Free Will Fights Anomie
Time, existence, and agency
…the landscape of a dynamical system, by definition, is never static. Although it remains qualitatively the same between phase changes, it continually shifts in response to the system’s interactions with its environment... - Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Action (1999:160)
Humans are always changing. Neurons are always activating and inactivating. Skin cells are constantly growing and shedding. Lungs are continuously expanding and contracting. The heart is perpetually pumping and pausing.
A living human system is never static or still. When you look at one, you see it like the light of a star. You only ever witness its afterglow. By the time its appearance reaches your vision, it’s already gone, different, and, in a sense, dead.
Something that is always changing can only exist over time. What it is can only be recognized as a distinct thing if you search for it across multiple moments. You realize that the inhuman statue is actually a human street performer when she moves. Movement is dynamic and trans-temporal, rather than static and temporal.
Imagine we are facing each other silently in an empty room. You are always changing in the sense that you are never the same physiology from microsecond to microsecond. However, you are the same person from hour to hour. You are changing, yet you remain the same. Confusing language creates this paradox.
The way many people use “you” profoundly confuses themselves and others. The confused distinguish “you” from “your body.” This exacerbates their confusion because it denotes a nonexistent relationship between possessor and possessed. This relationship is illusory because there are not two entities standing in front of me in this room. There is only one entity. This entity is simultaneously the same and different.
The confused interpret this simultaneous sameness and difference substantially: “One substance cannot simultaneously be the same and different, therefore there must actually be two distinct substances!” They conclude that the “you” that has been distinguished from “your body” exists ethereally.
The inference that the paradoxical one must actually be multiple is understandable at first, but obviously flawed at second glance. It is like saying a typical human hand must actually be two distinct substances because it is simultaneously one and five. Rather, it is a substantial entity with different aspects. The single substantial entity is one in the sense that it is one hand and five in the sense that it is five fingers.
There is not two different substantial entities “inside” the single apparently paradoxical entity in front of me in this empty room. Instead, there are two different aspects to one substantial entity and therefore two different ways that the one thing can be conceptualized. When aspectualized one way and quantitatively assessed, it is one. Aspectualized a different way, it is five.
Most of the confused mean well. So do the vampires who look at the paradox and conclude there is no you. Vampires reduce people to subhuman structures and processes. They deny the existence of things like agency, selfhood, and personhood because they buy into a “secular” and “scientific” dualism. Their dualism is more subtle than the confused in that it appropriates scientific vocabularies. The optimistic dualism of the confused is easier to reject because it uses anachronistic vocabularies that rely on concepts like souls, gods, and celestial dimensions. The vampires advocate a pessimistic dualism in the language of modern science.
The confused differentiate “you” from “your body,” and then conclude that “you” is a soul, spirit, or some other otherworldly thing. They spiritualize “you.” Vampires also differentiate “you” from “your body.” However, they conclude that “you” is a pattern of neurological activity, a sequence of hormone productions, or some other biological process. They physicalize “you.”
Unlike the confused, vampires tend not to recognize their dualism because it lurks implicitly in the background. They call your name and then equate you with some biological structure or process. They do not see how blatantly contradictory it is to say, “Hey Marshall, you are actually just a bundle of cells.” How can I be cells yet also distinctly identifiable as Marshall? There must be a higher-order aspect to me for the vampires to distinguish between Marshall cells and non-Marshall cells in cell space. In this case, my personhood is smuggled into the term “bundle.” Marshallness bundles the cells in the distinct bundle together, so it cannot be reducible to the bundled cells. Vampires love this trick and perform it in various ways. They say “you” is “just” a sequence of neurological events, a set of genes, a flesh-covered assembly of organs, etc. The devastating question for them is how the purported ingredients are separated from other like ingredients. Why am I the neurological events over here and not over there (pointing at their head)? Why am I the genes over here and not over there (pointing at a dog)? Why am I these organs and not those (pointing at them)? They cannot answer questions like these without referencing “you” or invoking some other functionally identical higher-order concept that connects the specifically implicated ingredients into a distinct configuration in time and space.
Some dualist models are wrong in subtler and more sophisticated ways than others, but all distract people from their individuality. Dualism is destined to fail because it inevitably conflates aspects with substances.
Aspectualization is the selection of one way of conceptualizing something from among a set of multiple distinct ways of conceptualizing it. It is useful to discuss aspectualization in terms of “levels” because most of us like to arrange things in terms of size. I can aspectualize the entity in front of me in this empty room at the cellular level, the genetic level, the organic level, etc. This is not vampiric if I recognize that these different ontological levels correspond with aspects of a single higher-order entity with a distinct trajectory in time and space. In other words, as long as I do not conflate you with your aspects, I am not a vampire.
I can conceptualize the entity (you) as these various collections of units of different sizes. I can look at it as though it is a bundle of cells, a genetic profile, an assembly of organs, and so on. These are structural levels, analytical paradigms, or specialized vocabularies, for conceptualizing the entity’s static organization. What I am conceptualizing is like a fake skeleton used for demonstration purposes in anatomy and physiology classes. It serves a purpose, but is does not incorporate time, which is an essential ingredient for the creation of a real living human system.
Enter: process. To incorporate time, I can conceptualize the entity in terms of processual levels, analytical paradigms for conceptualizing an entity’s dynamic activity. Instead of looking in a way that focuses on structures, I can look in a way that emphasizes functional interactions and feedback loops. I can aspectualize the entity in front of me in this room at the epigenetic level (as gene-environment interactions), the physiological level, the psychological level, etc. These are dynamic ways of understanding metaphysical things that change over time. Processual levels vary with respect to the size of what is moving and the timeframes at which movements occur. For example, physiological movements like adrenaline releases tend to occur faster, or in shorter timeframes, compared to psychological movements like shifts in perspective.
The entity in front of me in this empty room is not a combination of two different things. It is not “you” and “your body,” “a soul” and “a body,” or any other dualism. You are not multiple, but one with multiple aspects. You are multidimensional. Dualists confuse the dimensionality that enables aspectualization with substantial difference.
With all this in mind, what is human will? Is will a static thing conceivable at a structural level like a neuron, muscle, fingernail, or lung? It is locatable in a representation of a static structure at a single moment of time?
Or is will a dynamic thing conceivable at a processual level like a chemical reaction, a synapse firing, a heartbeat, or a breath? Is it locatable in a representation of a pattern of dynamic activity across multiple moments of time?
What level is will?
Is will static or dynamic?
Is it something we have or something we do?
Where is it?
All these questions must be answered about will’s general nature before one can even begin to discuss the variables that afford and constrain will’s freedom. Freedom is a quality of will, but what is will in the first place?
I can’t find will at any structural level. I don’t believe human will is locatable in any single moment of time because I cannot find it anywhere in any static pictures of cells, tissues, organs, neural networks, or anything else. (Can you? If so, please let me know where you found it!) If will exists, and it’s not at a structural level, then is it at a processual level?
I look at patterned maps of cellular activity, hormone productions, synapse firings, and so on. Still, I cannot find it. I do not see anything in these patterns of activity that I recognize as will. (Again, let me know if you can!) If will exists, but it can’t be found at either static or dynamic levels, where on earth is it?
This is when many confused people invoke dualist models and known-to-be-unknown dimensions. They say, “Aha! You cannot find will anywhere, but it must exist somewhere otherwise your experience of making decisions is incoherent! Your experience indicates that there must be a force motivating your decisions. Since you cannot find it anywhere, it must exist somewhere that is nowhere. There must be another realm, another dimension, in which will exists. We must simultaneously tangibly inhabit somewhere within our everywhere and intangibly inhabit somewhere that is nowhere to us. We are multidimensional beings, don’t you see?” They reinforce their confusion by taking sentences they understand in incoherent ways too seriously.
This is also when vampires deny personhood. They say, “Aha! You cannot find will somewhere, so it doesn’t exist anywhere. Will is a religious fantasy for those too squeamish to embrace the scientific reality that people are bloodbags with brains. The idea that you can ever become more than a bloody animal is wishful thinking.“
I have found will. It is indeed nowhere and somewhere, but not in the way the confused imagine. Willing beings can indeed be said to exist tangibly somewhere and intangibly somewhere that is nowhere to us, but again not in the way the confused imagine. They use language that is right in a sense, but, since they do not understand the sense in which it is right, they speak it incoherently. Many of them will be the first to admit that they are speaking incoherently for they conveniently mistake their incoherence for humility.
Vampires are also accidentally right when they say will doesn’t exist. It doesn’t fit within their constricted definition of “existence” because it can’t be found using scientific instruments of measurement. They are right when they say that human agency doesn’t exist, but only because they have a myopic understanding of existence.
Let me tell you how I’ve found will. I’ll start with a confession. Up until now, I’ve been a little tricky with how I’ve discussed processual levels. I did this strategically in an attempt to bring out a stark contrast between two totally different senses of the term “time.” The trick is that I’ve talked about time as though it is something that exists. By discussing processes like synapse firings as things that exist “over/across time,” I’ve implicated a measurable sense of time. I’ve implied that time is a thing that can be measured, but measurable time is not the only sense of time.
Time is not only a measurement like 45 seconds, 7 hours, or a billion years. Most people talk about time in this measurable sense. When they say “time,” they mean “a measurement of time,” “measurements of time,” or “a measurable quantity in terms of standardized units” (e.g., a second, minutes, a potential decade). This is perfectly understandable given that it is actually impossible for humans to conceptualize the profound sense of time. Time in the profound sense is an aspect/dimension of existence.
The inescapable problem is that all measurements of time (in the measurable sense) are measured in time (in the profound sense). Time in the profound sense isn’t measurable because it keeps going. It can’t be measured for the same reasons infinity cannot be measured. All measurements of time are perceived by living people who, like time in the profound sense, keep going.
The living are infinite until they end, at which point they are measurably finite. Eastern worldviews tend to grasp the philosophical implications of this far better than Western ones. The circle symbolizes the finite infinity of living, which is simultaneously everything (the actualized present) and nothing (the actual future).
In the greatest movie of all (past) time, Everything Everywhere All At Once, an “everything” flavored bagel, a circle that is “everything” but also forms a zero (nothing), represents the burden of existing while caught in the thought that life is meaningless (or not meaningful). Depression is brilliantly portrayed in the film as the nihilistic desire to be erased by the bagel. The weight of potential, how life could be lived, is so heavy for the depressed that it disturbs their ability to orient themselves toward the actual future in a way that fulfills them. They get trapped in anxiety about what to actually do next, they get sucked into the bagel of despair. The symbol for this blog, ∅ (null sign), is a mathematical representation of the bagel, and “fighting anomie” is a name for the struggle to exist in the face of life’s nothingness.
From now on, I will use lowercase “time” to represent a measured or measurable quantity in terms of standardized units (e.g., a minute, a potential minute) and capitalized “Time” to represent an aspect of existence (i.e., a dimension of life/reality).
Let’s return to the empty room in which we are silently facing each other. For me to aspectualize the entity in front of me at any level, static or dynamic, structural or processual — for me to conceptualize the entity in any way — I must pretend like I can remove Time from the equation. In other words, I must use knowledge I already possess to conceptualize an entity that is always changing.
Already possessed knowledge is knowledge inherited from the past. When I conceptualize the entity in front of me, I invariably conceptualize something else. It is impossible for me to conceptualize something that is changing right now, in “real Time,” because it is always updating faster than my existing knowledge. I can only conceptualize it like I see a star, forever bound to perceptions of an afterglow.
Will exists at a processual level that can’t be conceptualized because it is the level of existence. Existence, or life, can’t be conceptualized because it is lived in Time. Life keeps going for the existing. It never stops and waits for knowledge of what is happening right now to catch up because that would be impossible. We can only learn from past events. Actual future events haven’t occurred. They can’t teach us anything because they don’t exist yet. They aren’t anything, they are nowhere. Since the actual events that constitute the actual future don’t exist yet, the actual future doesn’t exist.
“The actual future doesn’t exist.” Hopefully, you get what I mean by now. If you do, you see how confusing it is to express this idea in words. The statement looks paradoxical until you understand that Time is an aspect of existence that keeps going. The statement is another way of saying “we keep going” or “we keep living life.”
Will is a relationship between a thinking being and the actual future. It is a relationship between an existing thinker and the unknowable nonexistent future (nothingness). It is an existential orientation, an attitude toward. Toward what? Toward what doesn’t exist (yet).
Will (noun) always wills (verb). An existing will always wills because it is always encountering existence, which is always moving in, with, and through Time. To will is to exist in Time with a unique history. A will wills into the unknowable and unknown actual future in a way that is influenced by the singular circumstances of its individual history. Critically, will can’t be located because it is a relationship with the actual future, which has no location because it doesn’t exist (yet). It is a concept without content like infinity. Infinity cannot be conceptualized, but we can discuss it using the placeholder word “infinity.”
If you understand this, you get why the confused are confused. The actual future is their “somewhere that is nowhere.” It is their heaven and their hell, their afterlife. “We exist tangibly in a somewhere that is part of our everywhere” is a way of saying “we can conceive of ourselves using concepts derived from the known, or previously encountered, world.”
“We exist intangibly in the somewhere that is nowhere to us” amounts to “we are always encountering the actual future, which is inconceivable because it is nonexistent and therefore unknowable.” When they invoke known-to-be-unknown “realms,” they invoke the existential relationship between thinking beings and the actual future using confusing language disposed to paradoxical interpretations.
Vampires suck life out of the living by depicting them as goalless. Bundles of cells don’t pursue specific goals in life, individuals do. Bloodbags with brains can’t be specific symbols of greatness, individuals can. Vampires don’t conceptually treat people like individuals because they can’t see personal individuality through their reductionist lenses. They can’t even see people because they are looking at cells, organs, and the like. If you are looking through a biological lens, you see biological structures and dynamics. You don’t see people. To see personal structures and dynamics, you have to actually look curiously at real people. You have to switch from “looking” in your imagination to actually looking curiously at systems outside of yourself.
People are located in the processual level of actual existence. Existence itself is a dynamic process because it unfolds over/across Time. Time is an aspect of existence. Time and existence are one inconceivable thing. The idea of “God” emerged from the observation that we can use language to represent the actual future, an inconceivable thing that births everything we (presently) know to exist and that constitutes our (present) everywhere. Our everywhere, our universe, expands as we learn from encounters with the actual future that is currently nowhere.
If will is a thinking being’s existential orientation, what is free will? The key question is: Free to what and from what? You can’t physically locate freedom. Instead, you invoke freedom’s conceptual dimension to qualify, or describe, people’s relationships with their goals. Goals for the future are orientations in life. You are free to cook a good dinner tonight if you have the necessary competencies. You are free from debt if you have already demonstrated financial competencies. These freedoms are qualities of your experience of life, in life, through life.
Freedom is experienced as the ability to either succeed or fail at specific goals. This is also the experience of meaning. The depressed person stuck in anxiety is not as free to pursue goals as those outside of this sick condition. If you are caught in anxiety, you aren’t embracing the contingency and ambiguity of existence by pursuing fulfilling goals. Not knowing what your goals are is the same as not knowing yourself because you are a will, a nexus of thinking (knowledge), being (living now with a history), and nothingness (encountering the inconceivable actual future).
The living are always pursuing goals, they are always goaled. They are always encountering the actual future with some orientation. They are a point of view, a way of looking toward that individuates existence/Time. Since the actual future is always incoming, the living are always going toward something, willing something. The will that is you is free to the extent that it leans into the future. The power of will is the power of facing the future with courage and intentionality. Freedom is an aspect of willpower, an aspect of the way life is willed. Freedom is a way of living.
People talk so much about flight or fight that they forget a third response: freeze. Freezing is anxiety. Goals enable flighting (toward a better life) and fighting (for a better life). You freeze when you don’t know where a better life is, what your goals are, who you are, how to be in Time, how to live.
Freezing is not always bad. It is often planning, which is an important aspect of life. However, planning, like anything else, can become an addiction that reduces one’s ability to intentionally make and fulfill goals. You can get trapped in a planning spiral in which all doing is the planning of unexecuted actions. You become so overwhelmed by the number of possible plans that you never act upon any particular one. As Kierkegaard said, “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
There are some practical takeaways from all this. First, fight back against the vampires who deny personhood to cultivate and protect individuality. When someone says that you’re “just” a pattern of brain activity or anything like that, push them to identify how the boundaries of the container are determined. If they say you’re just a clump of cells, ask them how they identify which cells are you-cells versus not-you cells in cell space. What does the clumping? If they can’t give you a direct answer, point that out. Vampires desiccate willpower by fallaciously invoking scientific vocabularies to deny the existence of individuality and its burdens.
Second, deconstruct the language of the confused to protect yourself and others against confusion. When they speak of heaven, they speak of an ideal actual future. When they speak of hell, they speak of an anti-ideal actual future. Talk of the afterlife is talk of living in the actual future that comes after now. In truth, life is heaven and hell, joy and despair, success and tragedy. You can’t have one without the other if you are taking real risks to pursue goals (leaps of faith). Trying to have kids in the face of the great responsibility of raising life could end in devastatingly sudden infant death. Getting married in the face of the great responsibility of being a life partner could end in an unexpected and bitter divorce. Every risk you take intentionally, every authentic leap of faith into the future, could end in horrible tragedy. But success without the potential for tragedy is unchallenging, boring, non-developmental. Heaven is meaningless without hell. Life has no experiential content without experiential contrast.
Third and most important, free yourself by intentionally doing weird things. If you are stuck in life, you are trapped in your current knowledge. You are a thinking being. If you are stuck, thinking is stuck. To unstick it, you must learn. Learning changes who you are and how you think simultaneously because thinking and being are aspects of the same living human. You must become strange according to existing knowledge in order to learn new information capable of disrupting the holding pattern. If you are depressed and anxious, the world you know now, your existing knowledge, is too familiar. It is fatally boring. Change the world, learn new ways of thinking. You can only learn new ways of thinking by doing new things. To increase the potential for self-disruption, try to do the weird things you least want to do. You don’t know what you want. That is why you are stuck. You need to learn to find out who you are. Become a phoenix. Die (lose who you are, abrogate existing knowledge) by sacrificing yourself (taking risks, being weird) so that you may live brighter (experience contrast, adventure, tragedy, meaning, freedom).
Fight anomie by freeing will.
PS - Here are some more cool pictures I generated using DALL-E 2 for this post.
