VII - FREE WILL AND INSTINCT

What is the deeper biological context of our actions? Do we have free will? Are we ruled by instincts? Is it possible to have both? If we have instincts, what are they? If we have both instincts and free will, how do we know what to do?

Starting with free will, do we, in fact, have it? At any one moment we do one thing and not another. Was it an open choice or was it predetermined? We appear to make choices. We are members of a generalist species. We do more different things in more different ways in more different habitats on more parts of the earth than any other species that ever lived. We are the ultimate generalist species.

The hallmark of a generalist species is the ability and willingness to try something new, to adapt to new circumstances and new challenges. A specialist species in a new situation either does the same old thing it always did or avoids the novelty or does nothing. A generalist tends to investigate, get involved, make a choice, and do something new. That is us. As a generalist species we adapt by making a wide variety of choices. We certainly act as if we had free will. Most of us believe we have it. It feels like we have it. It appears to be evolutionally favorable that we would have it. I think we have free will, the ability to choose between options and act upon our choices.

Free will is not, however, a certainty. We could have a complicated deterministic process that rules our decision making. One possibility would be that the mind is constantly monitoring the progression of its myths while at the same time remembering, forgetting, and altering its version of various parts of its past, along with the resultant morals and their demonstrations, all in service of some form of mythic optimization. Decisions would be reached as an ongoing part of that optimization process. Of course, what is optimum for a myth may not appear so optimum for a character; people do not always act in their apparent own best interest.

A story is more engaging if the characters have free will, since free will puts the outcome in doubt and maintains interest in the story question, so there would be a bias towards our seeing ourselves as having free will, even if we did not.

If the mind were, in fact, deterministic in this or some similar way, the deterministic process would be such a complex mix of changing influences, mostly unknowable, that it would look like free will, even if it were not.

For the purposes of this book, we shall assume the existence of free will.

Free will is not an imperative. We do not, indeed we cannot, make a conscious decision about everything we do. There is not time. Most of our behavior is determined by habit, myth, and instinct.

Habit is a mental pattern by which we make similar choices to those we made in the past in similar circumstances. The choices may not be on a conscious level, so the behaviors seem automatic. The selection process has been internalized, and the usual payoffs are expected.

Myth also controls our choices. In myth we play roles. Any role excludes the possibility of most actions; only those that fit the role are allowed. We are usually reluctant to make a large shift in our myth or to voluntarily step out of character. The role is known territory; we are safe there, or at least dealing with a known risk. The unknown is more frightening. Also, others need us to play certain roles; they apply constraining forces on our behavior. Yet we are still generalists, making adaptations to new stimuli. One common strategy for dealing with this tension is to press outward at the boundaries of role, rather than making a full breakout, stretching the limits rather than exceeding them.

In living by myth we also are limited by our need to make our myth an engaging story. We like to be part of a dramatically satisfying mythic progression. We don’t like to do things that muddle the story.

A dramatically satisfying myth will strike a balance between two conflicting needs. We depend on an ongoing flow of moral demonstration to continually validate our moral package. As life changes and our myth progresses, we come to doubt our understanding of the world and our place in it unless we have a series of reasonably consistent moral demonstrations to reassure us we know what is so.

However, a myth limited to reliable demonstration of known morals soon turns boring because the answers to the story questions become obvious, making the myth’s obstacles insignificant. We need an ongoing inflow of new obstacles to overcome, with some of them different from any we have seen before.

We make choices in life to keep our myth between the two extremes of just reconfirming previous moral demonstrations and charging off on new adventures unrelated to anything from before. When our myths settle too deeply into routine and we face the same obstacles over and over, we get relief with variety, something new. But when our myths are progressing too fast, with our roles and moral packages evolving at a rate that makes us unsure of who we are and what to do next, we find comfort in the familiar, known characters, settings and actions that produce stable, dependable moral demonstrations. We want to eat, sleep, rest, get back to our normal habits, and be around friends and family.

Instinct
Instinct also affects our behavior. Yes, I think human beings have instincts. We probably have a lot of them. If we are acting instinctively, how can we have free will? How can we be responsible for our actions? I propose the answer that most human instincts influence rather than control. This would be the case for the instincts I will consider here.

If an instinct has a controlling influence, you will follow it, unable to resist. If it has a strong influence, you will follow it unless you try hard to go the other way. If you “go with the flow” you will go with the instinct. If the instinct has a weak influence, it is easier to overcome, but the path of least resistance is still that of the instinct.

Instincts are predispositions to certain behaviors. They may be genetic, or environmentally determined, or both. There is a variation in their intensity between individuals. This may be due to an inherent strength of the instinct in a person, or in the particular ability of that person’s mind and myth to cope with the demands of the instinct, or both.

When we do the instinctive behavior, it comes easily to us. It feels like the natural thing to do. It is the natural thing to do. What could be more natural than instinctive behavior? It may not be the right thing to do. It may not be the best thing to do. But it is the natural thing to do.

So the answer to the question of how we simultaneously can have free will, habit, myth, and instinct becomes clear. We have the free will to override habit, myth, and instinct, but it takes effort, awareness, and determination, and usually we do not. This helps answer the question: “If everybody has free will, why are people so predictable?” Ninety-nine percent of all human action falls within a narrow range of choices. Routine behavior is the order of the day.

There are three strong instincts that are the basis of Biomythology. The first, the strongest, is a need to organize information, thought, and action in the form of stories. The second is a fear of abandonment. The third is an awareness of one’s social position, of one’s relationship to others. We have discussed the basics of myth, of story structure, in human life, so let us move on to fear of abandonment.

Abandonment
We all have a fear of abandonment. Abandonment is related to being alone, but it is not the same thing. If you walk away from the group, you may be alone but you have not been abandoned. If the group walks away from you, or you are driven from the group, you are abandoned. The effect is stronger if there is no prospect of return. Separation itself causes some anxiety, but if the group severs its mythic bond with you, the stress is multiplied.

Fear of abandonment is easy to see in small children. If their attention is on you, try leaving them alone in the room, or put your thoughts on something else, such as answering the telephone or quietly reading a book, and watch the stress go up and the effort made to get your attention back.

As we grow up, we develop strategies to cope with abandonment issues. We count on a future rejoined. We carry well-developed imaginary versions of the people we know and interact with them frequently in our minds. We have religious beliefs that assure us of the constant companionship of various spiritual beings. We accept depictions of other people in the information media. We carry symbols of group membership on cards in our wallets, in the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the food we eat and the products we buy. We confirm those bonds constantly through our actions, demonstrating to ourselves and others our ongoing group links and that we have not been ostracized.

Society depends on our fear of abandonment to keep us in line. Ridicule and isolation are very powerful tools of social control. Fear of abandonment causes us to desire to be well thought of by others, even strangers, even people we dislike. It makes us try to be accepted by others even when we have no clear interest in doing so.

Overcoming this fear is both possible and liberating. You can then take greater responsibility for your own actions and lessen your position of having to make choices enslaved to the wishes of others, or, worse, your imagined versions of their wishes. A route to freedom is first to become aware of the fear, to see how often and pervasive are its effects on your life. You then decide to make the effort to break its hold. See into each situation where the fear is present and determine the difference between the fear and the risk. The mind equates the two. They are different. Fear is a feeling, and feelings are harmless. Risk is a probability of harm. Evaluate the situation on the basis of risk and one’s priorities. Make a responsible, intelligent choice and then proceed. You will gradually build a history of experiences that contradict the legitimacy of the fear and its power will lessen. This is a general strategy for dealing with fear. It depends on one being able to use the force of rational will to override fear’s power over decision-making and action-taking. Some people are much better at this than others. The instinct, fear of abandonment, is still there, but it can be coped with.

Much of our fear of abandonment is linked to our need for myth. If we are abandoned, we lose access to characters and situations we need for the plot. We also lose the flow of new story material we get from other people that keeps the myth moving forward.

Abandonment is less threatening if the obstacles in our myth are centered on objects, actions, and ideas rather than on other people, so that people are less important to the myth.

Our fear of abandonment is also increased by our need for mythic confirmation from others. We all have some doubts about our own myth due to its incongruities with reality. If other people tell us we are on the right track, or especially if they like our myth so much they incorporate material from it into theirs, our doubts are lessened. Try to create a greater sense of personal authority over the validity of your myth.

We all get mythic material from others. Abandonment threatens us with the loss of that mythic source. The threat is reduced if you are your myth’s primary source of new dramatic material. Take initiative instead of waiting to react to what life sends your way. Create new ideas that take your myth away from the same old routine. If generating original thoughts is not your strong point, see Appendix B, Original Thought, for help.

Loneliness
Fear of abandonment is often felt as fear of loneliness. But what is loneliness and what causes it? It is a feeling, an emotional stress. Loneliness is often thought of as a result of having no one around, but it is not so simple. Solitude can be very satisfactory and one can be lonely in a crowd. When we are lonely, sometimes we want people around, just anybody. At other times they need to be a particular sort of person, our kind of people. Often we are lonely for particular individual people—friends, lovers, relatives. We need them around to be who they are and do what they do and to confirm our existence and validate its meaning. In short, we need the presence of players for characters in our myth that is stalling out in their absence.
Loneliness is related to homesickness, the need for a familiar place to enact one’s myth. It is similar to a longing for a particular object, a prop needed in the story. We can also wish for a different time, in past or future.

Loneliness is a result of a mythic problem. We are a social species and we have social myths in which a variety of characters interact. Sociable people have more positive-roled human characters than do solitary people. But without others to play their parts, we have difficulty playing our own part and our myth is interrupted, which is stressful.

If we leave the group, we lose involvement with its myth. We depend on group myths to supply us with ongoing mythic material. The more involved we are with groups, the more dependent we become. If we lose contact, the flow will dry up and our myth may stall. If we are so committed to the group myth that we have no significant role outside the group, then abandonment can make us feel we have no role at all, which mythically is to cease existence, mythic death. We follow mythic patterns. Many people have killed themselves soon after losing an identifying role.

Most people cope. They find some way to deal with abandonment and loneliness as they pull their myth back together.

What is the solution to loneliness? The obvious is to fill the lack, to go get whomever or whatever the myth needs. Also, we can change the myth, from without or within. From without, we can bring in new experience that alters the moral package. From within, we can shift the question being answered, the moral being demonstrated, shift our character’s moral package and priorities, or otherwise change the course of the myth to alleviate the lack. We can also increase the quality of internal myth played in our imagination and fantasies to make up for the shortage in the external world. The answer to loneliness is to either fill the mythic need or decrease our mythic dependence on what we lack. Sometimes this is easy. Often it is difficult.

Social Position
The third instinct to be considered is our constant awareness of social position, our relationships to others. Our interests fall into three categories—tribe, dominance and alliance. Tribe is about whether this person is a member of my group and what is his role. Dominance is about the question “Do I get my way with this person or does he get his way with me?”. Who calls the tune and who goes along, who will defer to whom? Alliance is about who’s my friend, who’s my enemy, who’s a member of my team, who will be there for me, to lead me or follow me or accompany me.

Our minds demand answers to these questions. As soon as we are aware of another person, we start figuring out answers. It is very hard for us to hold significant information apart from a moral demonstration. Our minds demand it to fit the myth. If we begin to interact, we take actions to provide information we need. In nearly all situations, the questions won’t let us alone, but insist on some sort of answer before we can do anything else. That may not take long, but it happens. The questions then recede in our consciousness, but never go away, because our relationships with others are always in a state of flux. The dynamics of social relationships will be discussed in the next chapter.