeling so entitled to free will,
but what does that really mean?"
"You sound to me as though you don't believe in free will,"
said Billy Pilgrim.
"If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings,"
said the Tralfamadorian,
"I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.'
I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe,
and I have studied reports on one hundred more.
Only on Earth is there any talk of free will"
(from Slaughterhouse Five, Chap 5, p 86).
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Coronavirus tie - in: Yang's editors need to update his text for 2020, emphasizing that an emergency version of his Freedom Benefit (aka UBI) has indeed been distributed in the United States.
Harris, writing in 2012 about the use of punishment in our criminal justice system, acknowledges the power of pandemics: "If we could incarcerate earthquakes and hurricanes for their crimes, we would build prisons for them as well. We fight emerging epidemics -- and even the occasional wild animal -- without attributing free will to them. . . . Of course, if punishing bacteria and viruses would prevent the emergence of pandemic diseases, we would mete out justice to them as well" (56, 59).
