Choice

The freedom to be

I write these pieces to sound things out to myself, really, and share my soundings with you. Do they touch something within you? Well, here I go again.

When parents raise their children to believe they are test cases in a divine struggle between good and evil, are raised to believe in an angry, vengeful God and an active evil force that undermines the wayward soul, ask yourself, How does it rub off on them?

When our gods are Good and Evil, we cede responsibility. We are taught that we are not in charge of our lives, since “the devil made me do it,” or “God wants me to ….” Multiply this times through the generations since people first thought that way, and you can see that where we are today has not evolved that much from where we were millennia ago.

I’m not a psychologist, but indulge me, will you, as I “go all psychological” on you.

Our deepest beliefs make up the ground of our emotional being, from which we act.

The stronger these beliefs, the more they constrain our personal freedom of choice. An old saying once put it starkly: “In the moment of action, no man is free — he does as he is.” Well, that’s gloomy! Sounds like we’re all machines. And of course, sometimes I have felt like a machine. I acted stupidly, then afterward wondered, “WTF did I do that for?” When I’ve managed to look at it later, I see that it was because I believed something a bit crazy, acted emotionally, and — well, it didn’t end well.

lingda kong, @konglingda

Some beliefs drive those visceral, gut-wrenching, fight-or-flight, zombie-like impulses that enslave us, rather than serve us. I’ve experienced their power. And the perverse thing is, I usually felt, when I was in their thrall, that I was doing the right thing.

Ah, but that old expression says, “in the moment of action, no one is free”. That also seems true to me. I act according to the person I’ve made of myself to that point.

I’m illustrating this right now. Since I believe consciousness can expand, I feel empowered. I’m happy when I’m learning. I share what I’m learning with you.

The Problem

But so many of us don’t choose our beliefs. We simply accept what we’ve been told to believe, thereby turning our backs on the greatest freedom we have been given. If God gave us brains capable of thinking independently, is it not our obligation to use them?

Time for an example. I’m a proud member of the Authors Guild (AG) which aggressively defends the free expression of writers like myself. The AG joined major publishing houses and several acclaimed authors to challenge Florida’s HB 1069. The coalition requested and won a summary judgment on HB 1069. According to AG:

The law allows any member of the community (not just parents) to demand the removal of any book in the school district that “describes sexual conduct” or that the person deems “pornographic” without defining what either term means—although, as Judge Mendoza finds, “—given that obscene material as to minors is already prohibited under Florida law, these terms must, therefore, target non-obscene material. The books must be removed within five days of the objection—even if the objections are frivolous—thus keeping books unavailable indefinitely while the objections are reviewed. Read more here.

Turns out, anyone can walk into a library and demand its removal, no questions asked!

So what’s happened there? Goodbye, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and other acclaimed works like The Kite Runner, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Slaughterhouse-Five. What would you bet that advocates of this law have never even read these books?

What impels us to ban books? I might have a little insight. My stepfather (“Dad”) was a wonderful, loving father. He was also a fervent anti-communist who spoke publicly about the evils of communism and advocated banning all communist literature, such as Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Dad was a good man with good intentions, fighting for our freedom. But he took his anti-communist beliefs from no less than the formidable authorities of J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy.

When I got to college and discovered the freedom to read, I thought I’d find out what Marx was all about. I acquired a more balanced awareness than Dad was able to. I never advocated communism. It is, I thought then and think now, a bad idea. But I didn’t fear it either.

The thing to fear, I learned, is not communism per se, but despotic leaders like Lenin and Stalin who killed and oppressed in its name. Dad was taught that communism produced dictators. I disagree. I say that Lenin and Stalin sought power above all things and found an ideology that they could use to exploit others.

But so did Hoover and McCarthy! The underlying belief of all four of these despots was common: to attain absolute power over people like you, me, and Dad.

It’s important who we listen to. They tell us what we must believe, that we must not use our brains to think for ourselves and make choices.

Choice — the Freedom to Be

My example of book banning arises from fixed beliefs that cause well-meaning people to parent from fear. It surely gets our attention: parenting is a fearful responsibility. Every parent knows how fraught with danger is a child’s path in this world.

But one of many things I learned from our sons is that their journeys are, and always were, theirs, not mine. Oh yes, I tried to intervene. Sometimes it was needed. But so often, I didn’t need to do anything but tell them I love them and allow them the freedom to learn as they experienced life, that greatest of all teachers. Usually (well, maybe mostly!), they didn’t want my assistance, no-thank-you-very-much. They were separating from my influence to find their own way, just as I did from my Dad. Our sons taught me it was their lives, not mine, and I admire them for it. Dad came to admire me, too. I felt it. I wonder what kind of conversation we’d have today if he could see the America we live in now.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity life presents is to examine what we are so certain about, to try to live as consciously as we might, and maybe to make a better choice this time. This, it seems to me, is life lived creatively.