It is understandable to not trust another person,
if I think I have reason to believe that he or she might wrong me,
deceive me, disappoint me or whatever. But to not trust myself? You
would think that if I want, or don't want, to behave, speak or even
think in a certain way, that I have only to behave, speak or think
accordingly. For though I cannot directly control the actions of another
person by my will alone, I can directly control my own. Or at least I
can do so insofar as I am not restrained by other things 'outside of
myself' - other people, my physical environment and so
on.
It seems so simple - and yet a person can think,
rightly or wrongly, that he is not always free to will and control his
own thoughts and actions, even when there isn't anything or anyone
getting in his way.
Take the example of a particular decision to act.
Suppose that you recently had the idea of setting about learning to play
the piano. The new resolution was happy, maybe even exciting - you
are going to learn the piano!
So you go about it conscientiously, systematically,
and you practice the piano a few times a week at a given time in the
evening. So far so good.
But now after five weeks, one evening at practice
time you don't really feel like it. The novelty of the new resolution is
beginning to wear off; you don't feel unwell this evening but you just
don't feel like playing the piano.
And so now, if only for this evening and moment,
you are faced with a little dilemna. You don't feel like playing the
piano tonight, but you feel like you should play the piano
tonight.
Well you might decide either way. But suppose that
you give in to your present mood; I'll miss one night. It's all
right, it's just one time, I'll practice on Thursday as usual. So you
don't practice tonight; and maybe you feel a little pang of conscience
as you make the decision, and a little pang of remorse to follow. Or
maybe you don't, it doesn't
matter.
What has happened? Did you exercise your free will
and make a perfectly free
choice?
Well maybe on this occasion it is easy to reply: of
course you acted freely. You might just as well have decided to practice
in spite of not feeling like it tonight. You could have decided to play,
but you didn't.
Okay, that was easy. But then comes Thursday, the
next time you are supposed to practice. And alas, you might have been
inspired and impatient to play tonight but for the sake of argument, and
for whatever reason, suppose you don't want to play again. And just as
on Monday evening, you have a little decision to
make.
This example is exactly the same as Monday night,
except for one little difference. Or maybe the difference isn't so
little.
The difference is that on Monday night you set a
new precedent! On Monday evening, at that moment of hesitation when you
were deliberating about whether to play, you had a clean record behind
you, so to speak, at least as far as this new project goes. Never
before, since you had started practicing five weeks ago, had you missed
an evening.
But now, on Thursday evening, that is no longer the
case. Before this evening, you had never missed a practice except once,
and that one exception occurred very
recently.
So anyways, tonight you have to decide again. You
hesitate a few seconds, and suppose that once again you give in to your
mood and decide not to play. It's just this week, you might tell
yourself, I am taking a week off for a break, but next Monday night I'll
resume my schedule.
Or if you think I'm cooking up my examples to bring
you around to some preconceived outcome, well then we can change the
example. Suppose that tonight, unlike Monday evening, you push your mood
aside and sit down to play the
piano.
In either case, whether tonight you decided or not
to play, I wonder this: tonight when you made your decision, did you
feel exactly just as free and uncompelled to choose one way or another
as you did on Monday evening? In other words, did Monday night's
precedent make any difference at all in your moment of
hesitation this evening?
Well I don't know what you would reply to that but
I can tell you what I think: I think that Monday night's precedent made
a difference. I think that that one little exception on Monday night
made it a little bit harder to decide to play tonight, and a little bit
easier and more tempting to decide to take another night
off.
But now I have to correct or qualify that answer
right away, and I think this correction is essential: On that second
occasion, Thursday, you were really exactly just as free to decide one
way or the other as you were the first time on Monday. But a little bit
of psychological baggage had slipped in since the last time, to create
the illusion that you were a little bit less free. That is, on
Thursday night, it felt a little bit more difficult to decide
to play, and a little bit more tempting not to, as a result of not
having played on Monday.
This has a lot to do with memory. Suppose, even
though this is unlikely, that by Thursday evening, for some reason, you
had entirely forgotten that you had taken a night off on Monday. In that
case I think your Thursday decision might feel exactly just as free as
it had on Monday.
And what we are talking about is the essential
mechanism of habit. Until Monday night, you had the good new habit of
practicing piano every Monday and Thursday evening. On Monday night,
when you decided not to play just this once, you weakened or diminished
the habit of playing regularly, and took one first little step towards
the forging of a new and contrary habit - that of taking nights off from
the routine, of making
exceptions.
There is more than one way of thinking of a habit,
or of what a habit is. In one sense of the word, it is just a way of
describing what in fact a person does regularly or repeatedly. This
sense of the word has nothing to do with psychology, free will versus
constraint, etc. If we see a person out walking after supper every
evening, we can conclude that s/he is in the habit of doing so, and be
right, regardless of whether we know anything whatsoever about his state
of mind, preferences, decision making ability, and so
on.
But there is another sense of the word habit which
does have to with psychology. And it is in the context of this sense of
the word that we speak of the force of habit, i.e. the
psychological force, or momentum, or inertia, that is either part of
habit, or accompanies it, I'm not sure
which.
A person faced with an immediate decision for a
course of action can be entirely free to choose one way or the other,
but can feel almost irresistibly urged or attracted towards one possible
action and repelled from the contrary action. And this can be the result
of past choices, of past precedents, and of 'present' habits.
If in general one comes, whether in certain
specific contexts or in any context, to 'give in' to urge and temptation
even in cases where one knows that it would be better not to, in other
words if one comes to habitually make decisions and do things that he
knows be unwise or unconstructive, what happens to his or her
self-confidence?
This person is still entirely free, or at least he
is just as free as he ever was before; but he has come to believe that
he is not. He may come to believe that he is not strong enough, or brave
enough, or wise enough, or good enough, to generally choose good over
bad, constructive over destructive, wise over foolish. This is because
he feels that his own moral or psychological strength is pitted against
another kind of force - that of urge and temptation - or maybe of fear
but that is another subject - and he feels now that urge and temptation
are too often the stronger of the
two.
Suppose something is ahead of me in my path, lieing
in the way, and I have to pick it up and remove it in order to continue
ahead. Am I free to do so? Well in one sense maybe I am quite free to do
so, if there is no law or rule, written or unwritten, or practical
consideration against it, and if no one is trying to stop me. In other
words, I am free in the sense that whether I do it or not is quite up to
me.
But suppose this object is a rock that is pretty
heavy. It is heavy enough that one person could lift it and move it
aside, but another person would be unable, depending on his physical
strength, for some people of course are stronger than others.
If there is no one stopping me from lifting a
burden, but it is too heavy for my strength, should we still say that I
am free to lift it?
By analogy, this is more or less the way that we
might sometimes think of ourselves with respect to our personal choices
and 'will power'; with respect to our endeavors and projects and
relationships; with respect to living well or not so well.
But the analogy is false! That is, if we think that
the rock story, or something similar, is analogous to ourselves and our
decision making ability, we are making a mistake, or at least that is
what I think. The seeming analogy is an illusion - for the inertia or
force or weight of one course of action over another, or at least the
kind we described in the examples, is an illusion - this inertia is
literally 'all in one's
mind'.
When one gets to the point where he feels that he
is generally not brave or strong enough to freely choose wise or
constructive actions over unwise or harmful ones, he has by the same
token come to the point that his self-confidence and self-esteem may
have been seriously undermined, at least for the time being. For he has
come to feel that he can no longer trust himself! He can no longer trust
himself to decide and do the right things, the things that he himself
knows to be best; best for himself and best for others. He can no longer
trust himself to do what he wants to
do!
But if the seeming difficulty of doing well by
ourselves is illusion, this does not mean it is harmless and nothing to
concern ourselves with. For of course illusions can be destructive or
even dangerous.
So if one has become diffident in this way, and his
self-respect undermined, can he do anything to get better?
Yes, of course! The way to gradually 'get better'
is just the exact reverse of how the problem started in the first place.
Just one little step in the right direction, one
little push past that psychological inertia and towards a new
constructive beginning - sets a new precedent. You do well by
yourself just one time, and the next time you find yourself in a similar
situation you can feel it already - the wrong course of action feels a
bit less attractive and compelling this time, and the course of action
that you know to be right, seems easier this time.
In fact it doesn't feel just a tiny bit easier, it
really feels easier. For you did it last time, so you know it is
perfectly possible and doable - not just by those strong and wise people
that you esteem more highly than yourself - but by you! You know you can
do it now.
It is very easy for a person to choose and do an
action that he knows he is able to choose and do. Whereas as
soon as one doubts that he is able to do something, the thing
becomes almost immeasurably more difficult and
uncertain.
You take one little step in the right direction,
and several things happen. You have dispelled the illusion of not being
able to do it. You considerably diminish the psychological inertia that
was holding you back. You have taken a first step toward the undoing of
a bad habit and the forging of a new and better one. And you have taken
a step towards increased self-confidence - toward believing, no,
knowing, that you can trust yourself to do the things you know are
right; in the future, and
now.