Consider Decisions, Choices, Real Freedom of Will

Daily choices, thousands a day. many without thought, others with just brief recognition by brain and mind. How many, influenced by the sub-conscience, may have been imprinted on the individual before self-awareness or even birth?

Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross).

In jest, I’d rather be writing about deciding upon the type of chocolate to have. Decisions have consequences upon other decisions, upon others, upon our soul and the soul of others. How do choices reflect/reflected by our faith? Can actions, automatic thoughts of the subconscious be sinful?  Is any decision truly perfect? We’re wired to seek rewards and avoid losses, complicated by rules, regulations and culture, sub-culture. How do they affect, inhibit, enhance individuality, creativity?

Choices are part of the journey of the mystery of life. Every choice affects this journey and when, if possible.

The only journey is the journey within (Rainer Maria Rilke).

Factors Controlling Choices

Consider, throughout our varied stages of life, we may be unaware of cultural influences, even to the extent of the morality of right or wrong. Can the measure of the morality of a society, its individuals be objective? Consider some soldiers of wars past, with the actuality of ‘knowledge’ programmed from controlled sources, generation after generation, where obligation, duty rule over inquiring, questioning.

Consider, bias upon those different from cultural, ethnicity, illness, poverty beliefs.

Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors (CCC 1735).

Consider,

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught
From year to Year
It’s got to be drummed
in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught
To be Afraid
Of people whose eyes
are oddly made
And people whose skin
Is a different shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught

You’ve got to be taught
Before it’s too late
Before you are 6 or 7 or 8
To hate all the people
your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught (1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein Musical South Pacific).

There are also a variety of desires, urges, choices, beyond our dictates.

Moreover, the economic, social, political, and cultural conditions that are needed for a just exercise of freedom are too often disregarded or violated. Such situations of blindness and injustice injure the moral life and involve the strong as well as the weak in the temptation to sin against charity (CCC 1740).

Only with maturity may recognize them and hopefully choose freely, correctly, unencumbered. We hope. Consider the failure, the sadness, of the poverty of lack of choice.

We have free will, but our free will lies in our choice of thoughts (Emmett Fox).

Considerer. Our Birth.

Who has the choice of where, when, into what social, economic, structure, our soul shall inhabit? What of the influences placed upon the infant, even before birth? Consider the family’s social, spiritual, religious, economic positions, and values. Consider the place, neighborhood, nation, education systems, career opportunities. Consider the justice system, the policing structure. And the time of birth, understand how the influences of a year, even six months affect a child’s perception.

Only God understands.

Self- Awareness

Every child is distinct. Every child is innocent. And there’s genetics, complexities, barely understood, imprinted upon the innocence. Every child. Then exposed to the world. Then self-awareness, and the disappearance of innocence, into the reality created by human weaknesses, original sin?

With self-awareness comes not freedom but dictates, from biology, strong powering and empowering – puberty, peer pressure, education to work, family, responsibilities. Growth depends on influences beyond the self, mostly uncontrollable factors of life. The individual, physical, emotional, logical self, confronted, bombarded, and changing as genetics/DNA continue to develop/influence/change. How to adapt? Compounded by limitedness, of mind, body, and spirit. Time upon time, choices, decisions. Again, again. Everything, perpetual motion, with seemingly little time to discover the inner. Every decision, choice leads to another, then another with varied consequences. Still, how many are really of free will?

Overwhelmed yet?

Freedom of Will

Where, when then does actual ‘freedom of will” occur? Does God measure us against some unknown balance sheet adjusted, to the imperfection of every individual’s mental health – our brain presenting us with false hopes, desires, even falsehoods?

All you can do in regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in (Ichiro Kishimi).

When Jesus talks about sin, I believe, hope, He understands the limitedness of freewill. Consider, the frailty of the human condition inflicted upon by it by the imperfections of the human condition.

Will society may finally understand personal flaws, failings, limitations, desires, values, beliefs, are not weaknesses, imperfections of our nature nor of our choosing? Will some be considered not imperfections, but differences of cultural/societal norms?  The more ‘advanced’, mature society is, the greater the responsibility it has to understand the individual.

Questions to Consider

How, should we, judge another – based upon the life imposed? Can this be done objectively?

The brain’s complexity, psychology, biology is still beyond comprehensive understanding. Everyone faces mental health challenges, now enhanced by society’s structure and biases. Decisions/choices, seemingly clear and reasonable, can lead to self-destructive actions. Then there’s mental illness. It seems hard to believe, but we are more fortunate than anywhere, anytime. But does that display human progress or human deficiency due to pigheadedness?

It is the ability to choose which makes us human (Madeleine L’Engle).

Growth, maturity, enhance choices. Increasing complexity? How truly can a ‘well-balanced’ individual choose ‘rightfully’? Upon, lay the effects of technology, changing faster than individual generations can adapt, and geometrically increasing the generation gap. Throw into the mix, the difficulties, intricacies of the speed of information and knowledge. Decisions impacted by quantity and quality, in decreasing limited time spans, possibly creating the inability to truly comprehend anything. Thinking has changed. The mind, over-crowded, overwhelmed?  Has mental health become a cultural disease? And what of creativity, the imagination? Where, when can reflection occur?

The true-self, can it be seen by mind’s eye?

How do we decide, Spirit’s influence?

And what of mental illness?

When is the mind free?

Will we be judged on one poor decision?

Yet, God Still Loves Us

That alone is amazing!

We do what we can. But this does not exclude us from self-responsibility and the responsibilities we have to others. In our multicultural, but highly flawed, sometimes ignorant society we must, follow the knowledge, experiences of others, the wisdom of the great faiths, whenever possible.

So what is truly sin and its relationship to the choices we make, its after-life consequences? Then Purgatory, as envisioned by the saints, the pains of punishments inflicted, cast fear upon my multitudes of my imperfections. I must remember the joy of God’s love.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves (Thomas Merton OCSO).

Maybe there are just times where the most important things to do are watching the birds in the air, feel the breeze on your face, say hi to a stranger, and hold open a door. Those are the most blessed pleasures.

To think too much is a disease (Fyodor Dostoyevsky).

I think it’s time for some chocolate cake.