Existential Freedom and the Modern World (Part 1): The Challenges

Irving Yalom identified freedom as one of the four ultimate concerns of the human condition. The fact that we can reflect upon our lives - look back at where we've been and ahead to where we’re going - and ultimately make decisions about our current actions - this is what existentialists refer to as freedom. And this freedom, perhaps unexpectedly to some, brings with it a great deal of psychological suffering and anxiety. We may feel shame and guilt over past actions, fear over impending consequences, and insecurity over whether or not we can trust ourselves. Adding to this anxiety, a number of factors in this mad-hat modern world make it difficult to say with any certainty where our freedom begins and where it ends and what, if anything, is under our control. And yet, despite all of our anxiety and all of the barriers that we face, I believe that it is perhaps more important than ever that we adults develop an understanding and appreciation of our freedom, especially if we want to develop an authentic sense of its complimentary trait – responsibility. So I'm going to go along with Yalom on this one and include freedom as one of the four areas of my adult development model. But I’m also deeply aware that existential freedom is a difficult topic. So before I discuss what a well-developed sense of freedom and responsibility might look like in the modern world, I'd first like to identify those things that make it really, really difficult for us to understand our freedom. 

• The Self-Serving Bias: Researchers in the field of Social Psychology have found that our brains tend to adjust the level of personal responsibility we accept based on the outcome we receive. For example, when we win a game of Scrabble we might attribute our success to our impressive spelling skills while when we lose we might harp on the lousy selection of tiles we were dealt. Basically, our brains prefer to use reasoning that best maintains our self-esteem. And while this may be a good thing for our mental health, it sure makes it difficult to develop a clear and objective understanding of what is and what isn't under our control. So I would argue that an awareness of our biased perceptions is essential to gaining a realistic sense of our freedom and its limits. We must realize that many of the things we tell ourselves that we have no control over are actually well within our ability to change. Likewise, some of the things we take full responsibility for (good and bad), might largely be out of our control.
• The Just World Hypothesis: Humans have the tendency to believe that our natural and social environments hand out just consequences. We don't like to believe that bad things happen to good people, or that good things happen to bad people. Thankfully, the world does function in a just way much of the time. The hardest worker does sometimes get the promotion. And individuals who've committed horrible crimes are often caught and punished. And nice people sometimes live happily ever after. But the world is also partly chaotic. Every day innocent people are victimized through no action of their own. And in addition to their work ethic, people are also judged based on things like race, religion, gender, and body weight. Given our faith in a just world, we can become deeply troubled when confronted by the world's chaos. Women and children who experience abuse find it hard not to blame themselves. A husband will search for a reason as to why his wife died of cancer. And we all struggle to understand why people who behave badly get ahead. Ultimately, complete faith in a just world leads to a misguided understanding of our freedom. The fact of the matter is that the world contains both order and chaos. And we must take responsibility for ourselves in a world that won’t always reward our good actions or punish our bad actions (although hopefully more often than not this will be the case). Furthermore, we must realize that our own actions - towards kindness, mercy, hatred, resentment - all play a small part in how fair the world is for others.
• The Information Age is providing us with constant updates on the state of affairs across the globe - the genocides, the melting polar icecaps, the poverty, the starvation. We're watching 24-hour cable news programming and being asked what we think (but more often being told what to think) about all manner of issues outside of our training and experience - global economic systems, healthcare policy, international relations. And the more we allow ourselves to be seduced by the news, the more we are at risk to develop delusions about our existential freedom. We can become preoccupied with large abstract issues at the expense our immediate surroundings. We can become frustrated by our powerlessness to make a difference on a large scale. We can feel the weight of the world upon our shoulders. The challenge, in the face of this information overload, is to develop a realistic understanding of the limits of our own power.
• Modern American Politics: This one is more of a semantic issue worth clarifying. The concepts of freedom and responsibility are deeply ingrained in American politics, and are, unfortunately, often used towards hateful and ugly ends. The term freedom, for example, has become a sort of nationalist rallying cry, to imply something special about us Americans in contrast to the rest of the world. Responsibility, meanwhile, is often used by individuals, not to talk about their own responsibilities, but to disparage and pass judgment on those utilizing public assistance. All of this is, of course, against the spirit of existential freedom and responsibility, two terms intended, not to stroke our own egos or judge others, but to empower us to look critically at our own actions. In order to talk about freedom and responsibility from a developmental standpoint then, it is essential that we separate the terms from the politics, and reclaim them in a sense.

Okay, so that's the breakdown of the challenges. The question now is, in the face of our biased thinking, our myths about a just world, and the overwhelming distractions of the information age, how on earth are we supposed to develop any understanding of our freedom, let alone a sense of responsibility? What, if anything, is under our control? I’ll leave the answer to that one for my next post. For now, I'm going to sit with the question.