Plato and Free Will
“Free will.” A concept which, like many others, has severely retarded many people's systems-level cognition.
Over the last several weeks, I've been reading Plato's Republic. Every time I tell someone I've been reading it, they say, “Oh, yes, I read that in high school.” They say so with the implication of a question: Why would you read that again? Haven't you long moved past it? If you read the entire ~500-page Republic in high school, you must have attended quite an excellent institution which presumably employed the classical trivium approach. Or, far more likely, you read a few brief selections from The Republic, as I did in my classical Christian homeschool curriculum. You haven't read Plato's Republic.
Last week, a couple (the Branhams), their son, and the wife's parents (the Johnsons) came over for dinner with my family. We used to live next door to both couples in Hawaii back in 2005. I was five years old, so my memory of that time is rather poor, but everyone reminds me of a charming anecdote: once, I was riding my scooter in the alleyway, and I saw Mrs. Johnson on her porch. I called out to her, “Mrs. Johnson, watch this!” I then rode my scooter in a daredevil fashion down the alleyway, proceeding to crash into several trash cans. Apparently, I stuck out a thumbs-up and yelled, “I'm okay!”
As the evening visit wore on, I somehow managed to subconsciously steer a conversation with my dad and Mr. Branham into the realm of debt and economics (as I am wont to do). Both men are proponents of Dave Ramsey's model for financial literacy, and while I find it helpful, it only tells a portion of the story. Ramsey calls the individual to resist the temptation of frivolous spending and credit cards, and to instead live a completely debt-free life with a zero credit score. Sounds great, right?
The problem, however, is that the FIRE (Finance, Investing, Real Estate) sector is the largest sector of employment in the United States, and this sector's profits are predicated upon the existence and prevalence of interest-bearing debt. If Dave Ramsey were somehow able to convince a significant percentage of Americans to cut off their debt usage, the FIRE sector would correspondingly decline or collapse. This means that, in order to rigorously envision a world less dominated by financial slavery, a systems-level perspective is necessary. State intervention into the economy must be considered.
I inarticulately submitted this to the discussion – I had not the time to think it through to its logical endpoint, so the thought was incomplete – and was immediately met with resistance. “But, Gabe, don't you believe people have free will?” Ah, yes, “free will.” That perfect cudgel which flattens all invocations of philosophy or systems of influence.
In The Republic, Plato speaks about five forms of government – aristocracy, timarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny – and he then describes the kind of man inevitably produced by each form. For example, under tyranny, Plato's least favorite form, a man is ruled by an ever-continuous seeking after the satiation of facile desires. He is concerned with neither prestige nor philosophy, but almost exclusively with “experience” and “enjoyment.” Let's imagine the child of such a man, presuming the man is in a position of tyrannical power: the child is raised to seek fulfillment in the same ways as his father, but is unsatisfied by them, just as his father is. Perhaps the young man discovers drugs and alcohol as a teenager, continuing to forge his path deeper into the void of pleasurable experience. And then, let's say that he tragically overdoses in his early twenties, never having transcended the structures of his youth.
It is easy to see how one could construct such a sequence of life events; a wide variety of external factors have influenced this fellow's decision-making process, in addition to limiting the range of decisions he has available to him. But, you see, there is a problem. We have now departed a rather long way from this eternally-preserved, rational “free will” which plagues the minds of many people I know. We have now embarked on an exploration of manipulation, coercion, socialization – all domains which infringe upon and, perhaps indeed, determine, one's decision-making process.
Interestingly enough, earlier in the evening, Mr. Branham and I had spoken about the prevalence of big data and for-profit surveillance. He's perfectly privy to the fact that his smartphone microphone is listening to him and serving him advertisements based on the things he says. He's taken steps to curtail his use of tools and applications that he knows play an instrumental role in data collection and profile refinement. Somehow, though, it seems that he hasn't completed the circle: the fact that big data and advertising cybernetically shape human behavior. No, he's broken out of the Matrix. His techniques have exempted him from being touched by centers of power. He has free will, and he makes wise use of it.
By the end of our conversation, I asked Mr. Branham a question: “If one party agrees to a proposition made by another party and signals their agreement via contract, should the state involve itself in that interaction whatsoever? Should there be any legal restriction on the nature of an agreement between two parties?” After considering for a moment, Mr. Branham said, “No.”
Wassily Kandinsky, “Circles in a Circle,” 1923