Quarantine 7 - Habits and Contradictions
I was having a conversation with a friend this week and realized I have a core contradiction in my beliefs. Here are two beliefs I have: First I’ve been exploring a belief in pre-determinism or a lack of free-will. Second, I believe that people can change over time. What she tripped me up on was pointing out that these two things, when put side-by-side, contradicted each other.
First, I have to explain why I believe in each of these because it would be absurd to think about the contradiction if I weren’t firm in my belief. Pre-determinism is a view that has solidified for me - especially once I started meditating. In meditation, one of the things that become obvious is that thoughts just appear - you are just sitting there trying to not think, and inevitably you fail at not thinking. The coffee you are about to drink pops into your head and for the next two to three minutes you think about how satisfying the water pouring over the fresh grounds will look. This realization made me really uncomfortable at first because I equated the ability to control thoughts with intelligence and self-control. This implies that our thoughts are just appearing within a given environment - at the most, we can control is the environment in which they appear. This is why I take so many walks - I find walking is conducive to creative thoughts appearing (except sometimes in New York City when you walk along a street with a particularly noticeable amount of dog poop). A more relatable example however is coffee. I’m sitting here drinking coffee - in about 20 minutes, I will be noticeably happier and more energize - my thoughts will be fundamentally different - am I controlling this?
My second belief is less controversial, but maybe even more core to how I was raised - people can change over time. There’s an old joke about psychologists that my mom used to tell me - it goes: how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Of course, the answer is one, but it has to want to change. This belief becomes more controversial is the extent to which people can change over time. My friend believes there are certain core building blocks to a personality - events from childhood, biological tendencies, etc. that make you who you are. Put another way, certain things will never change. This argument makes sense - it’s also more in line with my thinking around pre-determinism. However, I think in terms of probabilities and not certainties and therefore I would put this as certain things are way less likely to change. A major limiter is the constraints imposed on oneself - either external in the form of money, familial expectation, etc. or internal in the form of ideas of what SHOULD be. To her point though - extent matters too, there are certain facts that won’t change - you are a human, the maximum you will live to be slightly over 100 years old.
Ok, but obviously these two beliefs are counter to each other. A lack of free will would imply that any change is not intentional and vice versa. Right? Let's consider both directions:
First, how can people change over time if they lack free-will? One simple idea is that once you recognize the need to change, the change is inevitable. Something clicks and you will continue to try things until the outcome you desire occurs. You may continue to move or work harder or isolate until you get what you want. The counter would be nihilism which says implies nothing that you do matters if you cannot control what you are doing. But you still live in a society and in order for that society to function there has to rule on actions. Is it a choice to act within this system?
Then let’s consider the opposite direction - Can pre-determinism exist even if people are in control of changing? If the answer is no, then one should discard the belief in pre-determinism. One way to rationalize this though is connection. There is an old saying that you are the representation of the five people you spend the most time with - your teachers, co-workers, relationships, etc. Meeting these people could be a random process that leads to a stochastic change. These connections are reinforced based on feedback - hanging with this person feels good or conversations with that person feel stimulating. However, the action of meeting that person is outside of your control.
Finally, an important question - is it necessary to have completely aligned beliefs? For sure, any misalignment leads to dissonance, but these contradictions are important to progressing your philosophy. This dissonance led me to consider each of these beliefs more completely It’s ok to be in a state of contradiction - believing that capitalism is good while also considering there are problems important to you that it won’t solve - or feeling angry at someone even if you love them. It’s very easy to talk about a single belief and why it is right. It’s harder to talk about all your beliefs and consider how they line up - there just no reason you have to have it all figured out at once.
As a note, my dev team has started adding mood music to the PR. There is a business essayist I like that uses rap songs to explain business models (https://25iq.com/). It’s pretty funny you should start checking it out. I think a fun blog would be to use music to examine philosophies. There is certainly a lot of existentialism in rap music. I know I haven’t done it here, but if you have ideas for posts, feel free to hit me up and we can talk it out.