A Loose Collection of Some Abstract Thoughts by a Wholly Unqualified Author
Sub-Sub Title: A long-winded conversation about criminal justice reform, philosophy, and the nature of our existence.
Successful people tend to be incredibly humble, giving credit to good fortune and luck to the point of cliche. For example, Elliot of Grey Matter in Breaking Bad (At least outwardly, they must be more honest with themselves in their own head).
It seems like being what society deems as successful (mostly focusing on riches and material possessions) is caused by some amount of luck and good fortune. It also seems to be caused by a mix of at least some hard work, higher education, and innate intelligence.
This may be hard for some to stomach. Not everyone gets to be a genius. I don’t get to be a genius. For people feeling uneasy, just remember that there is more to life than just what society deems as being successful. Was the Buddha successful? By society’s standards of success, with a focus on material goods, it appears not. But in terms of fulfillment, satisfaction from life, or legacy, he is likely far more successful than any of us.
That being said, those characteristics of successful people (hard work, education, and smarts) cannot be credited to the successful person in question. Why does someone possess a desire to work slightly harder than the person next to them? It is hard to say. Some mixture of nature (their genetic makeup) and nurture (their upbringing and how that shaped who they are). If you ask why someone is slightly smarter to the person next to them, the answer again can be chalked up to nature and nurture.
This realisation that the actions and outcomes of people, their decisions, their lives, and everything about them is completely out of their control. The decisions they make are only a result of the science experiment that they are – if you raised a child with their DNA with the same upbringing and life experience and put them in the same situation, surely they would make the exact same decision.
Figuring this out is becoming aware of the illusion of free will. It is true that I feel, you feel, we all feel in control of the decisions we make. But our decisions are only the sum of our genetic programming, our life experiences up to that point, and the options immediately in front of us. Considering this, how would it be possible for us to truly have free will?
For example, my decision to contribute to this very magazine. It must be a decision of my free will, yes? Not necessarily. A year ago my father told me that he occasionally writes pieces on topics that he is passionate about. For him, he has gotten a few pieces of writing published in New Zealand’s leading Catholic magazine. Good for him, I guess. Better than me slumming it in Nexus (friendly fire, I know). As well as this, I must have some natural inclination to write. Nature (I hopefully share some DNA with my dad) and nurture (my education and upbringing made me writey). Just one example but you get the idea.
Once you realise this, and apply it to the people around you, then go one step further and apply to people society deems as worthless (such as incarcerated people and houseless people) and you realise there is no such thing as a “bad person”. There are only people who have made bad decisions, and may even completely regret those decisions.
This knowledge is truly liberating. It allows you to be so much more empathetic to all your fellow humans, to know that if you had their genetic makeup, and their life experiences, [FACTORS THAT ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL], you would make the same decisions and end up in the same situations as any person on this rock. How can you condemn, pass judgement, hate, or otherwise throw stones with such liberating knowledge?
Would the world be a better place if everyone shared this understanding? A world without religion. It makes you wonder why the Queen put a hit out on John Lennon /satire. The Queen defo out a hit out on Diana tho, /not satire. I thought it was a matter of public record.
Every year in the United States, around 1,000 people are killed by police officers. Every year in the United States, around 50 police officers are feloniously killed in the line of duty. I have no political comment to make, the numbers tell a truer story than I ever could. Certainly not a shabby K/D by any standards.
What would these numbers look like if all police officers were given human empathy and philosophical worldview training at police college? Who is to say? Something to ponder, perhaps. Maybe they’d get the same value from reading Nexus.
Criminal justice reform is a topic that interests me greatly; it should interest us all.
For those blind to this enlightenment of the free will illusion, I can see why religion is so appealing. Right and wrong. Let someone else do the thinking; let someone else figure out what is good and bad. But on this rock, there is always nuance. Nothing is as simple as it seems.
This goes against religious understandings of this world. Indeed, what truths don’t?
Black and white understandings of right and wrong, good and bad, cops and robbers, black hats and white hats. All in all, a completely childish level of thought. In my opinion, religion truly is for those who seek out the childish comfort of absolutes in this world of unknowns. Not hatin’, just observin’. I can only write such scathing words as a former devout believer myself. When a religious person says they will pray for me to return to the fold, I reply that l will pray for them to leave.
Good and evil, sin and repentance.
It is so obvious that the Bible is full of simple surface-level ideas, written by uneducated early agriculturalists five thousand years ago, full only of barbaric mythology with questionable moral value. The whole book verges on the idea that Eve had free will to eat the forbidden fruit. Free will is paraded as the reason bad things happen, even though God is supposed to be good, all-powerful, and all knowing.
Anyways, I’m a bit off-topic.
Just remember, Do What Thou Wilt.
What we have covered today may seem groundbreaking, my dear readers. If you are interested, I highly recommend Sam Harris’s podcast on free will – after all, my opinions written here are only the sum of the information I have absorbed in my life, Sam Harris pods included.
I must write one caveat. While no person can be inherently bad, it appears some are genetically coded to have psychopathic tendencies with a propensity for violence. It appears these people might be inherently bad. The question of what society should do with a young child who tests positive for these traits is a philosophical conundrum for another day, and the moral repercussions of such a scenario should intrigue (and terrify) all of us.
