There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (and the Price of Lunch is Your Free Will)

An old sign, commonly posted in public indoor spaces in the days when all men wore hats, read “Gentlemen may remove their hats, all others must.” This sign captures the reality of what we like to call free will. Like it or not, Freud’s breakthrough conception of the superego impinges significantly on free will, that notion that human beings are free at all times to choose. What Freud realized is that rather than roaming the range of existence freely like wild buffalo we are much more like cattle, free to graze as we choose within the given confines of our surrounding fences. Given the superego, the notion of free will must be replaced by what I would call zones of autonomy. And it is only because free will is shrunk down to zones of autonomy that we are collectively able to enjoy the fruits and protections of civilization. In essence, to participate in civilization is to be not free. This cost of doing business for the venture, civilization, which makes human existence possible is a steep price indeed. As always, you get what you pay for. The message at the core of Freud’s lasting philosophical statement, Civilization and Its Discontents, can be boiled down thusly: In order for civilization to function, it’s participants must sacrifice free will; this sacrifice makes us all neurotic.

One may sacrifice one’s free will to civilization in one of two ways. Minus the superego, whose emergence in the individual is never certain and is the result of what is best described as a moral education, the individual’s free will is almost inevitably curtailed by the state, whose “justice system’s” true function is to assure the ongoing viability of civilization in the form of the state. Those who exercise free will in opposition to the will of the state soon find this free will demarcated by prison walls (or, it is important to note, in the case of defiance of the state’s economic necessities via failure to manifest marketable skills, banishment to the varieties of Siberia that include urban slums). Paraphrasing Alcoholics Anonymous, stomping grounds of many a soul who has chosen free will over the law, the path walked without the superego will lead you to one of three places: jail or other institutions, hospitals, or your grave.

Conversely, if one is the recipient of a modicum of moral education, the thoughts and behaviors necessary for the smooth functioning of civilization are encoded in one’s psyche as the superego. The particulars of the superego will vary by individual depending upon the vagaries of his or her moral education. But you will always know if the superego is present and functioning effectively in the individual if he or she is generally managing to stay out of trouble. Those individuals who get into trouble due to the dictates of conscience, see Martin Luther King Jr. or the Berrigan brothers as examples of those jailed for acts of civil disobedience, have the most advanced superegos of all, and as such pose no true threat to the ability of civilization to function. In fact, those burdened with outsized superegos are perhaps the most important contributors to society of all, for by imbuing civilization with a semblance of justice they tamp down the collective neuroses resulting from the loss of free will. Just as in Animal Farm where all animals are equals, and some are more equal than others, in civilization, where none of us are free, some of us are less free than others. And they are irrefutably the best of us.

One of the superego’s craftiest maneuvers is in allowing us the appearance of free will in everyday life. As long as our thoughts and behaviors remain within the boundaries set for us by our respective superegos, we are free to think and do just as we please. I am free to go to the movies with my free time on Sunday mornings, or play tennis in the park. Countless little decisions are made by the individual from the seat of agency, the ego, each day. The sheer mass of choosing that accumulates from these unnumbered choices feeds the illusion of free will; if I am free to choose in this infinite variety of everyday moments I begin to have the emotional satisfaction as if it were the case that I am free to choose at all times. This effect likely keeps us all sane.

But what I am really experiencing are life choices made within the boundaries of my zones of autonomy. If one had an exceptionally rigorous moral education, the ferocity with which one’s superego wields the only weapon it needs, guilt, may discipline one well enough such that the great majority of one’s time is spent in the zones of autonomy, thereby amplifying the illusion of free will for the most moral among us. But while not all of us give in to the temptation to put our foot up the ass of our obnoxious neighbor, we all at least think of putting a well deserved foot up this neighbor’s ass. And because the superego monitors thoughts, and not just actions, we are all inevitably subject to its recriminations in the form of guilt.

And if you doubt the power of guilt to shape behavior, then it is time to take a long hard look at what is keeping you out of trouble. I have a close friend who I have known since childhood. I can vouch for the comprehensive nature of her moral education, which was of the progressive social justice Christian variety. She shared with me that what shapes her behavior is embarrassment. For example, she was recently embarrassed by a server at a local restaurant, and emphatically stated to me that she will never set foot back in the establishment, even though they have an amazing wine selection, because of this incident. Understanding embarrassment as simply being made to feel guilty for one’s behavior, it is clear that the feeling of guilt was so powerful for my friend that she will likely never again engage in the behavior that, rightly or wrongly, led to the feelings of embarrassment/guilt. But an even greater witness to guilt’s potency is the fact that she can’t even return to the scene of the “crime.” The restaurant will always be the site where she drowned in guilt. It is submerged forever.

I am certainly not immune to this. At work recently I was “embarrassed” by a colleague who happened to be coming down the stairs in the stairwell when I exited the stairwell via the door on the landing. I was in a funk that morning and didn’t notice that she was headed for the door in my wake, so I failed to hold the door for her. When we made it to the office she announced to anyone who would listen how “some people” were so rude that they couldn’t hold the door for those behind them (and yes, I did gently confront her- I am getting better at this kind of thing). Whether or not I deserved this rebuke or not, and for what it’s worth my wife gives me a free pass after hearing my version of events, my superego certainly took notice. I now wait approximately forty-seven seconds after opening any door before passing through, on the off chance that someone else might appear out of the ether and need me to hold the door for them. I am tempted to start wearing a doorman’s uniform to work. All that to say that when the superego talks, people listen.

Wittgenstein said “You can mistrust your senses, but you can’t mistrust your beliefs.” If you are blessed with a superego (and I do mean blessed; remember the alternatives), it functions as the ultimate belief which can’t be mistrusted. The superego bounds one’s choices in the same way that death bounds life. You can ignore the superego just as we often ignore death. But, like death, the superego inevitably comes knocking. Inevitably because the last time I checked nobody was perfect. And the superego demands nothing less than perfection.

So what does it mean for us that “Gentlemen may remove their hats, all others must,” i.e. those of you with superegos may choose to follow civilization’s dictates, and we’ll lock the rest of you up? The first step forward is always to get real about just where you actually are. As long as we cling to illusory notions of free will we shall remain lost in a fantasyland made out of the denial of our most profound existential dilemma. The dilemma common to every human being, male, female, etc., is that to enter through the gates of civilization, as we all must (language acquisition alone guarantees this entry), is to irrevocably forego free will in exchange for that shabby impostor I call the zone of autonomy. Every one of us is Meatloaf singing “I’d do anything for love, but I won’t do that.” And then we all do precisely that. What else is there to do?

Freud is a hero because he refused to flinch in the face of this defining existential dilemma. He saw no way out, and so he took none. His philosophy, and Freud was first and foremost our greatest psychological philosopher, owned this central problem of being human. He showed us exactly where we actually are, and he died a pessimist.

Unlike genius brother Freud, I am just folks. But like Freud, I too will someday die. And while I have begun to face the need to own where we humans actually are, I hope not to die a pessimist. There is a popular Buddhist book titled The Wisdom of No Escape. Freud showed us that there can be no escape from our shared dilemma. I turn to Buddhism to learn the wisdom inherent to this place we can not leave. I told my wife tonight that I believe that Buddhism is the “religion of last resort”, which is English for “the wisdom of no escape.” Pardon me while I remove my hat.