Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows” (Sung by Don Henley, ©1995)

Today I had an unexpected day off, and so in the late afternoon I rode to Ôsaka-jô kôen (Ôsaka Castle Public Park). Sadly, I don’t have any photos of it to show, since I lost my phone this week and won’t get a new one until tomorrow afternoon. Of the few places I’ve visited on this planet, Ôsaka Castle is one of the most spectacular, and the views from it over the city, backed by sunset, are impressive.The grounds of Ôsaka Castle are also a good place to think, and think I did.

A little over a month ago, I had a powerful experience, of making the choice to quit NOVA with a single day’s notice, to leave Gunma, and to move to Osaka on the very good, but not certain, chance that I’d get a job with Berlitz. I did get the job, and I’m very happy now.

It seemed then that I stood at a crossroads in time: that depending on my choice, my life could go in two directions. Either I’d stay in Gunma, bored and miserable but with secure employment, or I’d move to Ôsaka, where I’d have an exciting time, but might not find a job and might end up having to fly home from, penniless. I considered my chances of employment (good), my feelings (that I’d respect myself more if I took the risk and moved), and my ideas that it’s important to take responsibility for one’s life and to make choices that move it in a pleasing direction. I thought, then, that my choice was free.

In the last year or so, I’ve been annoying people with talk about freedom and responsibility, having abandoned socialist ideas and letting myself be inspired anew by philosophies of individualism and strength, like Nietzsche’s and Ayn Rand’s. Thinking back, I feel foolish.

You see, I believe that the universe is mechanistic: that objects and events arise predictably from the present state of the universe, proceeding according to physical laws. And I believe that given sufficient information about the present state of the universe (or, theoretically, it’s initial state), we should be able to use our knowledge of physical laws to predict all future states.

This is a view that tends towards determinism, and if one holds it, one needs all sorts of metaphysical rubbish, like souls and such, to fit free will into the universe. Generally, I don’t allow myself such indulgences, but I still found it difficult to give up on the idea of free will. By “free will”, I mean a power to choose, that could have chosen otherwise than it did in the past. I mean the sort of power to choose that stands at crossroads in time and picks whether to stay in Gunma or leave for Ôsaka.

I used to think that the profound feeling of standing at crossroads in time indicated that free will did exist, and that being a determinist would contradict that experience. It would also contradict the impression that one gets from history that ideas are important, and that persuading people of one thing or another can have powerful consequences. But in a conversation I had with my friend Sasha on Sunday afternoon, he argued me into a position where I had to admit that consciousness (which includes the feeling that one stands at a crossroads in time), and the ability and power of persuasion, are not incompatible with determinism.

In a mechanistic universe, you see, physical laws can still produce brain-states that are conscious of making a conditioned decision based on the information available. And such brain-states can result in activity that involves attempting to persuade others: in which we emit information that causes another person to have share our ideas, which spur them to future action that steers history in a direction pleasing to us.

My objections to determinism thus shattered, I believe in the idea more than ever. I still think it’s important to act as though one could have chosen differently in the past, and as though one will choose “freely” in the future, because it’s obvious that people and cultures that abandon themselves to destiny fail to achieve their goals. But “free will” is an illusion. Our choices proceed from our conditioning and our present circumstances, as naturally as an object falls to the ground when we release it from our hand within Earth’s gravitational field. We could never have chosen other than we have, and our lives, and the entire history of the universe, could not have been otherwise than they are and have been. Our fate is predetermined, and nothing will change it, because there is nothing that can change it.

In some ways this epiphany is a let-down. I’m evidently not as powerful as I felt while riding the shinkansen to Ôsaka. But life is no less exciting knowing that the outcome is fixed. I don’t have perfect knowledge, so every day will still be a surprise, laid out for me through all of beginningless time. I now have a philosophical justification for my feelings of self-importance and of having lived a charmed life, as well as for my expectations of a grand destiny.

My biggest questions now are: “what will that destiny be?” and “how long will it last?”

Last night, I finally saw The Incredibles. A while ago, I read a review of the movie by David Kelley of The Objectivist Center, an organisation that promotes and investigates the philosophy of Ayn Rand. It assessed the movie pretty accurately, so I won’t go into detail: read Kelley’s review if you want that.

In short, the message of The Incredibles is that it is good and admirable to be gifted with extraordinary talents. It drizzles subtle scorn on those who can’t tolerate the greatness of others, and seek to bring everyone down to the same mediocre level.

There’s inconsistency in the way this message is delivered (as Kelley points out), because the main villain, Syndrome (a.k.a. Buddy, or Incrediboy), though jealous of the powers that superheroes possess, nearly manages to become their equal by making use of his talent for inventing amazing devices that emulate super-powers. His goal, though partially to enjoy the adulation that superheroes once did, is also to sell such devices to everyone. This being done, he says, everyone will be super, so no-one will be. This isn’t quite the same thing that Mr. Incredible and his family are supposed to be subject to. Rather, government regulations prohibit “Supers” from using their powers, reducing them to the same dull normality suffered by everyone else. By contrast, Syndrome would elevate everyone to greatness, and that’s a noble goal that someone like Ayn Rand would have endorsed, had she believed it possible. I don’t know whether she did, but I believe that science will one day let all humans live as gods (or “Supers”).

Inconsistency notwithstanding, the basic message is still there, and it was heartening (in the midst of the world’s best CG animation, and a pacey storyline) to see it put out there. I hope a lot of kids get to see it (hell, I bet most of them saw it before I did), especially talented ones and remember what it’s saying, because discrimination against the talented is very real in many Western societies, and it’s painful for those people who are already struggling under the burden of responsibility that their gifts bestow upon them. When I was at school, there was plenty of help and sympathy for the incompetent, but nothing but scorn for those with superior minds. Not from children so much, though many children (and adults, too) fear and hate the different and the superior, but from teachers with mediocre minds (such as one religion teacher I had who swore black and blue that Paul was one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles, despite my corrections). Those people tried to make my life a misery, and to make me feel guilty for challenging the rule of mediocrity and incompetence.

But now I know that it’s super to be super.