There’s a Talmudic saying, based on the Zohar, “You’ll find nothing that withstands the will.” Related to that is the one from Ethics of the Fathers, “One who conquers his desire is [considered] a mighty man.”
A few years ago, I heard a speaker predict that sooner or later, psychologists and other scientists would relegate the idea of free will to the attic of human experience, and sure enough, that has come to pass.
My day job has me researching all sorts of papers, and I came across that idea a few days ago. The topic was drug addiction and its close kin, smoking and drinking. Sex is also an addiction, according to some.
Disheartening and encouraging research
Research papers have explored the different ways people combat their dependency, and these papers are at once disheartening and encouraging. The first, because the struggle is lifelong.
For instance, I know of one person who used to smoke a lot. I would see him coughing so hard that he had to lean against a parked car to keep his balance, and he was in his mid-thirties then. He quit cold turkey, and he once told me that he missed it still. But his doctor told him he might not live to see his kids grow up, so he stopped. The struggle continues.
And some relapse, again and again. Yet, they keep trying, becoming the butt of their own joke, by saying that “quitting is easy, I do it all the time.” In a way, that is the second part, the encouraging side. They keep trying, and sooner or later, joy of joys, they succeed.
The researchers have their theories. Some look at all the enzymes being produced in the brain—the dopamine, the reactions to alcohol, the associations with pleasure—and say that these forces compel us to seek out these pleasant experiences or “highs.” They overcome our other interests, be they our health, our knowledge of short-term consequences, our fear of shame, you name it. The promise of immediate pleasure holds the cards.
Of course, even these scientists have their debates. Is this a call of our own drug factory, residing in our brain? Or is it a learned experience, following a sequence that will transport us, if only for a few moments (or an evening)? We can always get back on track. Another hit, another drink, another illicit meeting. We can get past it, nobody will know the difference.
It can be very enticing, so very easy to do. Maybe it’s partly the pure pleasure of feeling potent, or of seeing things differently. Maybe it just makes us happy, and damn the possible consequences. There’s always tomorrow to quit. Right now, it feels like bliss.
But quite a few people do quit. They shrug off whatever demon is riding on their shoulders. It’s been described as the most difficult thing to do, for physical reasons (such as the withdrawal symptoms) or the chore of finding new friends and new ways of taking simple or not-so-simple pleasures. It’s a major undertaking, whatever you’re trying to quit.
We can get past our impulses. Something, some event, will often make us see what we’re doing. Maybe it’s a friend who gets seriously ill. Maybe we’re given an ultimatum: quit or else. Maybe circumstances overtake us, and we get a call from the doctor`s office. But we make a choice between momentary pleasure and the world we truly want. Despite our impulses, as poorly and as simply understood as they may be, we understand who we are and what world we want to be part of.
Girl Walks Out of a Bar
One prime example can be found within a book I read a few years ago by Lisa F. Smith, titled Girl Walks Out of a Bar. One reviewer called it one of the best addiction memoirs she’d ever read, and reading this book will show you why.
The author had a successful life as a lawyer, with money, prestige and a great career path. Yet she was consuming one, sometimes two bottles of wine a day, plus cocaine. She had delivery systems set up, ways of disguising her habits (although we might wonder if her co-workers caught on, sooner or later). She drank on her own, at parties, and with friends, basically whenever the opportunity arose. She woke up to drink, and didn’t stop until she went to sleep.
Then one day, she woke up, took stock of her life and checked herself into a rehab centre. She didn’t stay that long, but she never looked back, either. She dropped the friends who liked drinking, hung on with iron determination to her goal (this is quite a suspenseful novel for one that doesn’t have violence, or even a second character), and eventually married. She decided, “I have to change, and I will change.” Lisa Smith turned her back on a decades-old habit.
Of her own free will.
There are also contrary examples of free will, of people who do the oddest, most incomprehensible things, and yet are perfectly sane. They have unimpeded control of their free will, yet they lead a life that seems so opposed to what we call normal.
Voluntarily homeless with a Ph.D.
On November 11, 2019, The Montreal Gazette published a below-the-fold article by a staff reporter, Jesse Feith. The article in question dealt with a 77-year-old man who was homeless. Not by circumstance, but by choice. He had no mental illness or addiction problems, and he wasn’t penniless. In fact, he has a doctorate in philosophy, and was steadily employed for 40 years.
He’d chosen, of his own free—yet most inexplicable—will, to live on the streets for the past 10 years. He did have hygiene problems, and was evicted from one residence because he liked to hoard, but he was totally lucid. He came to the attention of the police because he was almost beaten to death on those streets.
During his court appearance, he was courteous and lucid. In fact, he was far more articulate than most of us could ever hope to be. He explained his choice and his state of mind by saying, “It is not because someone is homeless that he does not read Le Monde diplomatique, Le Figaro, Le Devoir [a French-language, Montreal-based publication] or The New York Times.”
The Montreal police force, which has a squad dedicated to the homeless, told the court that they had attempted (on numerous occasions) to get him into a shelter, but he’d refused, saying that he disliked the “military”-like restrictions of the hospital they mentioned. Superior Court Judge Michel Yergeau, who presided over his case, described him as a “surprising paradox.”
The article ended with our hero residing in a centre and noting that he was actually free to come and go as he pleased. He’d put on weight, according to the report.
Free will. Fully aware of the risks, the discomfort, the utterly uncertain nature of life on the streets, this man chose it over a life under a roof, pension arriving in a bank account and food in the fridge. He valued his freedom above all else. That was his choice, and nothing in the compendium of rational explanations commonly presented by behaviourists and neuroscientists can account for his behavior.
Our will, free and unfettered, remains our own. No scientific explanation can take it from us.
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image 1: Wikimedia Commons; image 2: Pixabay
