Posted by Agency and Freedom
Nathan Richardson
In a previous post, “What Makes Me a ‘Me’?” I described two conflicting assumptions about the nature of self in psychology. The first paradigm, Self-interest, assumes that selfhood requires separation from other selves; we are entirely separate and distinct individuals, not inextricably connected or related to each other in any inherent way. The second paradigm, Other-interest, assumes that the self’s existence is created by the existence of other selves, which the self distinguishes itself from. That is, I am intrinsically connected to others because their existence is what makes me distinct.
This belief or lack of belief in inherent connectedness has implications in the way we conceive of agency and freedom. (The following discussion relies heavily on a thesis by Renée Beckwith,1 and I am indebted to her for her insights.)
Self-interest
In the first paradigm, “where the self is seen as separate, autonomy begins with man as an isolated, rational chooser, his independent will being the first precondition.”1 He begins with an independent will, and maintaining this independence consists in part of resisting any interactions or connections that might confound or conflate it with other selves. Agency is seen as the “capacity of the individual to choose … independent of any other sources or influences.”1 Any other agents or objects beyond the individual are obstacles or hindrances to autonomy to the degree that they affect or influence the self. If a person is connected, he is not truly autonomous; instead of governing himself, he is governed by those connections and obligations. Thus, freedom is “independence from the other.â€1
The first paradigm sees attachments and obligations as fetters. Pieces of rope that bind us to other people would prevent us from walking as far as we’d like, or in the direction we’d like. The way to preserve agency and increase freedom is to weaken or sever the bonds. For example, a husband might divorce his wife so that he can pursue other romantic interests. A woman might prevent herself from having children so that she is not obligated to limit her career choices in order to care for them. A child, now grown, might refrain from aiding her aging parents because it’s expensive and inconvenient to have them around the house.
Other-interest
In the second paradigm, because relatedness precedes and creates individual self or identity, “man is an agent, autonomous, precisely because of the other, not despite him.”1 The existence of others, rather than inhibiting choice, creates the possibilities from which we choose. Some have called these ties that make agency meaningful “bonds that make us free.”
The second paradigm sees attachments and obligations like kite strings. They connect us to people in such a way that we are held aloft and can move about freely. Without those connections, we cannot have meaningful experiences. Henry B. Eyring explains,
Men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence. But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel that comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. … We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose.2
Just as choice-making agents cannot make decisions free of influence, a kite cannot stay aloft from the ground without simultaneously being connected to the ground. That connection is what gives the kite the power to move about. If a kite is not able to move as far away or in the direction it might like, the answer is to get a different string, not to get rid of the string altogether. A stronger, longer string will increase the kite’s freedom. No string whatsoever will make it fall out of the sky, unable to move at all.
Discussion
Elder Eyring reminds us that we cannot go through life without external influences. For example, we are born into the world already indebted to our parents, and our obligations are not of a nature that we can “pay them off” given enough time. To be sure, there are wrong ways that people can influence us, but the presence of influence is not itself a problem; it is a necessity of agency and freedom. The way to freedom is not to sever ties, but to honor them in the right way. The husband fulfills his marital vows even though his wife has weaknesses, and he discovers the freedom of being loved in spite of his own weaknesses. The mother fulfills her parental obligations even though her children can be demanding, and she discovers the power of her newly-developed talents of patience and empathy. The child continues to honor her parents when she is grown even though they sometimes give unsolicited advice, and she discovers that she is more grateful for her parents than she ever realized growing up.
In Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game, one fictional character tried to make a decision that did not involve in any way the suggestions, needs, or plans of his various relationships. He equated their influence with manipulation, and he began to despair of ever being able to choose without being “controlled.” His sister, in a tongue-in-cheek way, taught him an important truth: “Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life. … The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.”3
Notes
1. Renée Beckwith, “Exploring Maternal Ambivalence: Comparing Findings with Two Opposing Paradigms of Intent,” master’s thesis (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2003).
2. Henry B. Eyring, “Safety in Counsel,” Ensign, Jun. 2008, p. 4–9.
Russell M. Nelson also said, “Often, however, agency is misunderstood. While we are free to choose, once we have made those choices, we are tied to the consequences of those choices”; “Addiction or Freedom,†Ensign, Nov. 1988, p. 6.
3. Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game (Tor, 1985), ch. 14.
Sounds like shades of 2 Nephi Chapter 2. You brought it out well. I believe that agency and influence are inseparable. Readers may enjoy my glossary on my website.
You’ve fleshed out some of the implications of egocentric thinking on the concept of freedom quite well, but I’m having a hard time seeing from your post how alterocentric thinking informs the idea of freedom.
You’ve certainly shown what it isn’t — it isn’t the kind of freedom that assumes the Self can (and should) be independent from the Other — but I’m having a hard time seeing what it is, on its own.
But maybe I’m approaching the problem from an egocentric viewpoint, too. Maybe egocentric freedom can be defined independently, but alterocentric freedom cannot be defined without contrasting it with some Other.
On another line of thought, it’s interesting to note that the word ‘freedom’ was initially related to the concept of love. It was related to the Anglo-Saxon goddess Frige, the one whose day comes right after Thor’s day, and who was a goddess of love, fertility, and communal prosperity.
At one time, there was a single English word (freogan) that meant both ‘liberate’ and ‘love (often in a sexual sort of sense)’ — that word is still with us today, in a modified form, but it is now only a crude reference to the sexual act.
But, other, related words are also still with us. One is friend, which was originally ‘the one who frees/loves’.
Another related word, which has kind of gone out of fashion, is ‘frith’, which means something like peace, but a bit more. In earlier versions of the Bible, Jesus was sometimes described as being a sign of frith between God and man — a sign of peace, love, and freedom. The -th in frith is of course the same as the -th in depth or strength or mirth.
The earlier concept in the word is the love concept, as is seen by the fact that all non-Germanic IE cognates are related to love rather than to freedom. Only in the Germanic languages has it developed a sense of ‘freedom’.
So original Germanic conception ‘freedom’ might have been more similar to the alterocentric freedom that you’ve discussed than its English descendant today seems to be.
Wes: You’ve fleshed out some of the implications of egocentric thinking on the concept of freedom quite well, but I’m having a hard time seeing from your post how alterocentric thinking informs the idea of freedom.
Yeah, you’re right, and it’s partly because I’m still exploring this myself. This post went through at least four drafts. It was originally three times longer, but I hacked it down to just the basic difference, and I’m still not sure how well I summarized it. I tried to briefly summarize freedom according to the Other-interest paradigm when I said, “The answer is to get a different string, not to get rid of the string altogether. A stronger, longer string will increase the kite’s freedom. … The way to freedom is not to sever ties, but to honor them in the right way.â€
Correctly perceiving and fulfilling the bonds that connect us is freedom; misperceiving and not fulfilling our bonds is captivity. For example, a husband might stay married, but as long as he does so grudgingly and as a martyr, his marriage will feel like captivity. He is misperceiving his connections, and thus not truly fulfilling his obligations, even if he thinks he is. But his marriage is not what shackles him; his mishandling of it is. That he is tied to a string is not the problem; it’s that he is using a weak, short string. He needs to strengthen the string so he can let out more line. Yeah, it’s not a perfect metaphor. I guess all metaphors eventually run out of gas, huh? (Hee hee. Get it?)
How and in what ways we strengthen our connections is a bigger topic than I could cover in this post. At some future point I’d like to return to this topic of freedom and agency and think of better ways of describing and explaining the other-centered outlook. Thanks for the practice.
So the original Germanic conception ‘freedom’ might have been more similar to the alterocentric freedom that you’ve discussed.
That is fascinating. It intrigues me how many unconscious correlations may occur from second definitions, like the fact that English uses one word for libre and gratis (“unconstrained” and “without cost”). The implicit assumptions can sometimes sneak into our attitudes, it seems. Cool stuff, Wes.
Nathan: At some future point I’d like to return to this topic of freedom and agency and think of better ways of describing and explaining the other-centered outlook.
I think your response here helped me get it a bit better. Thanks! I do look forward to reading your future investigations of the topic, though. That seems potentially very fruitful!
Awesome post. Thank you. Nobody is “free” in that they are following some type of influence. Great quotation from Card. I find it funny when a Christian is mocked for being a “follower”; and the one pointing fingers is following, say, the celebrity du jour, or the trendy philosophers of the day. We read Alma 30 this week for Sunday School and post toes into the story of Korihor perfectly.
You know, Wes, I thought of another example. In Elder Bednar’s talk “And Nothing Shall Offend Them,” he described people who stop going to church because they are so bitter over an offensive experience or remark from another member. Such people felt so compelled by their negative emotions and thoughts in the presence of another member that they chose to sever their connection to that member and to church attendance. They thought freedom from those negative experiences lay in cutting the relationship and minimizing contact.
But Elder Bednar reveals the true nature of offense as a choice we each have. We choose to take offense. When he invites less active members to come back to church, he is not saying, “Return to that relationship with the Church and its members, and endure those awful feelings of offense.” That would be like putting the kite back on a short, limiting string. He’s saying that, through a correct understanding of how relationships work, such as our individual ability to either take offense or freely forgive, we can eliminate those negative feelings without eliminating the relationship. Don’t sever the bond; change it. Don’t cut the string, and don’t stay on the short string either; swap it for a stronger, longer string, and enjoy the freedom of relating to Church members without worrying about offense-taking.
Is that a better example? I hope it illustrates that many times, freedom involves perceiving and living in relationships truthfully, rather than living and telling ourselves lies such as, “He offended me,” or, “She made me mad.”