The inescapable fact of free will

Today, I had a really good experience.

I have a degree/certification requirement with my employment that I have to complete to keep my job. I have to finish my Master's Degree in Special Education. It's a long story, but I've had a crazy time with my current program. But if I'm not able to get enrolled this semester, then I may lose my job next year. I think my school and my district would be losing a really terrific teacher. But they would also be losing money the district receives for teachers (it's a fairly arbitrary requirement, but so many of the Federal regulations we face are fairly arbitrary). I'm doing everything I can to get it done. But I've run into a million snags in the process.

And the experience has totally helped me come to terms with choices. Choices amidst uncertainty. My choices, the choices of other people, the uncertainty of where the best choices lie, the uncertainty of even the most intelligent reflection on life.

I've totally come to terms, today, with the fact that no matter how much good and even smart, decent people try to make the best decisions -- individual decisions, decisions that impact an organization like a school, even decisions that impact a country or an international community -- that there is always uncertainty about what the best choices really are.

And coming to terms with that fact helps validate Abraham Maslow's argument that the more freedom people experience, the better choices they make. Not because they make good choices all the time. They can't. That is not possible, because it would involve no experience or understanding of the alternatives.

I've just come to terms with the fact that no matter how much you try to control or limit peoples' freedom or determine their choices, each person's life and all of our lives is ultimately a function of our independent and interdependent choices. There is no escape from that fact of life because it is not artificial human convention. It is a fact of life that is inescapable. And equally inescapable is the fact that noone, ever, no matter how smart, now matter how experienced, no matter how mature, or decent or good or whatever, nooone knows, with certainty, what the best choices look like.

We all believe that we know, at some level. But the truth is that noone knows with certainty, and the smartest people, I think, understand that better and carry more humility, as a consequence, than those who are less familiar with those choices and reflect less on their choices.

It doesn't matter what we know or what experiences we face in life or how good we are. None of that matters. We all make the best choices we know how, period, given our
understanding, knowledge, experiences, reflection, influences, support, etc.

And knowing that makes me much more sympathetic to a uncertain and often confused humanity trying to make choices and not really always knowing what to do.

Good choices and bad choices are an inherent function of our life and learning, as human beings. Our unique capacity is our ability to make them, reflect on them, learn about making them better, and improving our choices based on our capacity for intelligent reflection. Beyond that, we just keep learning until we are not learning anymore.

When I am frustrated with our failures, as individuals and as a community of people, I can reflect on the fact that no matter how foolish or stubborn our choices seem, especially our inability or unwillingness to reflect in the deepest ways on our shared problems, that people are making the best chioces they know how, given, as well, the million rationalizations and excuses that we give and the million pressures, controls, and limitations we experience in making better choices.

I may think that the whole world is embracing a bad idea. The democratic marketplace of ideas is not some magic elixir from which good choices and good ideas always come forward. They are found after so many bad choices being made that finally better choices are stumbled upon. This is what that Israeli diplomat meant when he said that governments make all the wrong decisions until they get to right ones. Because people, not just governments, are not genies or clairvoyants. They are human. Forever subject to the limitations of their understanding, good and bad. And our limitations, our humanity, is a limitation of being human, not a limitation of the concept of freedom and free will. Free will, and all of its pitfalls, including so many mistakes and bad choices and failures, is an inherent and inescapable feature of our humanity and our experience as humans.

I've got bathroom duty to get to. Have a good day, everyone:).

Love,
Ben