Who Cares About Tiger Woods? We All Should!

What interests me about the Tiger Woods story is not what seems to interest everyone else. What interests me is our collective reaction to the story of his alleged affairs. So what does this story, and the coverage and reaction to it, really say about reality—about how the world and our culture really function? As you may recall, understanding truth and reality is very much my tortured quest, so I feel like I have to take a shot at drawing a couple lessons from all this. Here is where I’m headed today: we are all to blame for not understanding the real world as it exists, verses the world we are told exists. In this post I hope to show that we don’t actually care, as a society, about affairs; we only say that we do. Then, I will argue that we really should care about affairs, but probably not for the reasons most people think, and that we are all part of the problem.

A pastor friend of mine once made an observation about people who lash out in anger about another person’s “moral transgressions.” He said that those most inclined to spew forth over-the-top indictments are often angered less by the transgression, and angered more by the belief that the perpetrator is “getting away with something.” He argued it is less the act, and more the jealousy and iniquity that cause the rush to burn someone at the stake. “Hey, you can’t do that—because I can’t do that, so you must be labeled and tossed in the fire.”

Let me stop here and disclose my personal position on the alleged Tiger Woods actions. A central moral of my novel, A Secret of the Universe—which deals heavily with sexual ethics and the supposed “morality” taught by religion, is that lying and deception about extramarital sexual activity are on a much lower moral plane than the actual acts of sexual activity outside marriage. Part of this conclusion follows easily from a true and historical journey through the actual sexual ethics suggested and exhibited in the Bible, versus the gross misunderstandings that have completely usurped modern Christianity, through forces such as Augustine and Marcion. But whatever the reasons, my guess is that even many evangelicals would agree that lying and cheating and having sex with someone other than your spouse, is way worse than consenting and loving sex with someone other than your spouse, with that spouse’s permission.

Back to Tiger Woods. Almost ironically, most women I know do not condone his alleged indiscretions, but they seem to believe we know of him due to golf, and that the allegations not related to golf are irrelevant. Perhaps, but I have a different take.

Here is what gets me. If the allegations are true, Tiger Woods is a liar and a deceiver. Granted he’s not alone in that; it isn’t about something we seem to think rises to the level of lies about taxes or money matters; and please understand, there could be many reasons, circumstances, and factors involved (who knows, and who cares). I realize all that. My point is not to judge him, but as a student of human behaviors and societal norms I am interested. Tiger, who has been the picture of discipline when it comes to athletics, was apparently not so disciplined and honest with his wife and family, and probably not honest with himself. Does this not beg the question why? Why wasn’t he honest with himself and others?

Our Complicity

We’ve all seen it a thousand times. In fact, in light of a recent disclosure that my wife and I were separating (with no cheating or lying behind it, at all—and genuine interest in the other’s wellbeing never set aside), it occurred to me just how many people I know have happy marriages that have been the result of someone cheating.

We all know the stories: a boss who fell for his secretary and since then they together have been model citizens and churchgoers (it was “meant to be,” but not until he tossed his former wife under the proverbial bus); a co-worker whose office romance is, after years of happy marriage, viewed as cute and romantic tale of people clutching sweet joy and happiness from the ashes of mundane marriages; the friends who found growth potential and the beauty of selfless love in an affair that began at church, resulting in great “revelations” for them after the deep regret for the pain-causing transgression that caused hurt—but the resulting new happy couple is still damn glad they have each other rather than their previous spouses (wink, wink). All’s good in the end, we seem to say.

The point is that society isn’t really against anyone dumping one spouse and finding something new in another. Society really isn’t even really against cheating, though it claims to be. I’ll argue that it should be; but it isn’t, at least not a year after the fact. Hey, Christian recording artist Amy Grant seems ultra happy with Vince Gill, right? All’s well; we celebrate that for the lovely couple. Even Tiger, if he repents, will probably cease to be a leper in a year.

If you think about it, our culture tolerates, then essentially celebrates and promotes this kind of serial monogamy and exclusive love, this twisted view of ethics when it comes to love and relationships that clings to strict monogamy, until it’s time to quickly throw a loved one under the bus and find a new person to stay with “forever.” After all, we say “all is fair in love and war”; cheating and/or seducing another person’s spouse is cute—and even romantic—once the dust settles; and lying and deceit are not condoned, per say, but really they are gladly accepted after, oh, roughly six months have passed without a further “bad outcome.”

But why? Why the strange and mixed messages of approval and forbiddance? Why the cognitive dissonance of our culture on this topic? Why don’t we get really serious and burn people at the stake for cheating, like in some countries (usually just the women though)? Why don’t we really seem to care, a year later when the new couples are all happy?

Well, the answer is simple, really. We don’t care because … it seems that human nature has some problem with lifetime exclusivity of genuine and close interpersonal relationships—without exclusivity being implemented by force of culture, religion, or government. At some level, we get that! We also get that human relationships are complex and difficult to sustain for decades, in the modern world. We even say we’re happy for our friends and family who find what makes them happy, after they’ve cheated. We’re not really against changing horses midstream, are we?

Why we should care

So now that we have a small but important part of the answer to the original question about why Tiger would cheat, we can move on to the bigger question: “Why should we really care about affairs, as a society?”

We should care because of the lying and the deceit and the hurt! And to some degree maybe we do, but when we deny the very “why” that leads to the lying and deceit, we are experiencing a massive cognitive dissonance and a breakdown between cause and effect, and thereby perpetuating a truly destructive force. We ignore the effect (lying and deceit), by ignoring human nature and the human potential to learn and grow and love wastefully through others; we ignore the cause (human nature), by deluding ourselves with fairy-tale expectations and tacit support of serial monogamy, wherein we toss one relationship aside to begin an new one, thus destroying lives with the lies and deceit that we demand through our denial of reality.

We are deluded about what marriage is, and what it should be. We say it is about love, but love cannot be contained and bottled exclusively for one person forever. When did we decide it should be? (No, I’m not talking about sex.) When did we start pretending that the genie belongs in the bottle? The thing we actually decided, historically speaking, was that long-term commitments—for kids, business, and life—were a good thing. I agree. But only recently did we decide to marry for romantic love, and be exclusively sustained by an ultra-intimate bond with only one person—for life, or even that a person somehow owns another’s emotional experiences. (See Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, by sociologist and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz, or hear my interview with her here on .mp3 audio).

Conclusion:

Tiger Woods’ situation is worth pondering. It’s worth pondering not for the purpose of judging him, but because all experiences and information can teach us about the world. Tiger Woods should not have hurt people by lying and deceiving them; on an individual level he presumably needs to fix that, seek forgiveness and redemption, and not do that again. But that’s only half the story. We are to blame as well. Our societal expectations and complicit demands for serial monogamy; our approval of recoupling and our approach that “all is fair in love and war”; our complicit acceptance of human nature while simultaneously denying that very same human capacity to be enriched by loving more than one person in lifetime—all mean WE are not without blame in the schizophrenic demands we’ve placed upon the cultural institution of marriage. Collectively we either need to get serious about enforcing life-long exclusivity and bans on loving more than one person in a lifetime—and get serious about burning people at the stake; or perhaps we should consider divorcing the life-time expectations of exclusive love from the true sins of malicious lies and deceit.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of  A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog. © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Is True Love Forever? Personal Thoughts and Disclosures

As a sappy skeptic, I have written extensively about the human emotion we call “love,” including a novel about religious and tribal conflict, wherein the ultimate secret revealed by religion, history, humanists, and contemplatives of all cultures and stripes is that the power of love—and the golden rule—are the true beacons that call us to a higher, more enlightened way of achieving our greatest potential. In today’s post I’m going to share a personal disclosure, and then ask a question I’ve asked in a previous post: Does true love ever end? Finally, I’ll be compelled to ponder whether people have varying capacities to love, and how that capacity, or lack thereof, affects our linked existences.

To get there, however, let’s begin with a Hollywood-inspired question. Can we love someone dearly, but find that due to the forces of life, career, culture, religious prohibition, or some other environmental factors, that we are forbidden from being with that person and sharing daily life? Can the movies that I so reject for celebrating only the lusty or temporary romantic brand of love still reflect great truths when they portray the tragedy of love that is forbidden, lost to death, or otherwise prohibited from pursuit? Clearly I have long argued that life for most humans in the history of our species has largely been suffering, punctuated with spells pain-free, if perhaps even joyous, existence. For this reason, and in this regard, it seems that Hollywood’s portrayal of unfulfilled/unfulfillable love is far more useful and accurate than the glorification of romantic love—so yes, it reflects great truths about our existence.

Now, in case you are wondering, no, I am not in some existential crisis of lost or forbidden love. In fact, the depth of my experience of love has probably never been greater, so my situation is actually quite the opposite. That said, a recent personal disclosure has left some people scratching their heads, while others see the great love that is genuinely involved. It is through these reactions that I am gaining insights into the issues at hand: the human capacity to love, and the endurance of true love.

A Disclosure

You see, my dearest wife, the central actor in my “life play” to date, the soul whose amazing heart was inspiration for aspects of the two central female characters in my novel—whom one Gnostic religion professor saw as a female Christ figure, and the woman whom I should reiterate that I love as deeply and truly as I’ve ever experienced love—recently joined me in issuing a letter to friends and family disclosing a desire to spend some time experiencing daily living outside the roles we’ve established through twenty years of family life. In other words, it’s time to search for and embrace a new chapter and a new phase in our evolution as individuals and soul mates, scary though that may be. You might call it a spiritual journey or a trial separation, which may seem like dramatically different things, though I’m not so sure they necessarily are.

It is worth clarifying that our life-long commitments of undying support and love—to the degree any human has sufficient ability to consent to such grandiose promises—remain completely in force. There has been no cheating, no deceit, no shouting, no fighting; essentially there has been love and desire for the other to experience his or her full potential as well as all that life has to offer. Weird, huh? It’s kind of like the old “if you love something set it free” idea, I suppose.

At any rate, and very understandably, when others look at our situation they do so through a heuristic—one of those problem solving strategies that help us quickly and efficiently categorize and resolve puzzles in life. In this case the specific heuristic employed by most people says that when two married people stop living together they must be angry, shout, throw things, someone must have cheated, someone must have lied, and very likely both must be angry and have stopped loving one another—perhaps except for some twisted, platitude-like frothing, or a need to reconcile present disdain with the thousands of previous testimonials of forever love.

But as we skeptics often point out, those brilliantly efficient problem solving strategies—these prejudices and heuristics—can lead us far astray in their efforts at efficiency. In the case of me and my wife, and in the case of many people whom I know who have selflessly celebrated for someone they love, and truly “set that person free”—as people do with their children when they leave the nest— being apart does not signal an end to love. In fact regardless of how you define true love (see my attempt here), there are countless situational examples where true love endures as people are forced—or in part selflessly choose, in the interest of those they love—to grant freedoms and experience the apartness that is essential to the growth and/or survival of individuals, or relationships.

In the end, does true love end? Personally, I’ve pondered the question for a while now, and admit there may be scenarios I’ve not considered. But that said, to me true love that is based on full knowledge of one’s character and composition, cannot ever end. Even when we perceive it to end for others, we do so because we either fail to see the continuation of the love—due to our misapplied heuristic, which says that being apart denotes lack of love; we do so because our fallible human mind needs to create a narrative to explain some action or behavior; or we entirely dismiss our “love” as merely an historic fantasy—a delusion from the beginning. But true, selfless, deep and caring concern and admiration for another seems to me that it is, and must be, timeless and enduring—transcending even death (see post “The Truth About Life After Death”).

Capacity to Love

This brings me to the question of capacity for love. Are we all equal in our capacity for selfless caring and love? It seems the clear answer is “no.” We can debate until the cows come home why that might be—if it is environmental, genetic, or in what combination; but simple observation makes clear that there are people who, if you’ll allow me the metaphor, are more “Christ-like” in their ability to love (as defined by I Corinthians—which seems a great definition). Yet at the same time there are also people who are sociopathically egocentric and void of the “empathy gene,” in a way that kills any ability or desire to place themselves in someone else’s shoes, or put the needs of another person ahead of their own.

With Christmas day behind us, and the metaphors, symbols, and cultural infusions of meaning into the 25^th of December (or winter solstice) fresh in our minds, it is perhaps a good time to draw a few conclusions.

Conclusions:

The first conclusion (provisionally of course): Most of us, in reality, have a mix of egocentrism and empathy, and therefore have at least a moderate ability to lovingly put others’ needs ahead of our own; we have some capacity for true love.

Second conclusion: That said, to me the value of idealism, and the value of the metaphors of Christmas, surround the goal of becoming all that we can be, and stretching our ability to love and care selflessly for others. Perhaps it is in loving purely and completely and wastefully, and throwing caution to the wind, that we become as fully human and as fully “divinely connected” to one another, and to the universe, as we humans can possibly dream of being. After all, a goal of loneliness and disconnection would make no sense, right? No, the opposite seems historically demonstrable as the loftiest, and I’d argue most worthwhile, of all human ambitions—connectedness.

Third conclusion: Still, the sad reality is that some will never “get” that my wife and I could still love one another extremely deeply, yet still encourage the other to travel away for a while—or even, god forbid, find additional love with another. For some of these people this is because they are among the many, many, who for biological reasons or something far more complex, are void of any capacity to even minimally see through the eyes of another, or place another before them; to them, beyond all other forms, such love is incomprehensible. Sure, for others there might be what appear to be somewhat less unenlightened reasons not to “get it”—like allegations that we have quit on each other or taken the institution of marriage and commitment too lightly; but these other views have less relevance to the topic at hand so I won’t digress into them further.

You see through my wife, and through a very select few other people that I’ve had the profound pleasure of sharing time with in this limited journey, I have seen glimpses of the most amazing and pure force that I believe humanity can ever experience. So the final conclusion I offer today is that selfless, true love is indeed real, enduring, and permanent, though in many ways it defies explanation or definition.

I have seen love so pure and strong that one cannot help but weep. I have seen empathy and compassion. I have seen caring and celebration for the joy of another, even when that person would like nothing more for his/her self than that very thing being celebrated. That, is love, and I mourn for those who passed this recent Christmas without yet knowing such love. I mourn for those who have known such love, but who can no longer touch it and experience it directly on a daily basis—because they have been forced to be separate from it in some way.

Mostly, however, I mourn for those to whom love is invisible, tasteless, without fragrance, without feel, and beyond experience. For whatever reason, they are numerous; in some cases they are dangerous. But in all cases, they are among the greatest tragedies of human existence, because it is through connections—no matter how remote—that our existence is defined, and our immortality tasted. True love endures.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of  A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog. © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Questioning Drunk Driving Data

From Today’s Truth-Driver Commentary on WKZO Talk Radio AM 590 (Commentary mp3 file; full interview with Dr. David Hanson mp3 file):

Thomas Jefferson said, “It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing than to believe what is wrong.” In my quest for truth, however, I’ve found that there are some questions so politically incorrect that you can’t even ask them; but if we want truth, we need to have the conversations. One is so-called drunk driving at low levels, and the increasing push for zero tolerance. What if I told you that there are sociologists and researchers who make a very compelling case that modern hysteria about low-level intoxicated driving is based more on fear than facts? That data are mangled by emotion-driven crusaders against alcohol rather than good science and evidence—and that truly bombed drivers, distracted drivers on phones, and drugged drivers are much bigger problems than someone who’s had a glass of wine or two with dinner and blows a .08 BAC? Dr. David J. Hanson is a retired sociologist from State University of New York, Pottsdam:

We have a common fallacy in our society that a person who has a drink and then goes out and drives is a great risk to him or herself as well as to others, and that’s simply not the case. Most people who drive intoxicated and have serious accidents have a BAC typically of about .17, which is dramatically higher than the .08, essentially twice as high.

So Dr. Hanson says it’s the people who get bombed and drive the wrong way down the highway at 90 mph who kill people and break things, not the person who had a pint after work. For clarity, Dr. Hanson would NEVER advocate drinking and driving; nor would I, and that’s not the point. The point is to ask what is true and what is not, and what are the costs of career-ending, reputation-destroying, financially devastating prosecutions for driving with as little as one drink in some US cities.

Dr. Hanson’s web site is http://www.alcoholfacts.org, and you can hear my extended interview with him in my archives at truthdriventhinking.com, or at the iTunes music store.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of  A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog. © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Backward Masking Returns

Today’s Truth Driver Commentary for talk radio is something you really should hear. It’s about backward masking, because it’s making a comeback—and of course people still think it’s real. For those old enough to remember vinyl records, you probably remember the craze of playing them backwards and finding supposed secret messages or satanic verses hidden within. Unfortunately, backward masking is just yet another fantastic example of the way our minds are wired to seek patterns. Do you ever look at beautiful puffy white cumulus clouds and play that game where you try to see faces or shapes? And once someone points them out you can see them? It’s the same with backward masking!

To prove the point, I grabbed a song from my ipod—it’s called “I’m Gone,” from Christian artist and legend Michael W. Smith, on his album This is Your Time. If I were to play it for you backwards, you’d hear nothing but a strange garbled mess. But what if I were to tell you what you were going to hear before you hear it?

Some of you know of the famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who completely dismissed Christianity. Well when you play the song backwards, you hear Michael W. Smith’s encoded slam on Nietzsche. It very clearly says “Nietzsche, you wanna run us down here? You and your big sickies?” (Listen here.) But does it really say that? Of course not.

Ironically there is even more to the phrase than I originally found. Here it is in full:

Nietzsche, you wanna run us down here? You and your big sickies.

Rotten is he, oh, Nietzsche’s the lost one.

The fact is that I pulled this song at random and had I not told you what to hear, you never would have heard it. As far as I know nobody has ever found a “backmasked” phrase in this song prior to me … and that’s because when you go looking for patterns, you can always find them. That’s what I did, and scientists call it the confirmation bias, or expectation bias. When you know what you want to find, you always can find it whether it’s there or not.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of  A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog. © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Does Truth Exist?

From Today’s Truth-Driver Commentary on WKZO Talk Radio AM 590 (mp3 file):

When I was a kid I always had a fantasy that when you die you get to ask a giant, god-computer any questions you wanted, and you could know the answer. As an adult, that led me to think that for all questions there actually IS an answer; it’s just that usually the answers to real-world questions are so complicated that we can’t understand them.

• Do certain pesticides, or cell phones, cause cancer?

• Do free-range chickens provide more or better nutrients to our bodies?

• What is the exact degree of human impact on global warming?

• Is John Gosselin really an agoraphobic alien, here to take Kate and their eight to Vega for re-colonization? (Okay, that one is easy … yes.)

Here’s the scoop, we may never know what is true and what isn’t, but it seems that for almost all earthly questions that we can ask, there is one truth—complex though it may be. Truth (small t) exists! The reality might even be that there are 11 dimensions and competing realities, but then THAT complex truth would still be the truth of how things actually are.

But back here in the real world there are complicated, actual effects on society of allowing gay marriage; actual, real-world effects of any given tax policy; actual, real-world effects of getting health care administration costs aligned with the rest of our global competitors. There are true effects of these things, even if they are complex and unknowable. True answers exist for all questions we can ask.

Now I don’t know those answers, and you don’t know those answers. But I will assert this; the best way to approximately and provisionally estimate truth is not through emotion-driven thinking, yelling, shouting, claims that “my god is better than your god and my god wants it this way,” or even just by repeating a statement so many times that others will accept it as truth. The way to do it is with the tools of reason, science, evidence, and calm, intellectually honest dialogue; because the closer we come to approximating truth, the better the world will be. Taking action based upon true assumptions is the path to less suffering and greater satisfaction. Conversely, false or overly simple assumptions about how the world works will never help us maximize well-being, and will never help us achieve the greatest possible benefit for the greatest number of people.

So won’t you join me in my ongoing quest to set aside ego, and pursue truth, wherever it takes us?

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of  A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog. © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Cable News Channels No Place for White Lies

From Today’s Truth-Driver Commentary on WKZO Talk Radio AM 590 (mp3 file):

So what’s wrong with a little white lie? How about a white lie that comes from a TV news channel? While they all do it, my commentary today was born of an ethics blog I read this morning, mentioning John Stewart’s recent undressing of Sean Hannity over what some might see as harmless exaggeration to make a valid point. What did Fox News do? When reporting on the November 5^th gathering of Tea Party opponents to current healthcare bills, Hannity/Fox created a highly deceptive video report of the event, which conveniently bolstered the guests’ exaggerated claims of the size of the crowd. In truth, the footage of the event was mostly footage from the much larger Glenn Beck rally back in September, interwoven into the current story in way that clearly makes the smaller crowd appear giant, so the video would match the hyperbole.

So what’s wrong with that, really? The other channels certainly do it too. Well, to me it matters because our NEWS channels are no longer dedicated to news, and to truth, and to intellectual honesty. They play to the base for ratings. I was a Fox fan for many years, but just like MSNBC and the others, news is no longer the primary function of news channels. And frankly, that is tragic—at least if you believe that real progress in the real world is made through pursuit of truth, as I do.

A friend of mine routinely laments the days of old when NEWS was about, imagine this, READING THE NEWS!—back when Hugh Harper or Walter Cronkite read the news from a piece of paper. They didn’t toss cutesy banter back and forth, they didn’t have to roll fake or sensationalist video that was hard to see behind tickers and swirly, animated graphics; they read the news, and they cared whether or not it reflected reality and truth. But now editorialized content masquerading as news is the norm, and as someone committed to discovering truth, it bothers me, regardless of which channel is doing it to play to their particular audience.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of  A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog. © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Truth Driver Commentaries Begin Today on WKZO Talk Radio

Can you believe it? A short blog post from Stephen Gibson? Not an article, but a blog-like announcement? Obviously I don’t usually “do” brevity, but I suppose a brief post is appropriate since what I’m announcing today will also be brief. If you haven’t heard, beginning today I’ll be offering 2-minute, daily “Truth Driver Commentaries” on AM 590, WKZO, Southwest Michigan’s long-time talk radio leader.

Segments are scheduled to air weekdays at 4:35 p.m.  (for the foreseeable future), as well as one additional time during the day. You can listen live at www.wkzo.com, or each day the commentaries will also be released via podcast (RSS), so you can receive them automatically through your iTunes music software (which is free here at Apple, and works great on PCs too). You may also listen at my web site, www.truthdriventhinking.com. For those who listen to my regular, long-form Truth-Driven Thinking Podcast, this will be a new show feed that you’ll want to subscribe to separately (also free).

iTunes link to daily 2-minute “Truth Driver Commentaries”

Note: To subscribe manually from within iTunes, go to the Advanced menu and select “subscribe to podcast,” and copy and past this feed address: http://www.truthdriventhinking.com/tdt_tdc.xml. You’ll be good to go! (Wait until you hear the backward masking episode .) Alternatively, you may search the iTunes Music Store for “Truth Driver Commentaries,” “Truth-Driven Thinking,” or Stephen L. Gibson.”

In no time I’ll surely have all sorts of people upset with me as I share thoughts on current events from a Truth-Driven perspective, as well as share anecdotes from my journey away from emotion-driven thinking. As always, I claim no unique access to truth, but will also openly challenges those who do–especially where there is evidence to the contrary. Hopefully as a sappy skeptic with a heart, however, I won’t truly upset too many people as I argue that psuedoscience, junk science, quackery, fallible human reasoning, and failures to follow reason, science, and evidence—cause very real harm to you, me, and the world.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of Truth-Driven Thinking, and A Secret of the Universe (official web site), a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog; © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Where Do We Go From Here: Feeding the Skeptic’s Soul

The following is the text of a talk I gave at the 2009 Dragon*Con convention (Skeptrack), held in Atlanta over Labor Day. It is a minority view response to recent discussions about where the “skeptic movement” ought to go from here. It was intended exclusively for a skeptic audience. An audio version can be downloaded at http://www.truthdriventhinking.com/audioblog.com, or heard here at iTunes).

Greetings!! What an honor it is to represent flyover country today. I’ve titled my comments Feeding the Skeptic’s Soul: Do More of This, and Less of This. You’ve probably heard this common device for improving communication—“do more of this, and less of this”—and as I was grappling with recent discussions of the future of the skeptic movement, and the scope of our inquiry going forward, it seemed like a workable framework to explore a nagging little feeling I have as a skeptic.

First, a quick warning about something that has bothered me: I’ve come from Kalamazoo, Michigan, a humble skeptic who has chronicled and shared his journey to this skeptical worldview through a couple of books; a three-year old skeptical podcast called Truth-Driven Thinking; and most recently a skeptical novel exploring religious dogma in some depth. So, here I am talking to a group of people equally committed to science, reason, and truth-driven thinking over emotion-driven thinking—many of whom are far brighter than I, and many of whom are people who love data, numbers, logic, technology, charts, graphs, and research papers as much or more than I do—and I’m mostly going to talk to you about … feelings. And emotion. WTF, eh? But this nagging feeling I’ve had is intimately tied to this question of where skeptic movement ought to focus, so here goes my two cents worth on both topics.

A Personal Paradox

My nagging feeling related to the future of the skeptic movement—and in ways I hate to admit this, is one of being isolated. Okay, I’ll take it a step farther and call it loneliness. As uncomfortable as it is for me to say, and probably for you to hear, Spock we are not; we do have feelings and emotions. I’ve determined it IS logically consistent for me to recognize two seemingly in-conflict consequences of my skeptical worldview: a great sense of completeness, peace, order the universe, and satisfaction—and also this sense of isolation because of the questions I’ve asked honestly and thoughtfully of myself and the world.

Now before go further, I need to be clear that there are many religious skeptics, or at least deist skeptics. I get that, and agree that a great skeptic can be a believer in a personal deity. Some even believe in Heaven and Hell, and for them I like to quote Mark Twain, who said, “[A] Dying man couldn’t make up his mind which place to go to—both have their advantages, ‘heaven for climate, hell for company!’”

Seriously I want to recognize our believer skeptics fully, but for my comments to make sense you need to know that for me and for many skeptics, our open inquiry into testable and untestable claims about the history of religions has led us away from traditional faith, and increased our skepticism about claims of supernatural agency in our world. Because this is my experience, and that of many, it is relevant to my discussion of this apparent paradox between a more fulfilling narrative of how the world works (skepticism), and a social deficit of sorts.

This satisfaction I mentioned is worth explaining just a bit. In a nutshell, I feel better equipped to handle life’s inevitable losses, lotteries, pains and joys, and tragedies and triumphs under a skeptical/naturalistic worldview. Life is even more rare and precious than when I could abdicate caring for others because everything would be made right and be part of a plan for another world or life. I feel empathy and other emotions on a deeper and more meaningful level than I ever did when I believed in contra-causal free will—essentially that there could be effects and reactions that had no natural or earthly cause.

Literalized mythology worked for me in some regards: a driving force, a loving overseer—but not others. He killed little babies in tsunamis, or allowed thousands to die in landslides and earthquakes. He healed some people internally where we couldn’t see or understand how he had allegedly moved or changed something in the physical person—a cell or molecule or whatever—in a way that was uncaused by any natural chain of events; but he couldn’t grow back limbs on amputees, where we could see what had to happen. That, or he hates all the amputees, because he never heals them.

Free Will

Or maybe that would be too obvious? Remove “free will,” right? There’s a concept! That’s always the excuse given for the existence of Hilter and all the horrific HUMAN evil in the world—we must have “free will.” Of course free will still doesn’t explain perpetual human suffering like the mass slaughter of humans in the Indonesian tsunamis. Why would an all-loving, all-powerful, all-seeing god allow that?

I highly recommend a book on theodicy and the so-called “problem of evil” and suffering by eminent NT scholar Bart Ehrman. It’s called “God’s Problem.” Still even on the question of human evil, Ehrman asks, “Is there no free will in heaven?” Great question. It sounds like a wonderful place, but if there’s no free will—in the words of Tina Fey—“Do I really want to go to there?” (Now there’s a good skeptical question).

So for me, here on earth we really don’t need to leap to supernaturalism to fill the gaps, especially since so far all gaps in knowledge have been temporarily filled by the simple “God did it” explanation when we didn’t understand, but then filled by real, useful, natural explanations, by science and intellectual curiosity. And every time we gain more knowledge, it turns out that a natural explanation about the interaction of “stuff”—like biochemistry, genetics, atoms and molecules—best accounts for everything. Chance, predators, psychology … the sun and rotation of the earth create weather; we don’t need God to understand crop failures (weather/climate); why some planes to crash others do not (metal fatigue); what caused that tsunami (converging tectonic plates), or why Michigan football teams can’t seem to win (Satan).

Now: it’s important to note that as skeptics when we don’t know an answer, it’s okay to simply say “I don’t know,” and leave it at that. And for me, that is less stifling of creativity and more honest and satisfying than saying, “God (magic) did it. That’s the answer. We don’t need to investigate any further.” In fact, we can embrace and celebrate mysteries and stand in awe and wonder just as much as the next person. I’ve literally been moved to tears on a mountain top while skiing. (Then again I’m the sappy skeptic.)

Okay, enough. You get the picture: the myths of a personal god just don’t work for me, and they don’t work for many skeptics.

Loneliness

This leads me back to loneliness. Part of my loneliness comes from a simple observation from everyday life: many people where I live—want to fix me—on a daily basis. They don’t honor my right to my own beliefs or inquiry, and when they learn of them they always say the same things: “Have you read CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity?” Or they cite something from William Lane Craig or Josh McDowell. Some more “enlightened” evangelists cite Gregg Boyd, or perhaps even Francis Collins or some new-age woo from Wayne Dyer or Deepak Chopra. But the bottom line is where I come from, in Western-Michigan-Dutch Christian-Reformed-land, what seems like a majority of people want to fix me. Whether that is for their own ego, or because they truly care about me and my soul—I don’t know.

It’s worth noting that I’ve done my homework. I’ve read and studied Christian apologetics … so the “have you read Mere Christianity?” line is getting tired. It is also a subtle form of bias—a constant admonishment that somehow I’m ill-informed, or not okay (as the minority). Never mind that I’ve come to my always-provisional estimates of reality only after great study and effort, and availing myself to high-level scholarship from more than one side—far more, I could argue, than most of those who claim certainty; my novel contains over 100 real-world citations—but it is I who am not okay, or so I am reminded almost daily. Silly example, but I just went for an eye appointment and my Doctor asked if I was having any trouble reading the fine print of my Bible. I let it slide, by the way. Should have said, “No, but have you read Mere Christianity?” (For the record: dreadfully inane book!)

This kind of inadvertent or casual “witnessing” often happens at a cocktail party, in a business setting, or in a public venue when we’re engaged in conversations. While in no way am I uncomfortable with it, nor do I believe people should refrain from speaking in terms of their myths, I am constantly amazed by how many times in an average day people tell me God was involved with this, or they’re thanking God for that, or something was divinely “meant to be.”

Of course the ability to see the hits and ignore the misses baffles me. “Fifteen wonderful children were mutilated in that bus accident, but praise God he saved little Sarah. It’s a miracle!” Or better yet, “I just lost my speech, my eyesight, and two limbs, but praise God I know he has a plan for me and will bring me through. What a gift.” Whatever gets you through, I suppose. Where the hell was he when you got into this! We might want to make a call to the loss avoidance department rather than just rush in and fix claims quickly, eh?

Now I’m partly making fun, it is true, because that worldview SO doesn’t work for me. But that said I truly don’t often make fun—and hope and believe this is an audience that can follow my message without offense. My heart is genuine that if they find strength there, and don’t impose it on me or deny their child medical care, good for them; but what I’m telling you is that it is lonely and isolating for me where I live, in everyday life. Sometimes I DO need to laugh with you, my fellow fans of unbridled, intellectually honest inquiry, and blow off some steam.

Back to the awkward conversations in which I find myself pretty much daily. So say an acquaintance in the store tells me how they’ve been healed. I am then left with the decision of whether or not to share my views. Sometimes I do; sometimes I think my sense of authenticity and self-respect demand that I at least demonstrate I am not in agreement.  I also like the idea of avoiding the appearance of being complicit and in agreement—particularly if I think there is a shot at consciousness-raising, or a better understanding between us.

Most often, however, I do not entertain illusions that I can change peoples’ minds, nor do I wish to arrogantly assume that the myths that people hold, which are unsatisfying to me, should be equally as unsatisfying for them. I understand they may even be wired differently—in fact, I rile people up by saying I wonder if some brains are wired such that they are “better served” by a theistic worldview. I may be egocentric at times, but I find it unsettling territory to demand my worldview will fit everyone—even the most right brained among us—like a one-size-fits-all glove, or putting square pegs in a round hole.

So most often I say nothing as they tell me how their brain tumor was tweaked and manipulated physically through prayer—not biochemistry alone—some matter somewhere was moved in a way that was not naturally caused. Often there is absolutely no point to saying anything. So despite having written an entire novel on the dangers of dogmatic belief in anything (did I mention I hate when people talk about their books … like mine that is available through Amazon, our web site, or any major retailer? Unconscionable.) But alas, I let it slide.

Even if I wanted to be rude, which I don’t, I couldn’t get through a day if I didn’t let things go. I can’t debate everyone all day, everyday, nor do I want to do so.

It is worth noting that I am not just talking about religion, but plenty of divisive, tribal customs that mean very little to me add to this sense of isolation. Whether it is failing to adopt a political party, a company loyalty, a sports team loyalty—despite my earlier jokes, a favorite color, a theme song, or some other bias, prejudice, slogan, or in-group mantra, the upshot of all of it is a tendency to feel like I don’t belong ANYWHERE. To be honest, sometimes I’ve thought that if I were gay I’d be better off, because I could be alone together with someone else. As a skeptic, I do feel isolated. But I can’t be alone in feeling isolated, can I? It is my personal observation that I am not alone, but I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve heard other skeptics talk about this.

This is my first Dragon*Con, but I have attended several of The Amazing Meeting events sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation. At my first, Julia Sweeney opened with her poignant and moving one-woman play, “Letting Go of God.” What a masterpiece. I laughed awkwardly at parts; and being an admitted sap, I was tearing up at others. Hell, I still like Little House on thePrarie. (Hey, ever hear of the Little House drinking game? You drink every time you hear the phrase “Pa, come quick, he’s hurt bad”; little did I know how right the comedian who said that was.) In subsequent years, I watched Hal Bidlack give a marvelous and emotional speech about his unwillingness to leave behind a shred of hope for a non-falsifiable Deistic watchmaker-god. It garnered one of the largest and robust standing ovations I’ve seen at a skeptic gathering. I don’t agree, but I loved it. He expressed, honestly, his human needs and how his human experience interacted with his rational mind.

Conversely, I will note that in the years after that, where real-world applications of these big questions were slightly downplayed in favor of more traditional skeptic subjects, I was fascinated to notice that virtually all the table conversations were dominated by talk of religion. With no prompting on my part, lunches and breaks were filled with interpersonal connections and discussions about how critical thinking impacted interfaith homes, and marriages and families.

It can be a tough thing to deconvert and no longer share the same worldview as the people you hold dear.

Why We Gather

It was obvious to me, these were the WIFM issues attendees at skeptic conferences were discussing. These were the things that were impacting their LIVES. The science and topics were great, but many of these non-scientists were working to apply these reason-driven concepts to their 9:00 to 5:00 worlds, and be nurtured by the experience of being together. They had needs that were perhaps going unmet by the conference content proper. Honestly, for some I suggest those needs were as big a part of their attendance, as the content.

In business I have often asked owners and staff the purpose of collecting charts, graphs or for that matter measuring anything. Why do we measure systems? The answer is simple. We look back, to predict forward. We want to estimate the results of future changes. If we were going to leave things alone forever, measuring them would be relatively useless. I see a parallel to the skeptic movement, and the feelings of isolation from the general population that I sometimes feel.

I don’t simply want to know the facts of the past: whether there are or are not UFOs and little green men. I don’t simply want to know the historical truth about that noise in the basement—whether it was the house settling or my dead father rattling chains. I want to know because answers to these questions are directly relevant to my future! I want to predict and extrapolate the data to the bigger questions, because those are where we ultimately gravitate in life. It’s about me, for me. And for you, it is about you and your life! Am I alone in that?

Big Foot’s existence is interesting, but the big public policy questions of a deity angry over stem cell research, or guiding economies, or appointing leaders by some Karmic force like Doug Coe and the powerful “Family” in Washington believe, or if Goerge Bush really told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse; or if burning condoms in AIDS-ravaged African makes sense because of some twisted, Gnostic or Augustinian distain for all that is flesh—seem to me quite significant. As does whether or not my wife will be bound to me for the afterlife as well as this one—as the Mormon’s believe.

Yes, UFO investigations teach me about the world and about epistemology, as does Randi’s investigation of Uri Gellar—in profound ways!!!! I couldn’t be more grateful and respectful … Randi is a hero of mine. But combine them with investigations by the likes of Dr. Robert Price, or Bart Ehrman, or Robert Funk, or Sister Karen Armstrong, or Bishop Spong, and I might also calculate the odds of there being a heaven or hell!!! And knowing that changes everything!!!! about how I’ll live my life, and the narratives through which I’ll make sense of it!!! And make the world a better place!!!

All that said, I guess I’m saying that all roads lead to Rome. All of our questions are going somewhere, and building on one another, and that “somewhere” is WHAT THE ANSWERS MEAN TO ME and MY FUTURE, and HUMAN EXISTENCE as a whole. And I’ll bet your inquiry, and all the questions you ask about the world and the universe, you ask because the answers mean something to your existence. So with all due respect, I am saying that I DO want us to play with the big questions that matter to society: philosophy, economics, social psychology, theory of government, religious claims, definitions of morality, and fuzzy issues and other soft sciences that lie beyond hard science. The tools of science and reason are still the best for inquiry, are they not?

But my larger point: from Julia Sweeney, to Hal Bidlack, to my sense of detachment and isolation, what speaks to us as a movement is more than just the facts and the scientific papers. We could get the facts from science journals alone, and there would be no need to gather and drink beer.

But we do gather at skeptic conferences. We don’t hold hands and sway, or listen to inspirational music. But MAYBE WE SHOULD!! Human souls need to be fed. Granted, to varying degrees, but they do. Is there a way we could do more of that? Do more of the fun things that Dragon*Con and Amazing Meetings afford us.

Of course we humans tend to divide ourselves. Much of my work, and my novel in particular (Amazon or see www.asecretoftheuniverse.com), has been centered on how we hurt one another through our divisive tribalism and dogmatic differences.

So here is the pickle: I don’t want to be a tribal skeptic. I don’t want to go to skeptic church and never see the outside world. It isn’t healthy for me, and it isn’t healthy for the world. But that said, I do need to retreat there sometimes. I need to enjoy the fellowship of people who think the way I do. Maybe I need to even make a joke about Mormons or Christians. That doesn’t mean I’m not respectful; it means I need some affirmation that it’s okay to frickin’ think!!! And ask questions!!! I need to know that all the people who tell me I’m incomplete and wrong, on a daily basis, aren’t the only people in the world—even if it feels that way where I live.

So I think we should gather more, not for the purpose of continuing to brainwashing ourselves—of course we skeptics aren’t conformists anyway: a stink eye from Shermer doesn’t turn us into zombies too readily; but it can happen. It happens the same way all groups become egocentric and inwardly focused, and intolerant of the human rights of others to hold views different than our own.

Suggestions

So what can we skeptics do more of to help me feel less isolated? What can we do less of?

Humbly I suggest, do more of this:

• Feed my soul (I don’t really believe in a soul, but there is the value in symbols). With humor, with fun gatherings, soul-stirring musical performances, with holding hands and swaying if you’re into that, with support, with friendship, with … Tiamat willing … hugs. (I better get one f-in hug out this effort whether you liked it or not).
• Gather
• Be kind and inclusive like churches can be. Step up the kindness a notch or two—for everyone, regardless of their belief. Be inviting. We can joke about the Christians in private, as a catharsis, but if we actually mean it, or worse yet say it maliciously in public, that potentially displays an unhealthy chip on our shoulder, and does not favor breaking down the walls of persecution and tribalism.
• Somehow, give me the space and forum to move beyond UFOs.
• Give me a community. Call me crazy, but weekly gatherings for fellowship could be done in a non-religious setting, couldn’t they? Some are doing it. Reed Essau; CFI; Drinking skeptically, Russ Schussler and the Atlanta skeptics. Do more of it. (I need to do more of it.) After all, institutions where people are tolerant of one another, make meals after someone dies, celebrate life’s milestones, and revere the mysteries of the universe together isn’t a bad idea, in and of itself, is it?
• Do this, read and comment on my BLOG. Seriously, it’s called Perspectives: Food for the Skeptic’s Soul—and that’s how I learn and grow—through kind/honest dialogue. And that blog is where I throw around real-world issues about the softer side of skepticism and what it means to our lives. I’ve written about everything from monogamy, to how the memories of our loved ones really do transcend death (without appeal to supernaturalism). I grow through exchanges and dialogue—so come join me there.

Perhaps I’m calling, for lack of a better term, for more skeptic churches. In fact in one post I’ve advocated more of you join me as ordained reverends to perform secular support functions and help people celebrate and mourn life’s big milestones. All of this exists, but frankly, not in so much in my neighborhood. We need to do more of this.

Needs for affirmation

Lastly, fellow skeptics, I’d suggest we do more of this: understand that we really are humans and we all have needs, whether we admit it or not. Even those of us with the pockets most diligently protected from ink, even some of us who can spend hours hacking code, or discussing the nuanced arguments of Nietzsche—we still have needs.

Much of my fascination has centered on the dark side of our needs for affirmation, and how we all have a malignant tendency to seek information that affirms what we already think we know, rather than a desire to find out we are wrong.

This is true; but the fact that we have this strong desire to be told we are smart, or right, or beautiful, or worthwhile, should tell us something else. It is human!!!! It’s okay to be human. Frankly, it’s all we’ve got! Push come to shove, in the end, it’s our only option!

These needs should also tell us that regardless of where we are on the spectrum of emotional neediness—and I suspect we are somewhere on the less needy side of the general population distribution—skeptics, being human, still need their souls fed. I still need to once in a while lick my wounds and relax around people who think the way I do, who tell me that I’m brilliant—even when I’m not. And this, this is the piece that we often overlook in our rationality. The acceptance. The loving, if you’ll forgive me, the warmth, that is taught in other worldviews. We need that here, and we need it in action.

SUMMARY

For the record, I completely respect the views of Daniel Loxton and others from last year’s panel: the skeptic community probably does need to mind its image and avoid being mired in an endless loop of metaphysical blather that can very likely distract it from its mission of education and debunking more pressing quackery.

But from my humble perspective as someone who doesn’t have university thinkers to hang out with; from the perspective of everyday laborers who don’t have too much time or too much patience to socialize in forums or on the web; from my perspective as a person who lives in a dominantly religious culture; from my perspective as a social human who does want to belong and be at least occasionally loved and respected; from my perspective as someone who is regularly told, implicitly or explicitly, that my journey through life isn’t quite right, that if I just read CS Lewis one more time I would GET it—I need not only factual information from the skeptic community, I need to sooth my loneliness through a sense of community. I need the freedom to explore big questions together. I need insights and reminders about how to live a better, more fulfilling life without appealing to woo-woo magic or the supernatural; I need to have fun, laugh together, support one another, or Isis-forbid help one another through tough times—perhaps mourn a death with someone who gets me, or cook food for someone when they are sick.

But to do that will require not being afraid to move into that realm we skeptics seem to fear, perhaps more so than most people: intimacy, awe, wonder, emotion, humor, Horus-damn-it, maybe even holding hands and swaying (Nahhh—okay, not that).

The skeptic community can, and probably should in many ways stick to its knitting, ghost-busting, and quack hunting. But my simple request today—with hats off to Julie Sweeney, Randy Olsen, and Hal Bidlack for leading the way—is let’s not forget to feed the skeptic’s soul, as well as his intellect; and let’s continue to give ourselves a sense of community, and the freedom and the forum to extend intellectually honest inquiry to the big questions about our world—because they matter.

I will close with the words of Albert Einstein, who said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of Truth-Driven Thinking, and A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog; © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Our Greatest Delusion: Why You Too Should be Skeptical About Free Will (Part II of II)

In Part One of this exploration of “Our Greatest Delusions: Free Will” I made a rudimentary case for a determinist worldview—which if true would mean that we humans don’t actually have the “free will” to choose or decide anything for ourselves, but rather exist as pawns in a big cause-and-effect game where everything that happens is fully caused by prior events. Now whether or not you buy this argument, my goal is to raise consciousness about the profound impact that genetics, life circumstances, environment, and thousands of external variables have in shaping and defining every individual life. It is also my hope that you’ll see we are not “created equal,” do not have equal opportunity, nor are we the self-made, self-actualized people think we are. Lastly, perhaps you’ll join me in pondering the role that our merit- and competition-driven delusion of “free will” plays in helping us to ignore human suffering and inequity.

In Part One I suggested we are entirely the result of a cause-and-effect chain of events, and that our successes, failures, and every “decision” we have ever made could not have been made other than exactly the way they were. “Free will” is a delusion, and we are fully caused to make every “choice” and execute every single action and behavior—by our brain chemistry, life experience, environment, biology, knowledge or lack thereof, access to role models, brain power or lack thereof, and billions of other factors. But what if our delusion of free will is actually an increasingly obsolete, evolved trait that prevents us from dwelling on our own humanness, encourages us to detach from other living things, and helps rationalize away our need to attend to human suffering and the inherent inequities of life? Should we not try to transcend that part of our nature in the interest of self improvement, as we do so many others?

One of the bedrock notions of American and Western thinking is the ideal, and the illusion, that we live in a meritocracy, where those who achieve do so from a level playing field and anyone can win if they work hard enough. We believe in competition and survival of the fittest—in what I might argue has become a perverse religion. Unfortunately, this appears to be a bastardization of the very natural process of Darwinian evolution. While I am no biologist, it seems that Darwinian evolution by natural selection is better described as “survival of the luckiest”—those with certain random mutations that favor survival over cumulative generations—than it is the “survival of the fittest,” which we have come to interpret as a forward-looking, solution-seeking, conscious and willful intent on the part of living things to change and make things better. The moths don’t say “Gee, some spots would sure help camouflage me from predators. I sure hope my kids and grandkids will help grow some.” That is not what evolution is, or how it works.

Very contrary to true evolution—descent with modification via natural selection—our Western and American ways of worshiping achievement tend in the direction of Hitler-like misunderstanding of evolution, and a eugenics-like idea of willing our way to an elect, chosen, superior status. We thusly prioritize competition over cooperation through what has become a perverse, self-rationalizing, self-aggrandizing, self-deifying vehicle that allows us to ignore those who suffer and are quite literally “less lucky.” Essentially these are the effects of free will, self determination, and to some degree libertarian capitalism.

We believe in competition at work; we regularly use primitive phrases like “fighting for” something; we want students to compete for their fair share in the world, not build bridges toward mutual benefit. And we do it all under the guise of ensuring victory via merit, by “choosing forward” in order to be on top, in a strategic position of power over someone else.

We view those who “fail” and those whom we callously chastise as “mental midgets” as less worthy beings. If only they had done it our way, we tell ourselves; if only they had worked as hard as I have; if only they were as smart as I am; if only they weren’t lazy; if only they weren’t fat; if only they could be like me, what a world it would be. But what if you didn’t really do it?

You can dismiss this argument against free will all day long, but let me ask you a pivotal question: What if I’m mostly wrong, but we still aren’t completely autonomous and self actualized? What if I’m right only to the extent that strict free will and the freedom to make uncaused choices does not fully exist, and Ron’s life as a drug dealer was merely the most likely outcome of events, rather than the only possibility. What if at every pivotal circumstance and decision point in Ron’s life he had a “free will” magical ability to make uncaused thoughts and uncaused decisions, but he was still extremely likely to make the choices he did, given the circumstances, brain chemistry, lack of role models, lack of education—which carried him through his world of abject poverty? What if I’m wrong and these weren’t “determined” choices that couldn’t have been made otherwise, but were nonetheless the most rational choices given what Ron knew and his circumstances at the time? In other words, fine, I’ll give you back your delusion of free will, but you still must see that Ron deserves some compassion and sympathy, and cannot be solely, wholly, 100% responsible for his plight!

Surely you see, however, that even this simple recognition flies in the face of the positive, self-affirming pep talk that nature has programmed us to give ourselves. We are programmed to dismiss those who don’t compete well or achieve—perhaps by nature, but perhaps also by modern culture, social structure, and the worship of the gods of achievement that I would argue have become institutionalized only in the last few centuries here in the West—since Adam Smith and Charles Darwin’s great works became widely known, and also widely distorted.

In his groundbreaking book “Outliers,” Malcom Gladwell—knowingly or not—made one of the best real-word cases for determinism that I have seen in mainstream literature. In my opinion, he blows the lid off the  greatest lie in America: work hard and work smart and you too can accomplish what Bill Gates has. That lie fuels management books galore about how we can be the next Jack Welch, or the next Steve Jobs, or the next Bill Joy, or the next Rockefeller or Carnegie from the prior century. But this book explains very precisely the unique circumstances that gave these people an amazing, exclusive advantage, and why they were in the exact right place, at precisely the right point in time, to do exactly what they did. You can read all the books you want, but you’ll never get the chance these people got. It’s that simple, and this reality is but a piece of a complex puzzle that makes us far less self determined than we can even begin to imagine.

Gladwell also explains in detail why one of the greatest supposed meritocracies in North America, Canadian Hockey, also turns out to heavily favor only kids who are born in the first quarter of the calendar year. Read his book and find out why. The point is that supposedly nobody gets to high levels in Canadian hockey unless they’ve earned it. You can’t buy your way in, you can’t cajole your way in. At least that’s what we thought. But it turns out there are factors beyond the control of even the best athletes, that make it extremely unlikely that someone healthy, fit, and super-capable, if born in November, can EVER succeed as a great hockey player in Canada. Who’d have thunk? Another meritocracy that isn’t.

What about the self-made kid who came from nothing and became a millionaire after vowing that he’d never, ever be poor again? He surely did it all by himself didn’t he? Actually, no. To begin with, he had the brains. He also had the circumstances and wiring that caused him to be driven—perhaps a natural hyperactivity that was helpful. But he was also exposed to ideas and knowledge at key times in his life. He didn’t just make up the idea that he could succeed beyond his social class, as if out of thin air! He built on the knowledge to which he was exposed—and stood on the shoulders of all those humans who lived before him and contributed to collective wisdom. He had access to television; he happened to hear stories of people achieving their dreams; he had a teacher who cared and inspired him; he was once in the right place at the right time and impressed someone who lent him a hand, because he had been taught certain manners and saw on TV how to impress people. He did NOT just make up all these brilliant insights from nothingness. He had the brain power to assimilate and correlate, and each circumstance allowed the next; but much was still luck—as was his genetics, and the fact that he was healthy and was not a Down’s Syndrome sufferer. Every decision and snapshot of his life was fully caused by many prior events, beginning before birth! (Thus it would seem we should be very careful with arrogance and pride.)

The Ramifications of Arrogance

Ever notice how people who are naturally thin have their noses highest in the air about physical fitness? Never mind that studies prove the average person is less than 5 pounds different in their fit states than in their most out-of-shape states. Five pounds!!! That is a fact! The truth is that we LOVE to think everything we have, and everything we accomplish, and everything we are, is because we are so bright, brilliant, fit, hard-working, “together,” resilient, loving, or tenacious (and those who don’t have what we do are not these things). But what if NONE of it is our doing? Most people simply cannot live with that idea. But if we truly care about truth, and if we truly care about the plight of others, we must charge on.

Our Western school of thought tends to say that the “have-nots” do not “have” because they haven’t played the game correctly. They’ve made bad decisions. They’ve done the wrong things. They’ve adopted the wrong morals. They’ve been stupid. They’ve been careless. But must not we set aside our arrogant addiction to our own greatness, our own self-made status, and ask the simple question: “What if there is even a shred of truth to this argument of determinism?” Would that not change everything about how we view compassion, safety nets, education, social institutions, and government?

What moral obligation would we have to end our rule as the last 1st-world nation on earth that bankrupts the “dumb shits” for failing to purchase health insurance when they lose their jobs—and delegating them to the bankrupt status of indentured servant for the rest of their lives (as if they weren’t already)? How might we view our dismal rate of social class mobility? How might we view the fact that “The top 1 percent of earners took home 23.5 percent of income, up from 9 percent three decades earlier” (NYT, Aug. 20, 2009), as those in power buy themselves ever greater advantages and corporate welfare—and now Wall Street bailouts. How might we view the massively increasing concentration of wealth among the rich in the last 20 years, despite oodles and oodles of self-help books like the Secret, or Joel Olstein’s “prosperity gospel” that tell us we are all actually determined to get anything we want just by believing and asking? (Obviously those books and sermons aren’t working—or are working for only the super rich.)

It Matters

From the healthcare debate to economic theory and religion, the degree to which we really have “free will” is a vitally important question. I will continue to argue that our culture of competition and our delusion of free will is the true opiate of the people, one that numbs us to human suffering and unnecessary inequities, and far too often oversells personal power while it blames the victims. If we can continue to feed ourselves laundry lists of reasons the “lazy” people—those dirt bags we see on TV in the food lines, the fat people, or the third-world crazies who just can’t manage a decent constitution because they’re too stupid—just don’t deserve our sympathy, then we can continue to tell ourselves it is their choice. We should lock them in prison, bomb them to oblivion, and wipe them off the pages of our newspapers. That seems easier than truly understanding the complex causes of why things are the way they are. After all, wouldn’t we really rather read entertainment “news,” and continue living in our mentally gated fantasy community, where we leave all the important concerns in the hands of the individual?

What might it do for us if we paused and realized the degree of suffering in the world? If we realized that many people work harder than I ever have, and are smarter than I’ll ever be, and die at young ages due to poor drinking water, or die of cancer, or have bad backs, or autism, or psychological illness? What if I realized I’m not “all that and a bag of chips”? What if I realized that hundreds of thousands of people never experience true love, suffer horrible and debilitating diseases, or they go uneducated or unfed because we buy into this nearly Karmic idea that they suffer because they deserve to suffer; they suffer because they did it wrong, and we prosper because we did it right? We rationalize that capitalism/freedom requires us to be able to choose incorrectly, and thus requires a large group of failures over which we need not bother or fret. “Just look away, there is nothing we can do, that’s how it has to be if we have freedom,” we tell ourselves.

Even Thomas Jefferson knew that his artistic and visionary platitude was false: all men and women aren’t really created equal. There is a broad and cruel spectrum of physical and cognitive ability built into the human condition, from those in a permanent vegetative state, to those with severe mental and emotional impairments, to those in the middle, to those Mensa members, geniuses and autistic savants. There are adults who can read and understand this post, and even more who cannot.

What’s in it for you

“But this deterministic worldview is empty, dark, and can lead you nowhere,” you might say in final protest. “So what’s the point? What good comes from making me feel out of control and sad?” This is an understandable concern, but here is the crux of these many pages: at least for me, determinism has brought a beautiful inner peace that I have a difficult time explaining. I will nonetheless briefly try.

Remember Ron, the fictional drug dealer from Part I? We all encounter Ron in the real world. Ron might have been on the playground with our kids; it might have been our child whom Ron kicked in the head to earn his status as an alpha. Or we might have been flipped off by Ron in traffic today. Or you might work with a Ron. Clearly there is no excusing Ron’s meanness. It is not okay. Still, when someone wrongs me I can only take responsibility for my own emotional response to that wrong; and for me, seeing the underlying causes (determinants) that got Ron to the point where he flipped me off, or attacked my kid, totally changes my emotional response. I understand. I can start to see the answer to the great question “why?”—and it makes so much sense. I can often completely skip the wasted energy of anger and hate.

So now I see death differently, I see life differently, and can better celebrate the non-cruel moments—with full knowledge that much of life is unfair, and that much of it is suffering. I don’t have to like Ron. I can even still advocate for removing him from society. But I can move beyond forgiveness by skipping hate altogether, and avoid the carrying of all that anger. I can see the horrifying and glorious symphony of cause and effect that more satisfyingly explains Ron—and the world; and it gives me a sense of connectedness to the universe, agency in it, and a greater sense of inner peace as a result. I hope that makes sense. We are not outside of cause-and-effect events; we are participants in them, even if our thoughts and actions are fully caused.

I’m convinced that whether pure determinism is true or not, I must dedicate my life to better understanding the “gifts” that nature, luck, and circumstances have given me—and thereby dedicate myself to treating the rest of humanity without harsh judgment, with an eye on figuring a way to reduce the suffering of others.

Once we admit that the world is governed by natural processes of cause and effect, and that even mental “choices” are heavily or totally influenced by brain chemistry, culture, education, and exposure to prior ideas and knowledge, we can then cease our habit of abdicating responsibility for the plight of others to some afterlife, or simply looking away because it is just some sad byproduct of “free will” or freedom.

It seems to me we are morally corrupt when we view the world that way, and when we arrogantly delude ourselves into buying that we all have equal opportunity. We don’t. We are not created equal, nor can we expect great things from people who are given no education, no family, no books, no love, no stimulation, and no way to meet even the most basic of Maslow’s needs. These causes that create the effects that are the lives of real people—are our failures, and they are nothing short of abhorrent abdications of our obligations to humanity. I for one am going to stop looking the other way, and I am going to abandon the rationalization of eugenics-like notions like “survival of the fittest,” fighting for market share, and competition—since they rob me of empathy and compassion. Won’t you join me?

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of Truth-Driven Thinking, and A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog; © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)

 

Our Greatest Delusion: Free Will (Part I of II)

Buckle up for the greatest of potential blasphemies. Here in Part I of a two-part post, you’ll be introduced to the great unthinkable. In Part II we will get to the part you really care about—what the prospect of living a giant delusion means to you, and to our world. So let’s jump in. Surely if you’ve read the blog for a while now and haven’t been compelled to your keyboard in protest, this could be the post that does it.

What if I told you that even if you are not legally or physically compelled by gunpoint or government to act or think a certain way, you are nonetheless still not free to make your own decisions? That in reality there is no such thing as human “free will,” only the delusion of complete autonomy of thought and behavior? What if I further suggested you did not randomly choose to read this article, and that in reality you could not have made any other choice but to read it—given the very specific circumstances that existed when you were introduced to the existence of this post? Indeed my assertion is that causes led to the effect of you reading this now. You did not have a free choice, and couldn’t have chosen otherwise.

Or what if I told you that neither you nor any human is a self-made person, no matter how brilliant and inspirational the narrative about the kid who came from nothing and did it all by himself or herself. What if I challenged you that even the tiniest elements of your life were “fully caused”—that they didn’t come from nowhere and nothing, but rather were the result of natural cause-and-effect forces, and thus were “determined”? I’m about to do that, and much more. Hopefully whether you agree or disagree, you’ll discover something about the way you think, and about the arrogance that comes from wholesale purchase of this problematic notion we’ve been sold: that our decisions are fully ours, are totally uncaused except in our autonomous heads, and that they originate solely from the “nothingness” that is our “free will.” You guessed it. I believed this all my life, but alas it appears I’m wrong yet again, and that this is not how the world really works.

To get you fully primed and riled up, let me further assert for a moment that your successes, your failures, your sorrows, and your victories are far less “yours” than you can probably begin to fathom! To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character from the movie A Few Good Men—perhaps we can’t handle that truth; but that doesn’t make it untrue. If I get my way here, you’re about to see how your delusion of “free will” destroys compassion, kills empathy, rapes peace, obliterates love, bastardizes the golden rule, and basks in your arrogance and ego-feeding self affirmations. Should be fun, eh? (Just wait until Part II.)

For me this topic is perhaps the ultimate stop along my journey of big questions. It has been among the scariest, most outlandish, potentially offensive ideas I’ve explored, and flies in the face of the very foundational assumptions of our merit- and competition-driven Western society. To utter such questions about “free will” is probably a greater heresy than questioning the existence of the most sacred of gods. But even as painful as it has at times been for me to admit, the evidence seems clear: all human action is fully caused, and thus fully determined—not by a top-down designer, and not by a god who physically moves the tectonic plates to create the tsunami or the aneurism—but by a non-designed, non-planned chain of cause-and-effect events that traces its origins to the beginning of time itself.

Of course as with anything, I remain open to arguments and new information. This is but an unexpected, unsought, and provisional estimation of truth—but it has also become a warming, comforting, and liberating worldview for me. I will comment more on this in Part II. For now, I hope you’ll try to follow along and give it a fair hearing; it is a useful metaphor for learning, even if you can’t fully accept the argument.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine for a moment the face of a newborn baby: not just any baby, but you! At the moment of your birth, and even weeks before, you were the culmination of a nearly-infinite number of interacting physical variables: mitosis, cells, neurons, maternal nutrition, chromosomes, immunities, physical defects or lack thereof, brain function, and many more. You were born into poverty or affluence, theological beliefs or non-theism, support or neglect, wellness or sickness, war or peace, plague or global wellness, and myriad other circumstances that uniquely defined your world—the world—into which you were born. These circumstances would be more powerful than you ever imagined. They would set in motion the very nature and course of the only existence you would know. In fact, between your biology and the natural makeup of your body and mind, and the circumstances into which you were born, I will argue that there would be no additional inputs—no other influences to the course of your life. You were a natural person, born into a natural world. (Even if you disagree, work with me on this. I know you’re thinking there could be a supernatural cause that determines physical-world “effects,” but more on that later.)

Now imagine another child, this time a child born into abject poverty in urban America—in this case an African-American infant we’ll call Ronald, born in 1982 into the country where “all men are created equal,” and we delude ourselves with the notion that there is equal opportunity for all. Ron was born to a crack-addicted mother in Detroit, with a relatively high IQ of 123. He was born into a Christian household, but with very little education or guidance of any kind. Drugs were the norm and survival was the game in the culture into which Ronald was born—at a very low birth weight it is worth adding. And while the circumstances of this child’s birth might be very different from those of your own, with both birth stories—yours and Ron’s—a series of cause-and-effect events progressed forward from an infinitely complex chain of these prior, “background events”—events that entailed the variables we’ve mentioned, and trillions more. But the chain progressed exactly from those births to this moment in time, didn’t it? Just as a butterfly’s wings flapping in South America has been said to be capable of creating a hurricane on the other side of the earth, the tiniest of events change the course of history—as did you and Ron; cause-and-effect is a funny thing. You changed the world as you were shaped by it, as was Ron. But still, there is more to the story.

Ron was smart, as we’ve said. Ron figured out that when he cried loudly enough, someone would feed him. That was his brain working—quite rationally, actually, even though he didn’t really know he was doing it. But as he aged, he made many billions of decisions that brought him to precisely where he is today. He learned to manipulate his parents. As he grew to pre-adolescence, he learned how to get what he wanted from others too, by intimidating his peers—even kids twice his age. Ron watched the pimps and drug dealers in the neighborhood, and saw the nerds in school getting nowhere. Ron made some pretty wise decisions if you think objectively—like the one to deal drugs. Ron got pretty rich. Ron prayed to his God, and Ron followed social norms and rules of conduct that applied to his world, not some “Leave it to Beaver” fantasy of another time and place. All-in-all, given his biology, his brain, the events and circumstances of every second of every minute of his life, Ron made very “wise” and predictable decisions at every step—at least to Ron’s mind.

Could It Have Happened Differently?

But let me push you a bit further. If we view Ron’s life—even from before birth—as series of decisions made by his cells, and then his larger brain, we see something interesting. Picture for a moment a snapshot of Ron at the point of any decision in his existence, no matter how momentous or how insignificant. You might picture his decision to cry or not to cry in order to get attention or get food; his decision to first smoke that crack pipe; or his decision to kick his neighborhood friend in the face—an act that established him soundly as the alpha in his peer group. As you envision a particular snapshot, understand how infinitely complex were the factors that led Ron to act or “choose” as he did at that split second in time: his biology, the amount of testosterone in his blood, the color of the paint on the walls, his hunger, his fear, his entire brain condition and chemistry, the weather, his genes, and so forth. Billions of variables existed in a very, very specific state at that snapshot in time.

Here is the essential argument: given all of those specific circumstances that comprise the picture at this single decision point in Ron’s life, there is essentially a ZERO probability that Ron’s “decision” to think or act as he did could have been made contrary to the way Ron made it. That “decision” was the culmination of an extremely complex chain of cause-and-effect events—all very “of this earth”—that led to Ron’s behavior and decision. Ron’s actions, in other words, were determined by myriad and complex causes. They were not uncaused. Ron did not, therefore, have the ability to “choose” in any conventional sense of the word—as we delude ourselves into believing he did. And here is the shocker: neither do you!

A “free will” worldview tells us that Ron has made a set of poor decisions. Ron is a loser. Ron deserves everything he’s getting in life. He may even deserve to die, versus the cost of housing Ron in prison and protecting us from him. But what if, in reality, Ron made the perfect set of “decisions” for Ron’s brain, given the circumstances into which he existed from before his birth, until this very day? What if looking back there was, in practice, no real alternative to how Ron’s body and brain could have interacted with his environment at any of the trillions of decision points that led from one to the other through the complex decision tree of his life?

But are we gods?

If you are like most, you are already coming out of your chair in protest. “We do have free will,” you want to scream. I know, I know; and I’ve been there. But as you ponder things further you’ll see it’s difficult to escape cause-and-effect, and indeed this philosophical debate has raged for over 2,000 years, so try to hang in there.

If in fact we can make uncaused decisions, as you might suggest, where do they come from? If we could defy our life experience, our specific biology at the time of decision, our training, our culture, our mental state, our heritage, defy everything we ARE and everything we know, and every biochemical signal at the time of a decision, at the risk of a false dichotomy it seems only one of two things can allow that: one, we behave randomly; or two, we are essentially our own “god” and exist outside of nature and all known reality, and we can overcome it in some magical way.

But clearly we do not behave randomly, as if there were no causes or reasons behind every one of our actions—no matter how wacky any single action may seem. If that were true, then there would be no predictability to anything you or I do. I might be carving pumpkins one minute, axe-murdering the next, singing lullabies the next, ad infinitum. But we are predictable, and we do not randomly make uncaused choices (again, “caused” being complex interactions of biochemistry, memory, experience, new stimulus, etc.).

But are we gods? Can we truly just change our minds, in an uncaused way, or behave contrary to all those things that define us in that snapshot of a decision? Clearly to do so requires a supernatural element or ability. It requires that we overcome nature itself, or have a non-natural input somehow cause us to behave outside all earthly causes and constraints. But both of these options put us on a supernatural level. If you argue a “non-natural” input that is an external deity—a god—in that case we are still not in control; we are mere puppets, determined by God. And if it is not an external supernatural god, then it is we who are the supernatural, magic-wielding gods, is it not? ([note added 11/3, 10:52 a.m.--there was a somewhat snide, passing Calvin reference here with a question mark indicating my lack of knowledge but suggesting Calvinist predetermination asserts that all things are predetermined, which is not what Calvinism teaches; I stand corrected. Indeed most Christians believe some things are determined by god but not others--a problematic assertion of "partial determinism" that we'll cover later]).

So these are the two main choices: a supernatural god who leads us in a world without free will; or it is we who are supernatural gods, capable of operating outside all cause-and-effect. Of these, only the latter leaves us in with free will, but it’s a pretty vacuous explanation—that we are gods who magically transcend all laws of nature. Not very satisfying, eh.

For me, even though science cannot today—and may never be able to—identify all these natural elements of any given decision, the natural solution that all behaviors and thoughts are the effect of causes, makes the most sense of all to me. If this reasoning holds (and I am open to being wrong—though right for the wrong reasons would be preferable:-), the personal problem for us then becomes how we can accept this  deterministic reality, and why it might change everything about how we live, love, learn, and even govern our society.

One quick additional note: Many try to use quantum mechanics to argue against determinism, quite unsuccessfully from what I can tell. Unfortunately for them, it seems even quantum mechanics favors either a determined universe or a random one, but certainly not a partially determined universe where we control “some” things, but not all. If new understandings of the quantum world hold consistent, it still does not bode well for free will and the notion that we can initiate uncaused effects with our supernatural minds (otherwise known as contra-causal free will).

For now I will leave you with this. Whether you buy this determinism philosophy or not, modern science is showing that we are far less “self made” than we would think. Psychologists like John John Bargh are studying situational causes of psychological phenomena, and finding we have very little choice in how we react to many situations (see his book “Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes”. It appears we are programmed by nature, quite literally, and decisions we make can often not be made otherwise under our biological, cultural, and environmental constraints.

In Part II of this post, we will move on to the meatier and more entertaining questions of what this argument means to you—and to our understanding of how the world works. I hope you will then see that whether you ultimately agree or disagree that we are fully determined—as the effects of causes—we can all do better when it comes to expressing compassion and understanding for those who have made some “bad choices” in their lives. Unfortunately for us, the unanticipated consequences of our compassionate understanding may be a need to rethink our worship at the alter of competition, and a new understanding of what ”survival of the fittest” really means to nature.

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(Stephen L. Gibson is the author of Truth-Driven Thinking, and A Secret of the Universe, a critically acclaimed, citation-rich novel about the intersections of science, reason, and faith. Still an emotion-driven thinker in recovery, Steve shares his journey in search of ever-elusive truth with thousands via his Truth-Driven Thinking podcast, and his Perspectives blog; © 2009, Truth-Driven Strategies LLC.)