The Freedom to Transgress

“Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?” —John Brunner, in Stand on Zanzibar

     One of my earlier Buddhist essays was on the topic of Free Will, and why I don’t think that we have it. In that essay, and in a few others, and on a few videos, I gave some of the evidence for this belief. For example, scientific experiments have shown that the brain starts firing to move a muscle before the volition to move that muscle has entered consciousness. Also, from a Buddhist perspective (which I admit holds no authority over non-Buddhists), the Buddha denied that we have control over any aspect of our mind or body to the extent that we can say “let it be this way, let it not be that way,” and consistently have it happen. Free Will would seem to necessitate a separate individuality independent of the rest of the universe, which is denied by the aforementioned sutta and by orthodox Buddhism in general. And on top of all that, Free Will is simply logically impossible—either something (like a conscious volition) has a cause, or it doesn’t have one; it if has a cause it is determined by that cause and is not free, but if it doesn’t have a cause it occurs at random; and neither of these options, nor a combination of the two, accounts for Free Will. Apparently people in the west tend to believe in Free Will out of philosophical naïveté and due to the pervasive influence of Christianity on western culture, even on people who are not Christian. We have to have Free Will in order for God Almighty not to be a cruel and capricious tyrant, or something along those lines.

     But then, a few years ago, a friend sent me a copy of The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen, which puts forth in a persuasive way the idea that paranormal events (like ESP or spirit encounters) are caused by liminality, which in turn is caused by the laws and rules and other structures which keep our world more or less predictable having weak spots or “faults” between them, which allows seemingly impossible events to happen. One way of generating such liminality is by deliberately transgressing the aforementioned laws, rules, and other structures. And psychological reflexivity, or self-reference, like the sentence “This sentence is false,” creates a liminal short-circuit which can serve as a door to the seemingly impossible. Thus Free Will, which is logically impossible as well as unscientific and un-Buddhist, can somehow exist through the breaking of “natural laws” through the paradox-inducing phenomenon of self-reference. If Free Will somehow exists, it may be transgressive in our universe.

     So transgression seems to be fundamental to Free Will, first by being impossible to begin with. But some religious tradition further emphasizes this transgressive aspect in other ways also.

     For example, consider the story in Genesis which pretty much necessitates the Christian belief in Free Will: Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge—the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of right and wrong, the knowledge of “ought” and “ought not,” which implies the knowledge of how to rebel against God and Nature (as well as the knowledge of how to comply with same). Adam and Eve—assuming for the sake of argument, playing Devil’s advocate maybe, that the story may be interpreted as true at some level—began human history by exercising their Free Will to defy God and separate themselves from the rest of God’s creation. I think it was Jordan Peterson who said that this act of rebellion and Free Will was the beginning of human history. Though of course Genesis would have to be accepted by us as some kind of metaphor and not, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses would have it, as literal history.

     Without Free Will there is no rebellion against God, unless you are a Muslim I suppose. According to the Muslims only Allah has genuine Free Will. Then again, Allah appears to be the sort of cruel, capricious tyrant that the Christians scrupulously avoided: creating us imperfect and then punishing us for that imperfection. But maybe I digress.

     Christian literature is not restricted to the Bible, or to works of non-fiction composed by saints and theologians; much great fiction is also Christian literature, including much that was written by arguably the greatest of all novelists, Fyodor Dostoevsky. In his nightmarish novella Notes from Underground he puts forth an intriguing, and haunting, description of individuality and Free Will. The protagonist of the story has a perverse compulsion to do what he knows to be wrong and harmful to himself and others, and at one point in the story he attempts to justify it. He says that the socialists (who were on the ascendant in Russia even in the mid-19th century) are trying to codify morality along scientific, objective lines, and that someday, if they get their way, they will have charts and graphs showing what is the right thing to do under any circumstance. Thus a devout, or at least obedient, socialist will no longer have any freedom of choice: he’ll simply do what the socialist chart tells him to do—and thus he will cease to have any individuality or self agency. By deliberately transgressing the rules of rightness or righteousness, one maintains one’s own individuality and freedom of choice. Although this explanation of matters was given by a fictional messed-up miserable person, still it is very intriguing to me, and I think there is some truth in that.

     This odd theory of Free Will being the prerogative of an individual trying to remain a distinct “self” receives some support from Roman Catholicism, as well as orthodox Theravada Buddhism. In Catholicism, in the writings of Saint John of the Cross (the Mystical Doctor of the Catholic Church), a contemplative adept who has attained the state of perfection, who is said to be “God through participation,” has mortified all his self-will and thus has become a kind of puppet of God, motivated not by his own will, because he has mortified it, but rather being motivated by the Will of God. Thus, evidently, a perfected Catholic saint has no Free Will, at least in practice. In Theravada a fully enlightened Arahant, similarly, creates no new karma/kamma; and since karma is volition or will he exercises no will, free or otherwise. He is not an empty vessel of God because in Theravada Buddhism there is no capital-G God, but nevertheless he always does what is right…and thus, again, he exercises no free choice…except perhaps for trivial details like which spoon to use for his porridge, or whether to say “bucket” or “pail.” And even if an Arahant does make free choices, he exercises no volition or will, because he generates no new karma, and karma is will.

     So again, quadrupeds without self-consciousness evidently have not even the idea of Free Will, nor does a perfected saint or sage. Only humans who create the transgressive and paradoxical state of self-reference, self-consciousness, have even a semblance of Free Will, which evaporates at the moment of enlightenment. Either the Free Will itself evaporates, or else the belief in its existence, which may amount to the same thing in some paradoxical way.

     At any rate, the unenlightened human of this world have created the belief in Free Will, along with the belief that they can transgress against God or Right Conduct or whatever is considered to be the Good. Self-consciousness is apparently by its very nature transgressive. Which may be one reason why we cannot exist without inflicting pain and death on other beings, simply because we exist and remain in existence. It may also be one reason why we remain unenlightened—not because we don’t try hard enough to become enlightened, but because we are trying, pretty much continuously, to remain unenlightened “selves.” But this last bit is a topic for another day.

     (And by the way, I was inspired to write this due to the statement I read in Stand on Zanzibar last night, which serves as the introductory quotation to this post.)