FREE WILL and RESPONSIBILITY

1)

Do you feel like you are responsible for your actions? Are there other factors reduce your free will? In what ways?

The simple answer is yes, I feel I am responsible for my actions, who or what am I otherwise? I would hate to think of myself as someone who just acts on the first thought that pops into my head...do any of us really live our lives like that?

However I do have a couple of caveats. Over a decade ago I trained to be a hypnotherapist, I never made it in that profession but I found the course itself incredibly enlightening and very helpful to me in my own life. The idea that we all create and also have patterns of behaviour created for us and these can both be positive and negative enhancing and disempowering, is something I can relate to. As an adult i was always very shy, very insecure and had a very low opinion of myself, I had ideas of what I would like to do but felt emotionally crippled, I felt like an invisible force was always holding me back. Learning about the roles of our conscious and more importantly our sub-conscious really shone a light on this for me.

Up to the age of 11 I was a confident kid, I was always a deep thinker and probably a bit different (though most people like to think of themselves that way). In junior school I had a little gang and if people were getting bullied they would come to see me and i would try to resolve the situation for them. School is the only place most of us witness physical violence, at that time I never backed away from a fight but fighting was always a last resort. One of my favourite memories of me as a kid was being called into the headmasters office with around 10 other boys. There had been a fight after school the day before which had been reported by the school's lollipop lady. The head had just started to read the riot act when  my 9 year old self said "Can I stop you there Sir, Edward wasn't involved" One of the boys called into the office, (you may have deduced it to be Edward) had not been involved in the fighting, the head asked the other boys if that was true and Edward was sent back to class. I know at my core I am kind, honest and have a strong sense of fair play and justice.

Things changed for me when I went to an all boys senior school, I stopped growing, I was 5ft and 6 stone when I left that place at 16 (I did not reach puberty till I was 17) my school days had been awful, I was bullied a lot and looking back that is when I first started thinking about suicide.

Coupled with this my relationship with my Dad became increasingly strained neither of my parents are bad people but they are both very insecure. Dad struggled with me growing up and was forever putting me down, anytime i got excited about doing anything he would say "You won't do that" if I disagreed with him he would say "You know nothing" this went on for years and if I did do anything well he would ignore it. I took and passed my driving test in secret, when I went home quite proud of myself and told him, he did not look up from the paper and just muttered "Oh right" I make him sound awful he was in that regard but in many other ways he was great. I realise now him being the last of 9 children he too would have had a difficult childhood and became the victim of some very dodgy programming of his own.

The hypnotherapy course helped me to make sense of me, the annoying little voice in my head that stopped me going for jobs "you can't do that" seeing a girl I realy fancied and being paralysed by fear and doubt "she would never go out with you" refusing to go on holiday with my mates "you won't do that". To this day it still causes me problems the self destruct voice is pretty strong in my head but I have on occasion been able to overcome it. I had always wanted to go to Australia in 1997 on the spur of the moment I went. I said to my Dad "Hey Dad I am going to Australia..."Australia!? you'll never go there" he said and I thought to myself 'sod you, i will' and i did.

So although I would agree my free will was affected, I still believe I had a choice in how I behaved, the actions I chose to take or the times I chose to back away. The decisions I made were my responsibility. I was just slightly handicapped by a lack of understanding as to how my mind and personality had been corrupted.  

Despite my negative unhelpful patterns I have been married, lived in a nice house, been on enough lovely holidays that I don't feel i missed out...and I was incredibly lucky in that I  had an intense four month relationship with the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, Kerry, I absolutely adored her and consider myself incredibly fortunate to have experienced those wonderfully powerful feelings. 

That brings me on to my second caveat, an area where I do not think we have free will, I know for certain I don't. We seem to have no control over the people we are physically attracted to. Not just the gender or age but individual people within the group we class ourselves as being attracted to, it never seems to have any basis in logic. A feeling takes over (lust) and can lead to us to wanting someone who is completely inappropriate for us and results in many people ending up in toxic relationships. On the flip side I have had had women in my past who I really got on well with but I just didn't fancy, my life may well have been far easier had I been able to.

 Now sexual attraction is not everything but without it, it is very difficult to get a relationship up and running. With having a partner being so important, in our society, I do feel frustrated that something I feel I cannot control, where I do not feel I have free will  (ie I cannot make myself find someone physically attractive) plays such a big part in my own and most other peoples lives. The last time I saw a counsellor I said to her "It is so difficult to understand, for me there are men there are women and there was Kerry and I was only ever really attracted to Kerry. Nobody before or since came anywhere close.

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2)

If you believe that someone is responsible for something bad that has happened - does it necessarily follow that you blame them? Do blame and responsibility always have to go together, or can we hold people responsible without blame? Why?

OK so let's begin by looking at the dictionary definitions

Responsibility :- the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something or of having control over someone."a true leader takes responsibility for their team and helps them achieve goals" 

the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something. "the group has claimed responsibility for a string of murders"

Blame :- feel or declare that (someone or something) is responsible for a fault or wrong. "The inquiry blamed the train driver"

Free Will :- the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

With that in mind I think it is difficult in our society not to attach blame if something bad has happened as a result of a persons actions. Having said that it is ok to look for reasons/excuses as to why the person behaved the way they did but ultimately they are responsible for their actions. Personally, I believe that is a good thing. In order to remove the concept of blame you would need to create a society with no rules and no laws, no expectations regarding behaviour. Having said that, collectively, humans are the most violent, murderous destructive species on the planet despite having all these rules, laws and regulations in place in our societies. 

I love a book called the Tao te Ching, 81 verses, written 2500 years ago and packed with wisdom but I struggle with one concept "throw away morality and justice and people will do the right thing, throw away industry and profit and there will be no thieves." Perhaps that would be the ultimate goal, animals do not seem to need so many rules, maybe the first human societies were like that but I believe any attempt to radically reduce consequences for the actions people take ( i do not see how you can impose consequences without the notion of blame) would initially lead to a rapid and prolific rise in violence.

I would argue that when it comes to free will and the actions we take we always have a choice. Let's take dogs, interestingly, in my opinion dogs have evolved to get on with people far better than people get on with people, how have they done that? Now dogs do not recieve much of an education but when you first bring a puppy home you begin to toilet train  him/her, it usually takes a couple of months. Initially the dog just craps where it likes but over time it figures out that it should not to go to the toilet inside. Is the dog exercising it's free will? The dog still has options, when left alone in the house there is nothing to stop it making a mess indoors. Does a dog make a choice to go to the toilet outside? I would say definitely yes.

People are the same whatever the circumstances there is always a choice and as there is always a choice then the ultimate responsibility is with the individual. The way we talk to ourselves is very important... Henry Ford said "Whether you tell yourself you can do something or if you say you can't you will probably be right." 

I do not like spiders, i don't kill them but I choose not to hold one in my hands. If someone said "Gary I will give you £10,000 if you hold a spider...i will hold a spider. When I suffered from depression, I guess if i am honest I probably still do now but I like to think how I deal with that depression is largely down to me. I could lay in bed and say to myself I can't get up I can't go to work, which is what i did on occasions when I was employed. However, i did get out of bed to go to the toilet and if someone had said, we will pay you £50k a week if you come back to work, I am pretty sure that would have motivated me to go back. A few occasions I tried anti-depressants and I hated the way they made me feel, that probably contributed to me wanting to believe I could take on a large degree of responsibility for my mental health.

When it comes to crimes especially crimes involving cruelty and physical violence then for me the person acting out their aggression is always responsible. Even the most mild mannered of us have aggresive thoughts sometimes, 'I would love to just smack him in the mouth' we do not act on them though. I do not believe in random acts of violence and i do not believe people ever lose the ability to reason. Take for instance road rage if a person cut another up and one person aggressively got out of his car to confront the other occupant, perhaps with the intention to physically attack them. If the person getting out the car was 6ft 6 and holding a shotgun the aggressor would back down. Self preservation would kick in. I believe the fight or flight instinct is inherent  in  all of us. Crimes of passion is another example, I do not believe a person becomes so out of control they lose the ability to reason, they make a choice to hurt someone. If at the point a man was going to attack his partner, he was given a bag containing £10 million and told he could keep it if he walked away, then it is more beneficial for him to walk away and he would. I know these are extreme examples but I am trying to demonstrate that regardless of circumstances people always have a choice, without that ability to reason and weigh up the odds, society would be even more savage than it is today.

Obviously those examples involved presenting people with different options they are not always going to have options that they see as more favourable, so there has to be consequences when people behave badly and cause harm and it is difficult  to impose those consequences without apportioning blame. I do not really see how it can be done. Going back to when I was being bullied, the teachers tried and failed to stop it, my Dad tried and failed. Then one day a group of boys came round my house to see me. They included the biggest lad in our year a black boy called Brian and he told me he would sort it out. Apparently he went back to school, picked one of my tormenters up and slammed him down onto a desk, gave him a warning to leave me alone. He then did the same to the other boy. The bullying stopped.

When it comes to people acting under the influence of drugs and alcohol again I think they are responsible for their actions as they choose to drink and take drugs. The one area I do not have such strong opinions is with regards to medication.

I have a friend who is probably the most mentally ill person i know. I am fully aware he needs medication in order to function. On one occasion I went to see him and he had absolutely trashed his house and his own mess was smeared on the walls. I did not know what to do, at the time I was completely out of my depth. He was speaking to me normally as if nothing was wrong, saying he had just had a fit of temper, we sat and had a game of chess. Like I say I had no idea what to do, which makes me sound bad...if he had physically hurt himself I would have immediately called an ambulance. When I left I rang his partner to express my concerns. Later that night he took himself to A&E and demanded they keep him in as he was a danger to himself. I found that fascinating and it is something I often think about. During this episode of completely irrational behaviour, maybe a psychotic breakdown I am not sure of the correct terminology but within all that internal madness & mayhem he was experiencing, there was something inside him that recognised he was unwell,  he took responsibility and made the decision to get himself to hospital and demand to be looked after.

In summing up then I believe Blame, Responsibility and Consequences do need to go together, some things such as acts of violence and cruelty should result in severe consequences. For other types of behaviour then reasons and excuses can be made in mitigation but the responsibility still lies largely with the individual, as for all the actions we take there is always an alternative choice. I believe we are always capable of taking a different course of action.