Losing Freedom, Gaining Empathy?

Last year, The Harvard Review of Philosophy’s annual theme was free will. In preparation, we read quite a bit about whether free will is something we possess. Although this topic is incredibly interesting I still wondered: Who really cares? Is pedantic arguing over the philosophical structure of the will and its freedom not just a chance for philosophers to exercise their own intellect while arguing over ideas that will, in the end, have no implication on people’s lives? To my surprise, however, these philosophers, and especially the ones who argue that we lack it argue that we actually have the opportunity to live better, happier, and more virtuous lives if we dispel ourselves of the illusion that we, and everyone else, are free.

One such philosopher is Cornell University’s Derk Pereboom. In his book, Living Without Free Will, Pereboom writes that skepticism of free will “holds out the promise of better relationships through release from reactive attitudes such as moral resentment and indignation.” He later adds that, while resentment and indignation can often express important information or inspire good action, “it often fails to contribute to the well being of those to whom it is directed. Frequently it is intended to cause physical or emotional pain, and can give rise to destructive resistance instead of reconciliation.”

Reading this reminded me of two things—one expected, and one ironic. 

The expected thing is a feature of our current social and political climate. I am speaking, of course, about the political polarization characteristic of the past several years. Though it is uncertain how substantively polarized the American public actually is—political scientists and journalists disagree on this point—people certainly feel that we are more polarized. That seems to matter, for in a certain sense, the perception makes it so. If I believe that my ideological opponent and I diverge irreconcilably in our worldviews—and if I think their worldview is abhorrent, unforgivable, or deeply and fundamentally flawed—I am likely to treat them with the disdain and indignation so characteristic of our current political zeitgeist. I am not arguing that perceived polarization brings about actual polarization in the sense understood by political scientists—that is a question for empiricists to answer and for philosophers to leave alone. But I am arguing that “polarization,” the word that to the American public has come to describe something more about culture than about politics, is augmented, and perhaps even constituted, by how ideologically distant we feel we are from one another. Irrespective of how real something like cancel culture is, for example, the bandwidth it takes up in our collective consciousness may be just as important as the effects of the phenomenon itself.

Now, the ironic thing it reminded me of is David Foster Wallace’s famous graduation speech at Kenyon College, “This is Water.” I say this is ironic because I first learned of this speech at Harvard, in Sean Kelly’s “PHIL 34: Existentialism in Literature and Film,” where we read “This is Water” vis-á-vis existentialism, a philosophy whose founding principle is that humans are fundamentally, sometimes overwhelmingly, free (in the Sartrean version). In the speech, Wallace tells the soon-to-be college graduates about the malaises of every day (i.e., non-liberal arts college) living—assholes in traffic, screaming children in grocery store aisles, lifeless and depressed cashiers at checkout registers. He explains how easy it is to let ourselves become filled with anger, resentment, and misery if we choose to think that the Other is radically free. But he also claims it’s in our power to think differently.

“Maybe,” he said, “the lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line [is] not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer.” Or “maybe” the car who just cut you off in traffic is “being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am.” Wallace claims the ability to choose how we think about scenarios like these constitutes our freedom, and so even more ironically, he finds our own freedom in the recognition that others’ freedom is hampered by the parts of life, external to them, which compel them to act the way they do.

A common idea seems to underlie both Pereboom’s analytical and Wallace’s existential thought: knowing the explanation for someone’s (bad) behavior—whether micro reasons like mechanistic cause and effect relationships described by the laws of physics, or macro reasons like a father rushing his child to the hospital—brings into sharp focus that they are acting within a milieu whose bounds go far beyond themselves. That realization can diffuse the indignation once directed exclusively at them. Depending on how we construe freedom (which can be understood both as how we respond to reasons and how we act in spite of them), this may or may not entail freedom’s loss. But the important point here is not how we define freedom. It’s about how much attention we pay to the agent(s) upon which we bestow it. 

I think we pay entirely too much attention to these agents, and it is intellectually, psychologically, and pragmatically indefensible.

Intellectually, it is an unsound philosophical shortcut. It encourages people to think, even if subconsciously, that those with whom they disagree underwent a process of deep deliberation and chose the “wrong side,” making them worthy of moral indignation. Irrespective of the thought or action attributed to them, this vision of the human self, completely free from the environment within which they formed their ideas and values, is simply inaccurate.

Psychologically, it hinders moral virtues like empathy and goodwill, worsening the lives of all parties involved. Here I can speak only from personal experience. I can be a deeply indignant person—when I feel someone has been wronged, or some kind of injustice has gone unchecked, my mind can quickly resort to anger and frustration. When that happens, the best parts of myself (and any human, for that matter) disappear. Caught up in my indignation, I forget to be understanding and thoughtful, and the agent who caused harm becomes an unambiguous villain. Along with accomplishing nothing, this makes my own life worse. But other times, I can do something different. I can choose to think about why someone has done some wrong, or why some injustice has come about. Experientially, it is such a better feeling to ask why (to be curious and interested) than to fill oneself with indignation and resentment.

Pragmatically, and this is the most important point, indignation acts as a significant barrier to change. With few exceptions, if a person—let alone millions—feels a certain way or subscribes to a collection of ideological propositions, that feeling expresses some important truth. This truth may not be found in the feeling itself, but it may begin to rear its head if the right questions are asked. What frustrations with government led to the rise of a populist like Donald Trump? Or why, after almost two and a half centuries of American capitalism, have so many people become disillusioned with it? You could say it simply reflects systematic moral failure on the part of individuals, insist that they are carelessly destroying all that is good about America, and refuse to regard their concerns with real thought, but that won’t get you very far. Especially for progressives, who tend to claim that systems overshadow individuals, giving into the individualism of polarizing indignation shortsightedly abandons any commitment to legitimate change. It only tightens the proverbial rope in our ideological game of tug of war, bringing us that much closer to a cataclysmic snap.

To be clear, I am not calling  for ideological moderation in politics. I also am not saying that no one is deserving of indignation or moral disapproval for what they think. For some, and perhaps for many, that is the right answer. My intention in writing this piece is merely to suggest that we incline ourselves to fixate less on people and their supposed shortcomings. It’s a call to think—to really think—about why, in a deep sense, a person or a people feel a certain way, and to think about what truth they are expressing. Again, moral indignation can be an acceptable response, but we should try to make it a last resort, not an initial reaction. That, I think, amounts to the truth hidden in the cliche “I respect you but not your opinions”—not just that one is more than their opinions, but that one’s opinions come from much more than, and perhaps very little from, themselves.