The arguments of religion that
introduced predestination to Xian converts, the arguments of Determinists
that serve to continue that into the metaphysical realms attached to
science (mainly, it seems, through psychology), work to the benefit of
those who would impose their own ideals onto human societies wherever they
can grab a purchase. The first aim of the memes that perpetuate religions
is to remove the personal autonomous self from the mix, after which
gullible converts become convinced they should do away with such an evil
concept, and work for the glory of their religion or political body even
against their own best interests.
All religions seek and strive
to always replace the self with their own set of ideals, for their own
self-perpetuation, by fixating attention upon whatever each self has been
fed, the indoctrinational materials passed to each individual by all the
proselytizers in their lives. Memes get built upon by a constant influx of
religious ideas until each formerly self-aware host has been given a new
internal identity as a "man or woman of god" as ready to defend their
facsimile self as viciously as they should have fought to save the
original, had it not gotten so surreptitiously stolen. Most of us never
get to know our selves before they have been banished while we still were
adolescents. Self out, god in.
Is 'Self' Real? My
approach to the creation of this entire website, all the other writing I
have done, and the design of my own personal philosophy, has been to keep
myself reminded that, "Whatever is true, is true in spite of what I want
to believe." Whether or not any of us like an idea, if it is true it
cannot do us any good to deny that; and, if it is false, it will be false
no matter how much we love the way it seems. If an idea is testable, if it
is accessible to our common awareness, then it can be either true or
false, but only as a matter of whether or not it can pass or fail our
tests. Our best lives can be lived by acknowledging that and designing our
existences around it, and our worst kinds of lives will be those lived by
people who fail to do so.
The philosophy named 'Determinism'
has done the secular world a continuing disservice by promoting its false
view that, mainly, infers the autonomous self is only an illusion, and
then works hard to convince all parties that means 'delusion'. To make
their case against the reality of our perceptions of 'self', Determinists
rely upon the accuracy and dependability of the very same systems of
perception they strive to discredit. Their notion that selfness is an
illusion cannot be supported by any kind of objective testing that cannot
also better support better alternative hypotheses, and that most often
gets misinterpreted to a view that includes all of existence as only a
"delusion" by those who have no facility with which to perceive the
difference and so will treat both words as synonyms.
The harmful nature of that
philosophy comes from its tendency toward a nihilistic view of life: "Oh,
what's the use?" "We're all going to end up dead anyways, so why should we
care?" "Why should human beings struggle to better themselves, only to
have the universe die around us and turn to frozen rocks?" It is such
sentiments as those that spring from delusion, whereas 'illusion' presents
the metaphor by which we correctly or incorrectly understand what is real
and what is required for us to survive and thrive. That 'us' is the selves
by which each of us recognizes our inherent individual autonomy as
presented in each sovereign 'self' in any group. This works through a
process modern thought has given the name 'emergence', of which you can
read more by clicking the link at the bottom of this page.
Determinism not only is too
easily misrepresented, too easy to misunderstand, and too easy to make
inferences from that are absolutely incorrect, it uses a concept called
'free will' as a strawman to decoy skeptics away from the autonomy of self
as something that has risen up by evolutionary processes, by insisting
that only 'cause and effect' determine responses by some unformulated
automatic process. The basis upon which determinism rises up is a right
enough description of cause/effect relationships, which can be most
concisely expressed as "Nothing happens uncaused." In the material world,
events occur because something made them happen. The part that gets
overlooked is that "Something made them happen because it could." Material
existence provides a complex array of materials that will enable all kinds
of events: 1) If something will initiate them; and 2) If something is
present with which to do that. Determinists commonly describe that as
"things happen because they were determined to." It would be more correct
to say, "Things happen because they were able to," as in the interactive
view of cause and effect.
The opposing view to
determinism is indeterminism, which claims free will does exist,
but offers no explanation or definition beyond a wide brush stroke
supposed to account for all of humanity's actions. In my mind, both sides
of this argument avoid the true issues and are actually non-issues that
use red herrings to make their arguments seem sensible.
The correct description of the
misnamed "Free Will" determinists claim to be the only alternative to
their creed, is that "thoughts and actions cannot self-originate
(paraphrased)." That, in just that expression, makes sense enough, but
determinists do not stop there when they get involved in discussions about
it. A few of them want to deny us actual consciousness, deny us an ability
to make choices, and/or deny our 'selves' any meaningful role in our
existence. Self out, determinism in, wherein determinism becomes the force
that drives us and takes the place God first sought to usurp.
'Self', as I reference it in
all my writing, is not the reification of electrochemical processes
inherent to all sentient beings, which is the 'self' the determinists and
other nihilists have put up as a strawman that they can then deny. Self is
an autonomous process inherent to sentience. You and I both know of
ourselves as the living, breathing, thinking portion of our bodies, a
concept we can grasp without making untestable claims of its separateness
as a being on its own. We know, if we have ever experienced it, that when
an accident (or the doctors operating on our bodies) renders us
unconscious, we have no self awareness, and except in the twilight zone
wherein we fade into or out of consciousness, we have no awareness of even
being alive. In the twilight zone, we may be aware of doctors' voices, or
those of people working over us, and dream of them in their uniforms while
we try to self-explain all that is taking place around us. When loss of
consciousness is complete, we will not experience even that, nor will we
experience not having the experience.
That occurs because the
electrochemical processes Nature has put in charge of our bodies —our
internal computer guidance system— has been interrupted in its operations.
It is the product of our awareness, as centralized in our bodies and
brain, that we generally consider to be our own distinct 'self'. To
recognize that does not require the reification of a second being in
violation of Newton's Rules of Reason or any other of the
Principles of Atheology.
'Self', then, is as real as any other kind of process commonly recognized
by human beings at all levels of our presence.
How to retrieve your stolen
self: The first step is to realize whether it actually has been
stolen; the second to realize what it can mean to you to understand
yourself.
We saw in a previous paragraph
how deterministic cause and effect actions are, in a manner of expression,
interactive in their natures: For there to be an effect, an event must be
involved, a cause for that event gets presupposed, that material was
present to enable the action initiated by that would-be cause, and also
that no events or causes act alone nor do they act without feedback from
later events that modify our perceptions of them. Why must we view our
mentality in any way different from that?
The material for our autonomous
'self' starts with our genetic heritage, out from which we each rise as
unique, self-sovereign individuals. Our mental 'realm' accretes from the
materials we filter into it as we grow and mature, and thereafter. Our
filters get stricter as we age and learn new ideas by experience and
various kinds of exposure. Our pictures —the metaphors we live and work
by— become clarified by this kind of process as we refine it. All of the
events and knowledge we have passed through those filters becomes the
material from which we glean new concepts and initiate actions of our own.
No internal force bears down upon us to make us unable to select from
whatever options may be available. I see determinism as limited in that,
and not the all-powerful facsimile deity that so often gets proposed. The
role determinism plays is limited to that which has become available: No
thought or action arises from nothing, inside or out, but thoughts and
actions will arise from interaction with ongoing events according to the
available materials, inside or out. Most of those ongoing events are
passing us by, not bearing down on us, until we decide to interact with
them.
Most important, and far more
important to you than misrepresentations by opinionated determinists can
ever be, is to understand the way in which your self became displaced by
parasitic memeplexes (look for memeplex in my
Glossary). Memes, active ideas that so surreptitiously (and yet
obviously) reside in your brain and nervous system (see: Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene), displace the genetic self by adding an over-layer
if they are symbiotic, or by subduing it if they are parasitic. We all
suffer from parasitic memes to at least some extent, and very few of us
get to experience life with
symbiotic memes for all kinds of reasons. That is something well worth
the struggle, and the risks are not all that they may seem unless we have
vested interests to feel concerned about.
Young people will find the
struggle easy, in comparison to someone who has matured and may find
himself face to face with great odds to overcome, such as the threat of
job-loss, or a spouse whose views are hard and fast. The struggle involves
dedicated questioning of your own deeply held beliefs, which most people
apparently find to be an impossible task to consider. What you believe,
what you can verify in nature using the scientific method, and what cannot
be verified by the processes of science (either by yourself, or by
studying the works of others), are items you must discover for yourself
and determine what kinds of actions will work for you. Your aim is to
rediscover and reaffirm your actual self and then to determine your
lifetime aims. I am not a professional psychologist, the kind of person to
whom you should turn if you get stuck; but, mainly, even he or she can do
little more than help or guide you. You will have to do the hard stuff on
your own. It may take years.
It's your life. It's your self.
It's worth it. Start now.