PAGE IN PROGRESS What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. Thank you for your interest and patience!
When you see a bird carrying a straw for its nest, you might think (if you are in a philosophical mood): "Poor thing! This bird does not have any choice. It lives its life according to what the nature prescribes. Each spring, the bird has to build the nest, lay eggs, and then take care of the hatchlings. In the meantime, it has to look for food and escape predators. And so its life goes by, without the bird experiencing any freedom." People usually see themselves as self-aware creatures who make choices all the time. Even if you think that you are not entirely free to do whatever you want (after all, everybody is constrained by society's limitations), you might still regard the bird somewhat condescendingly or with a sense of pity. It appears that, unlike the bird, you have at least some ability to make choices, you have a degree of freedom in your life.
Every day, these assumptions about choice shape our perceptions and actions. We teach our kids to take responsibility for their decisions (the book What Should Denny Do? is an interesting example). We make sure to think everything through before choosing how to act. We blame or punish those whose choices appear to be dangerous, selfish, or unreasonable. To understand the present, we study history—typically by focusing on human agency, since historical accounts often emphasize intentional actions and decisions. For example, by saying "Napoleon invaded Russia" we presuppose conscious choice and motive. We compare people who, throughout history, had no choice (oppressed groups) and those who used their choice to do harm (oppressors). Without the idea of choice, moral judgements (and consequences based on them) become meaningless. So, justice systems also depend on our assumptions about choice and agency: placing into a correction facility someone who was not truly free to decide how to act does not make any moral or practical sense.
Our everyday experiences help explain why we tend to think about people as choosing beings. Each one of us can easily notice how, throughout the day, we make numerous decisions. We automatically assume that others experience the world the same way. Of course, we can also notice how our choices are constrained by commitments and rules. You can choose which route to use to get to work today, but you do need to go to work if you want to keep it; and you do need to follow traffic rules if you don't want to end up in a police station or in hospital. And so, it seems, is with everything in life: you cannot do absolutely anything you want, but you do get to make choices. In fact, it often feels like you have to make them!
Existentialist philosophers captured this idea when they described human beings as radically free, and freedom as inescapable. According to existentialism, people literally create themselves through their choices. From this point of view, freedom can be a burden that breeds anxiety. According to Sartre, this is not surprising: you cannot help being anxious once you fully recognize what you freedom to choose means: being fully responsible not only for yourself but for all humanity through your actions! As Sartre put it, we are condemned to be free. Another existentialist philosopher, Kierkegaard, talked about the dizziness of confronting the possibility of unlimited choice. Existentialists did acknowledge social, historical, and bodily constrains, but they emphasized human beings' freedom to interpret, respond, and choose within these limitations.
Unlike existentialists, those who belong to the school of thought known as determinism believe that choice is an illusion: all events, including human actions, are shaped by prior states of the world. Although you might feel that you make choices every minute of your life (for example, choosing to read these words), you might also find it hard to argue with some of the determinists' claims. It does make sense to see every event as caused by preceding events and natural laws. It is hard to argue with the fact that people's behavior is shaped by biology or inherited traits, and that out mental states and actions are products of past experiences or unconscious drives. Numerous scholars point out that human action in general is shaped by social structures, economic systems, or cultural conditioning.
From the determinist perspective, blame and punishment do not make much sense, while compassion and humility seem appropriate. But leaning too much toward determinism might also feel unwise, perhaps even dangerous! It we are too deterministic, will we need to excuse all sorts of bad behaviors? Will we become passive, waiting for things to happen to us?
These dilemmas lead us to the conversation about free will. But this age-old debate remails unresolved, and it's possible that it will never be resolved entirely! So, it looks like we will have to make choices (or do what feels like making choices) after all. At the same time, we should consider how our assumptions about choices and freedom can be misleading.
To develop my view on the paradoxes of choice, I draw on Buddhist philosophy alongside related insights from modern Western science, particularly neuroscience and psychology. According to these perspectives, our perceptions of ourselves and others as selves that choose is an illusion (Western science, in particular, explains it as a biological adaptation). We talk about ourselves using the word individuals, which derives from the Late Latin adjective individuus, meaning "indivisible, inseparable". Considering insights from Buddhism and modern science, the prevalence of this word is ironic. The word individual implies a coherent whole that cannot be further divided (e.g., self or soul). A person is supposed to have an essential integrity that distinguishes her from others. Internal fragmentation is seen as abnormality that does not happen often and should be avoided (e.g., multiple personality disorder).
Yet, according to Buddhism, the indivisible self is a notion that facilitates reasoning and aids communication but does not reflect reality. In fact, individual is not indivisible, but composite and impermanent, contradicting the etymological root of the term. Buddhism sees each person as a bundle of five aggregates: physical body, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. This idea might appear absolutely ridiculous, not the list because it go so much against our everyday experiences. Are Buddhists themselves being delusional? It turns out that the views of the self similar to the Buddhist position are not at all fringe in modern neuroscience and psychology (e.g., cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology).
In fact, Western science largely aligns with the Buddhist perspective, rejecting a fixed, indivisible self. Cognitive neuroscience shows the self emerges from distributed brain activity, not a central, unifying "I". Split-brain studies reveal that consciousness can be divided, further challenging the idea of indivisibility. Developmental psychology indicates that the sense of self is constructed over time, not pre-existing. Overall, modern science often sees individuals as systems composed of subsystems (biological, psychological, social), rather than as unified entirely coherent wholes.
If there is no fixed self, then who or what makes choices? Without a self, is freedom of choice an illusion? According to Buddhism, there is no independent, unchanging “owner” of thoughts, feelings, or choices. In fact, instead of thinking of a choosing self, we should explore how mind-body system—conditioned by prior causes and context—gives rise to intentions and actions. Buddhism offers us a paradox to consider: no one chooses; choosing happens, but it is not done by what we usually call “self.”
If interpretation appears wild to you, consider that modern neuroscience and cognitive psychology largely confirm this perspective. For instance, according to Dennett, the brain creates a "narrative center of gravity" that feels like a unified self. Experiments conducted by Libet suggest that many decisions are made before conscious awareness catches up. What we call “choice” is the product of multiple interacting systems: sensory input, emotional states, memory, context, and inhibitory control. From the interaction between these systems, a tendency toward one action over another emerges.
Let's take an example. You are dealing with an anxiety, but you want to get over it. You take various steps to achieve this goal. Does this mean you're the one who chooses—truly in control of your choices? According to Buddhism and modern science, not exactly. When someone decides to deal with their anxiety, this is what’s really happening: Conditions align, including practice, support, insight, and openness. A new mental configuration arises. Based on these shifts, a new action pattern becomes possible. In this situation, there is no one controller pulling the levers. Instead, there is a shifting system of causes and responses.
How can this shift of perspective be helpful? Focusing on the choosing self leads us to give credit and assign blame. Giving credit to oneself, and feeling good about our successes, seems to be something positive. However, this tendency has its dark side: when we do not succeed, which inevitably happens sometimes, this might lead to a host of negative emotions that can easily overweight the positivity of succeeding. And when we blame others for their choices, this can lead us to treat others with anger, impatience, and lack of compassion.
Letting go of the idea of a fixed self does not remove agency—it frees it. Without a rigid “I” to defend or affirm, the system becomes more responsive, flexible, and capable of wise action. It can stop clinging to “I am anxious” and shift into “anxiety is happening; it can move.”
The problem is that when we think that people have so much choice we tend to give them too much credit or assign too much blame. People’s behavior is more complex than one of a bird, but the room for choice is limited. We don’t choose our character, our temperament, our body, our needs, our life circumstances, affordances and limitations of our brains, and so on.
If there is no fixed self, then who or what makes choices?
Making true choices is in itself a form of power. But what looking like making a choice is not necessarily a making-a-choice situation. Making true choices is form of mental power as it requires a mental effort.
We can choose from a range of options, but we do not choose the range of options that we need to choose from.
YOU DECIDE what happens next. In any situation you decide how to react. To blame or to take responsibility. To give up or to go on. To raise your voice or to ask a question and listen.
choice is power choice is power as influence because we make a decision about how things will be, it is about limited resources
Determinism - our choices do not matter as much
I believe that it is important to understand that we can make choices, but also to see limitations of our choices [give me wisdom to know what I can change, give me strength to change what I can change, give me patience to accept what I cannot change]
Making choices does not mean making free choices. We need to see what stands behind those choices. Sofie's choice is the famous example. She made the choice that she had to make. The choice that she really wanted to make was not offered to her as an option. A person with a mental illness might seem to be making choices, but the mental illness affects their choices, so these choices are not free.
from Unwinding Anxiety: “in fact, the OFC sets up a reward hierarchy so that you can make decisions efficiently without having to exert too much mental energy. This is especially true when you are making choices. Your OFC assigns each of your previously performed behaviors a value, and when given a choice—let’s say between two behaviors—it can then choose the more valuable one. This helps you make choice decisions quickly and easily without having to think too much about them.”
from Unwinding Anxiously- seeing your hardships as your teacher
Letting go of hate by questioning the very idea of evil: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/21/1176864308/religion-hate-evil-spirituality-simran-jeet-singh-sikh?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&_kx=uXKY7Y_39hYG3GPkxzgt8LldzLrnEO60BhP9Ij-Kj7c%3D.TAzfUF "The very simple practice, the starting place, is to take 10 seconds each day and see the humanity in someone who is different from yourself. You can start in the easy places: family members, friends, colleagues, coworkers. But once you get through that list and you need to find someone else, you'll start seeing strangers you never noticed before. People you wouldn't otherwise connect with. And what I've found with this practice is that the strangeness starts to go away with these 10 seconds every day. It doesn't have to be super cheesy, you don't have to lock eyes and stare. Just notice someone and try to think about who they are and where they're coming from and just see their humanity."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ « A natural way to think of an agent’s control over her conduct at a moment in time is in terms of her ability to select among, or choose between, alternative courses of action. This picture of control stems from common features of our perspectives as practical deliberators settling on courses of action. If a person is choosing between voting for Clinton as opposed to Trump, it is plausible to assume that her freedom with regard to her voting consists, at least partially, in her ability to choose between these two alternatives. On this account, acting with free will requiresalternative possibilities. A natural way to model this account of free will is in terms of an agent’s future as a garden of forking paths branching off from a single past. A locus of freely willed action arises when the present offers, from an agent’s (singular) past, more than one path into the future. On this model of human agency, then, when a person acts of her own free will,she could have acted otherwise. »
-muffin cone” episode of bluey - power / ability to choose behavior SOURCES: