I was looking around yesterday for exciting things to read or discussions to listen to online. I found several on free will. I think almost every philosopher dating back to Socrates has written on free will. More and more psychiatrists and psychologists are interested as well. In fact, they are interested enough to do actual research on free will. Before I continue, I should give you a definition of free will. This one is from Wikipedia, “Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen.” The philosopher’s comments didn’t differ much from other things I had read. However, the viewpoints of the psychiatrists and psychologists were interesting.
One comment made by a psychologist almost in passing seemed very illuminating. He was commenting on people’s political beliefs. He said that conservatives strongly believe in free will. Most could never see a case where the ability to choose between good or bad action wasn’t possible. Why are most people with wealth conservatives? Their wealth has protected them from situations where they had to make bad or horrible bad decisions. I can give you an example from my own experience. I know a man who went to an Ivy League college. He bought and drove a sports car while still in college. He had a very successful business career. One of his daughter’s weddings was held in the Bahamas. I could go on, but you can see that overall, his life has been a great success. He would tell you that it is because he made the right choices. He could not think of a time he ever considered a wrong decision. Because of his life and his belief in free will, he is a conservative Republican.
For a long time, I had wondered what made a person choose either a conservative or liberal political point of view. The free will belief argument helped improve my understanding. However, like most things, wealth is not an absolute predictor of a person’s political viewpoint. Sometimes wealth changes the political view of a person. Examples are ranging from Carnegie to Bill Gates. When these wealthy people realized poor people were not poor because they made bad choices, they set out to help them.
On the other hand, some poor people are conservatives. They are conservative most often because of religion. All religions have doctrines that point out we have the ability – read free will – to choose our actions for good or bad. They feel if we make the right choices, we will go to heaven or in another religion, and we can avoid the endless cycle of being born, dying, and being reborn. A belief in free will has other consequences as well.
People with a conservative point of view believed in punishment for those who do bad things. If a starving person steals a loaf of bread, they have to do be punished because they made other choices, which led them to starvation. Conservatives can always find a reason for punishing wrongdoing. They believe that because they made the right choices, they do not need help. It follows then they don’t believe in welfare or most of the other social programs. They will tell you, “Make the right choices and work hard, and you won’t need handouts.” The more I think about it, the more I think the free will argument is an excellent predictor of one’s political viewpoint.
