Why are we so afraid of freedom?

Many people are terrified by the idea that they have a completely free choice in many things and frantically deny that this is so

  The way that many of us live our lives, we might as well be mindless automata for much of the time; getting up in the morning, having breakfast, going to work, voting for the same political party each election, taking part in some activity or other every Thursday evening, meeting the same friends regularly and so on, all without any conscious act of will. How many people rise from their beds and actually consider what in the world they will do with the fresh day? Does the average person think anew each day of the desirability of going in to work or even of getting dressed? These things are what we do, they define us. When an election is announced, very few people sift carefully through the facts and figures in an effort to decide for whom they should vote. They know that they are Conservatives or Liberals, Democrats or Republicans and vote according to what they have come to think of, subconsciously, as their nature. In this way, an awful lot of us have effectively abandoned freedom and reduced the number of choices which have to be made each day. We are like sleepwalkers.

     The main reason that so many people limit their choices about so many different aspects of their lives is that it is easier, safer and infinitely more comfortable to follow a familiar routine and pretend that this is how things must be. It is the line of least resistance and avoids having to face hard decisions and a lot of agonising about whether these are in fact the right choices, either ethically or in any other sense. If you can get into a position where you half believe that there are no choices, then life becomes smoother and less stressful. Because of this fear of freedom and the ability to choose, various ideas have been proposed which apparently remove this limitless choice and make us instead hapless puppets of forces immeasurably greater than ourselves; thus relieving us of responsibility for our own actions. Let us look at one or two practical examples of how this process has developed. It  is part of a general trend, in which people’s responsibility for their actions has been removed and they are treated by doctors, psychologists and sociologists as helpless puppets, controlled by forces greater than themselves. Whether it is drinking too much, cheating on our partners or being feckless and idle, some expert is sure to have a ready-made excuse for the behaviour and a scientific reason why those following such a course of action really have little choice in the matter.

     Since the 1960s, those who drink heavily, abuse drugs or are sexually promiscuous, along with the lazy, violent and dishonest, have been soothed and reassured by being persuaded that their awful conduct is not really their own fault at all, being caused in reality by a combination of poor genes, defective parenting and an iniquitous social system. What previous generations have viewed as moral failings have now been either medicalised, attributed to an inadequate and dysfunctional upbringing or, when all else fails, laid at the door of an uncaring society which has made insufficient effort to understand and sympathise with the habitual drunkard who squanders his family’s income on drink, rather than food for his children. In short, such people are not responsible for their actions.

     This determination to remove the burden of guilt from the shoulders of even hardened criminals and let them think of themselves as victims, rather than offenders, reached new heights in Britain in March 2020, when Her Majesty’s Prisons and Probation Service announced that they hoped to do away with the term ‘offender’ altogether, in the interests of creating an ‘inclusive culture’. Instead of offenders, those on probation will now be known as ‘persons subject to probation services’. Meanwhile, at Berwyn, the largest prison in England, holding cells were renamed ‘waiting rooms’ and the cell blocks were to be known as ‘communities.’ The judgemental word ‘prisoners’ was also abolished and replace with simply ‘men’. Everything was being done to try and prevent men who had committed crimes from seeing themselves as criminals who had chosen to break the law.

     It was suggested above that some social problems have been medicalised, that is to say ordinary human behaviour has been placed into the category of disease and those undertaking certain actions treated as sick patients, rather than just men and women making choices of which society disapproves. Take the drinking of alcohol. Some people drink so much alcohol that their health is compromised and they can become ill and even die. For some, the risk is more of economic or social harm; they make a nuisance of themselves when they are drunk or spend money of drink which should be allocated for rent and food, perhaps becoming homeless or unable to look after their families as a consequence. It has in recent years been suggested that addiction to alcohol is a genetic phenomenon and that the desire to drink can be uncontrollable without the help of doctors and therapists. The drunkard is thus transformed from a weak-willed individual into the victim of a medical syndrome over which he has no more control than if he were to be diabetic or asthmatic. It is not difficulty to see the absurdity of such a contention.

     A personal anecdote might help to make sense of this and it is altogether likely that this will resonate with some readers. As a young man, I was inordinately fond of alcohol, to the extent that I regularly became drunk. This was not really the way to live and so I stopped it, but not before I had been diagnosed as having a ‘problem’ with alcohol; a problem in the medical sense, that there might be something wrong with me that made me drink heavily. Perhaps I had a faulty gene or ‘addictive personality’. Because I tended to drink to excess, I stopped drinking alcohol entirely and it has been many years since I have touched the stuff. Imagine though that I now decide that I have a sudden desire for a glass or two of vodka. I close down the laptop on which I am currently typing, put on my coat and go in search of a drink. It is purely a question of what choices I decide upon; whether to carry on typing this essay or popping out to get some alcohol. My genes have no more to do with the case than the flowers which bloom in the spring. Surely nobody can seriously suggest that I have a gene which might compel me to go to a supermarket, say, take out my debit card and use it to purchase a bottle of vodka? Is there really a fault in my genome, which codes for such foolish and ill-advised behaviour on my part? Or would it rather be an act of folly, brought on by a conscious decision on my part?

     If alcohol addiction is recognised as a thing, then why not chocolate biscuit addiction too? I am partial to this foodstuff and tend to avoid both biscuits and chocolate, lest I become unhealthy and fat.  Could it be that greedy and immoderate eating is similar to excessive drinking? In the latter case, there is posited a genetic disorder; a soothing and comforting thought for those lacking in self-control. Is there really a gene on some obscure arm of one of my chromosomes which makes it impossible for me to control how many biscuits I eat? Perhaps it is not simply that I eat an entire packet of chocolate digestives because I am a greedy man who does not bother to control his appetite. It could be that I am the victim of a medical condition! 

     None of this is as ridiculous as it appears at first sight. In the same way that some people have a medical condition called ‘alcoholism’, so too do others, instead of greed, suffer from an ‘eating disorder’. It is an illness! Of course, there is no limit to the way in which we can evade the uncomfortable truth that we are to blame for our actions. Just as we might hypothesis a genetic explanation for alcoholism, it would be quite possible to blame theft on a faulty gene. Who knows, there might even be a laziness gene which prevents me from mowing the lawn regularly.

     A marvellous instance of this seeking of alibis for shortcomings which are really our own doing occurred a while ago in my own life. I am notoriously anti-social; the kind of man who stands about awkwardly at social events, glaring at other people and wishing that he was by himself at home. There is a theory that introverts and extroverts are born, that this antipathy to the company of others and love of solitude is something hardwired in the brain. Just like alcoholism and greedy eating, a genetic cause has been posited for the difference between introverts and extroverts.  I once advanced this hypothesis to my wife, as a handy way to explain my rudeness and utter lack of social skills. She helpfully pointed out something which had never before occurred to me.

     At parties and other social gatherings, I typically position myself in a corner, away from others, and do my best not to engage with anybody. This is of course what one expects from an introvert. I write a lot of books though and give lectures about them, which entails mingling afterwards with the audience. Under those circumstances, I am the most sociable man in the world, smiling affably and making appropriate small talk. The only difference now is that I am usually being paid for such appearances and I am anxious to give a good impression so that people will buy my books. My wife asked whether I would consent to behave normally at the next social function we attended, if she only gave me money to do so.

     The point of this anecdote is that it beautifully illustrates the sheer absurdity of pretending that we are helpless victims of our genes or upbringing. Any of us can choose to be chatty and sociable, just as we are able to be taciturn and uncommunicative if we prefer. We can get drunk or become total abstainers, steal goods from shops or pay for them like everybody else, commit murder and rape or obey the law. It is this absolute freedom which is now frequently denied by the rest of society.

   Instead of saying, ‘I work as an editor’ or ‘My current job is in a hospital’, we say, ‘I am an editor’ or ‘I am a nurse’. Of course, this is quite ridiculous. We have absolute and unbounded freedom, as with every other part of our life, to change what we do tomorrow, and not allow ourselves to be defined by what we did yesterday or last year; to go to work tomorrow or not, to change jobs if we wish. This unlimited freedom is scary though and it feels far safer and more comfortable to follow our familiar groove, rather than to begin each day by asking ourselves, ‘What shall I do today? Who will I be tomorrow or next year?’ Our jobs are like a small child’s comfort blanket, something we clutch to show that we are somebody and have a place in the world.

      Coming to terms with the simple fact that our actions are wholly at our own command and that who we are tomorrow might be very different from who were have been today makes many of us feel uneasy. We are not subject to the random shuffling of our ‘genes’, the vagaries of early family life, what we studied at university or anything else. This is an exhilarating, if perhaps a slightly terrifying, realisation. It is only when we accept and acknowledge this alarming state of affairs though, that we become fully grown-up and in control of our own destinies, and realise that our actions are not predetermined by either biological imperatives or societal conditioning.   One is reminded of the existentialist concept of ‘angst’, whose nature was first described by the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard and elaborated in later centuries by people like Nietzsche and Sartre.

     Existential angst is a state of anxiety created when a person realises that unlike animals, who are controlled by mere instinct, humans have absolute and unbounded freedom to do whatever they please, being limited only by the laws of physics. This revelation can be both tremendously exciting and at the same time frightening. We can choose to go to work or not, kiss our partners or strangle them, give money to charity or steal from a bank; it is all entirely up to us. This complete freedom to act as we will, to do what we want, be who we wish, is a precious gift, but one which all too many of us are eager to deny ourselves.