Richard Lloyd Jones: Philosopher David Hume called it the most contentious issue in metaphysics. Actually, nearly every major figure in the history of philosophy has weighed in on the topic somewhere in their work. Free will. The capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Is the issue really that complicated? I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, liberating ourselves from our free will.
Well, Hume was right. The issue of human free will is contentious. And I'll be diving into the controversy, too, in a moment. It's a fascinating subject. But first, a number of you have been writing to ask that I let you know about the new internet call-in radio show I'm launching with world-renowned author and psychoanalyst Dr. Cláudia Pacheco. I'm not surprised there's so much interest.
You who've been listening to this podcast over the past year and a half or so must have come to appreciate the clarity and wisdom of the science behind this work. It's called Analytical Trilogy, and it's not an easy science to encapsulate in a sentence or two, let me tell you. The science is essentially a union of theology, philosophy, and science that gives us a comprehensive view of the psychology of the human being and the reflections of this human psychology on the greater social structures we live within.
Our political structures, our wars, our education systems, or lack thereof, our environmental challenges, all have their birthplace inside the human psyche. And no one in history has clarified that better than the man behind Analytical Trilogy, Dr. Norberto Keppe. Whether it be something every psychologist or human potential workshop leader has weighed in on, like depression, or self-esteem, or self-sabotage, or something almost no one talks about, like the psychology behind the pathology of power.
When we turn the Analytical Trilogy lens to the topic, you hear a perspective you've never heard before. And it lands. It just feels right. It just makes sense, as many of you writing to me have confirmed. And we'll be doing that kind of analysis live with Dr. Cláudia Pacheco and I, taking your calls and emails and answering your concerns personally. Can you imagine how impactful that'll be?
So I'd like to keep you informed about that. We're projecting our first show to be on March 10th at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, that's New York time, on BBS Radio. That's bbsradio.com. But get on my mailing list to stay informed of the exact information where you can find the program and stuff like that. Rich at richjonesvoice.com. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Now, today, liberty and our free will. You know, we in the Western world have this idea that we're really free and that we're also really quite socially evolved. That we have recycling programs in place, that we're advanced in our social programs, and also that we're super tolerant and welcoming of all other points of view and cultural traditions. Well, certainly we have that idea in Canada, where I'm from.
We pride ourselves on our tolerance and open-mindedness. But underneath our politically correct external persona, there is a high degree of censorship and intransigence. And all that means we're not really as accepting after all of other ideas or philosophies that stray from what we perceive as our superior beliefs and ways of doing things. Go against that and you'll find you are not really free to give that opinion.
Sofie Bergqvist is a Swedish educator and lecturer and a translator of a number of Norberto Keppe's books, and she joins me today. I've noticed, Sophie, that when we're working with our work here in these radio programs, that as long as you stay with sort of general questions about people's problems, the problems in the world and stuff, you're generally okay. The comments that come back are pretty reasonable.
But the moment you step out and start to criticize what is strongly held by the particularly academic community, you're completely slammed against the wall. And anything that questions the predominating scientific theories that exist in the world today, it's completely an emotional response. Well,
Sofie Bergqvist: I remember that Keppe writes in his book, The Universal Man, that he says that we have gone from a period that was very religious fanatic, with a lot of religious fanatism, where you couldn't even question or show any kind of different opinion from the church or the prevailing dominant idea in the country in terms of religion.
And today, he says, we have gone to the other extreme. Now, we are similar in our fanatism, but regarding science. So we have the same emotional reactions when somebody is criticizing or questioning or even daring to ask a question in relation to the prevailing academic ideas.
Richard: Like Darwin's theory, and this, be very clear about this, is
Sofie: the theory. Yeah, my teacher at high school, he asked us once, and I remember it still today, because he asked us if we believe in Darwin's theory.
And all of us, we looked at each other there in Sweden, and we said, What does he mean? What does he mean by that? If we believe in Darwin's theory? We got angry with him and we started questioning what was he wanting to say with this. And he said to us, well, you know why I'm asking this question? Because Darwin's theory is just a theory.
It's one of the theories that exists in the world in relation to the history of this planet. But you are accepted, it's accepted to believe something else also. But anyway, I remember we got very angry with him because he even said something like that. It was so stupid in our opinion.
Richard: Yes. It's like if you question what are the prevailing theories, it's like they
Sofie: look at you like you're a member of the Flat Earth Society.
And what is this? Dr. Keppe has written a lot about this, what we call freedom to think, freedom to express. Keppe, he says mainly, basically, right, that to have a problem is not a problem, but it becomes a problem when we don't want to deal with it or don't want to see it. And I notice many times nowadays also in Sweden with this western mentality that we think that to speak about problems is intolerant, is being intolerant, and you shouldn't see things as a problem.
You should be so tolerant that you kind of close your eyes to anything that becomes a problem or a pathology. You can't say that something is a pathology, or you can't generalize things, or you can't say that it's exactly like this, not openly. And this is another kind of censorship, differently from the past when we kind of punished people for having a different opinion or for showing some kind of different behavior, and we put them in prison or we stoned them to death.
And this kind of very very paranoid censorship from the past has instead turned into a kind of an omission, which is also a kind of censorship. That we are not really trying to resolve this, the problems and the difficulties, in a healthy way, in a balanced way, but we become like you said very irrational or very emotionally involved if somebody dares to speak about a problem or it sometimes a different opinion or something that is not something that we would say openly in our society?
Richard: Yeah, this is a very interesting thing to think about because we think we're so tolerant today.
Sofie: We think that we can look back at, say, 150 years ago
when there was slavery openly, when women weren't allowed to vote, and now, of course, we've mostly, for the most part, in our European and North American world, we've eliminated at least the obvious forms of those things, although still we could say that there's some discrimination going on.
We think, wow, we're so progressive now, and look how backward they were then.
Richard: Are you suggesting that we have a bit of a backward approach now, that we're not as progressive, we're not as open as we think we are?
Sofie: I think that we continue with the same emotional problems that we had in the past, but we show them in different ways. And, of course, it's an enormous progress in the world that we have democratic systems today in the Western world.
The democratic system is the best we can have. In this world so far, but we are a little bit lost about the concept of freedom, because the democratic system is basically fundamentally based on freedom, the concept of freedom, but we are lost about what freedom really means. And that's where I think that Capes approach is unbelievable, unbelievable, this book that he wrote many years ago about liberation from the will and about our free will, where he explains the concept of freedom and he explains that free is not necessarily to do everything you want like we normally think, but freedom has limits.
To the concept of freedom is something very important today in the constitution, in the western world. We say we are a free country, we are so tolerant with everything, but we are very lost on the interpretation of this concept, what freedom really is. Yes, it's
Richard: interesting, because I had a student the other day who said, but I was asking the students, have you ever stopped anything that you along the way in your life, you ever started something and then stopped it?
And she says, yes, the piano. And I said, but but why did you stop the piano? She said, well, I didn't like it anymore. I said, but so what, you didn't like it. And she looked at me like I was like, you know, like I was like, you're, you must have looked at your professor in in high school, what do you mean, I wouldn't.
Thanks
Sofie: for watching.
Richard: Stop something I don't like. Because we have the idea that we should only do what we like. Only, this is the idea of freedom, right? The freedom to do what you like. If
Sofie: you don't like it, you have the freedom to stop. But it's not like that, is it? No, because in the research of Dr. Keppe, he noticed that our will, the will that we have, we have a pathological will.
A very strong pathological desire that we can see sometimes in our life. And we can see it, for example, just in a simple way. If I do everything I want to do, if I really did everything I wanted to do in a day, it would be a disaster. So this concept of everybody doing exactly what he wants to do, what is good for him, what is nice for him in the moment, it's going to be a disaster for everybody and it's not going to be a freedom for anyone.
So, for example, I asked my students the other day about the concept of freedom. And normally everybody says, free is to do whatever you want, to be able to do whatever you want. And I said, but what if you want to kill your boss? You hate your boss. He's the problem of your life.
Richard: And everybody agrees with you. He's a
Sofie: terrible boss.
Terrible, terrible. I want to kill him. That would be, I would feel so free if I kill my boss. And normally the students say, no, of course, you can't do that. Because here in Brazil, we say that our freedom finishes where the freedom of the other person begins. So you can't limit the freedom of another person. So you can't really kill someone.
And actually you're going to go to prison and you're going to lose all your freedom. And I said, well, if I commit the perfect crime, it's the perfect crime, nobody knows it was me. In any way, people know that there is a consequence. And this is the consequence, the freedom that Kepa normally speaks about. And it's the psychological freedom to feel free inside, to feel good with yourself, to accept who you are and to feel good with yourself.
And you wouldn't do that if you're doing bad things, you're killing your boss, or you're stealing money from somebody else, you start feeling bad inside. You have this heavy conscience or guilt feelings, and you start limiting your natural freedom. So then we
Richard: enter the question of whether it's good for me or bad for me. And how do you determine that? Because a student of mine's father was a policeman, and he did that for his whole career.
And he said that a policeman on the force who had to shoot and kill somebody felt terrible for three or four or five months, terrible. The second time he had to shoot and kill somebody, he didn't feel so bad. By the time the third or fourth time came around, it was as natural as writing a ticket. You know, so there's something about what is really bad because if it starts to feel like it's normal, is it still bad?
Sofie: Yeah, because in general, for example, So Keppe says like this, he has a phrase in his book also, liberation, because it's interesting the question of freedom in Keppe's work, because practically half of his books have the name liberty, liberation, Liberation of the People, liberation through knowledge, liberation from the will. And when he says liberation from the will, he's not saying that we should liberate our will.
He says, actually, we should liberate ourselves from this pathological desire we have inside of doing things that actually is not going to lead me to something good. So then we enter this question of this inverted will that we have that many times want to do something that ethically, I know that I shouldn't do this. I know that I shouldn't actually do this because it's going to create problems for me.
Or if I steal or if I do something bad to somebody, I know I shouldn't do it, but I really want to. Now and it seems to be something beneficial for me in the moment, and I have this inner conflict between my desire to do it and this ethical or rational part in me which tells me not to do it. And Keppe says very clearly that as long as I use my will in accordance with reality, with a core, in accordance with what is good and what is correct, I'm free, because my action, my good action, will create a psychological freedom for me and very good consequences for me and for the others.
So within goodness, within the concept of love, as long as I'm in this concept and doing something within the goodness, I'm free. I can do whatever I want inside of this natural law of goodness. But if I step out of it and I'm irritated, I'm angry, I'm full of vengeance, I have envy of someone, I shouldn't do what I want to do, because if I do everything I want to do in that moment I'm surely going to create some problem for others, for myself, I'm going to destroy my freedom and the freedom of the others.
And there's where we are lost today, because we have no notion of exactly where the limits, natural limits of freedom really are. So
Richard: we need to talk about that, because you're presupposing then that there is a right way, there is a correct thing, and most of us come from a point of view as well, you have your truth and I have my truth and my neighbor has his way of seeing things.
How do we sort of navigate through this, these stormy waters? How do we get there to understand what is the way we should be? How do we know that?
Sofie: Well, in the philosophical studies of Keppe, he said that freedom is to do everything which is good, truth, and beautiful. This is a philosophical concept. But in his psychoanalytical experience with people, With more than 50 years of having clients, taking clients in many parts of the world and writing books and studying people and the health of people and the well-being of people, he noticed that this is true.
Because as long as people are doing what they know is good, when they know it's something, we know what is true. Deep inside, we all know what is true. We know what is good. And as long as we are doing this, we are also feeling good. And he noticed this, that even sickness, even depression, even starting to feel bad psychologically or creating mental problems, it's because we are not acting in accordance with this good essence that we have.
We are doing something against it, and many times because we want to. We are doing our will, we are following our desire, because I want to use drugs, because I want to speak badly about others, or because I want to steal a little bit of money.
Richard: I want to stop this class. I want to steal this car.
Sofie: I want to do nothing with my life.
I just want to sleep. I just want to do nothing.
Richard: And I'm not hurting anybody by doing that.
Sofie: And he noticed that when we are doing that, we know deep inside and we are creating our own problems and we start feeling bad. So in his experimental work as a psychoanalyst, he could see very clearly, and everybody who studies psychoanalysis and integral psychoanalysis can see the same thing, that we basically, essentially, we know what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful, but we deny it all the time.
Richard: We can think, I think, that freedom, our freedom comes from going against what we know we should do. Like, that's the freedom that we want, really, isn't it? It's to say, well, I know I should do this, but I'm free, so I can choose to do that. Really, if we only wanted to do what was correct, there would be no concept of freedom within that, because we wouldn't even think about breaking out of that mold, right?
We would only think about doing what is the correct thing to do. We wouldn't
Sofie: think about how do I go against that in some way. So our freedom, as Dr. Keppe has talked about, is actually the freedom we want is to go against what we know is true. When he speaks about our free will, he gives a totally unique explanation of the free will in that sense.
When he says that actually we use our free will only when we want to go against what is good. Because he says that we have this natural essential will. When we follow what we should do, we're actually following the divine laws, we're actually following what God would like us to do, and when we do that we are simply doing what we should do.
We are not using our will, we're doing something ethical, we are following God's will, and we create beautiful things or have nice results. But when I don't want to do it, I put in my free will, I have my free will, I don't want to do this and I'm not going to do it. So when I'm not wanting to do something, when I don't want to do something that I should do, which is good really, then I use my free will.
So in his concept our free will is something really pathological, something that we use just to go against what we should do. Now
Richard: what about if we see something in society that is obviously going against this divine nature that you're talking about. We have big difficulties to talk about that today, don't we? Yes. And this is a big form of censorship that we see in the culture.
You come from Sweden, I come from Canada. We're like so politically correct.
Sofie: We have to say the right thing in the right way. If we step outside at all, we're going to be like crucified almost. Yes, I remember that we crucified several people at school because of different opinions. I remember in particular one girl in my class, because my country is protestantic right, and she was catholic, and in one class she told the class that she believes in creationism and she doesn't believe in Darwin's theory, and we totally destroyed this girl.
We never wanted to talk to her again, we fought with her a lot in that class. I remember the teacher tried to calm us down, but we thought she was, we couldn't control ourselves. I remember that I got so So furious with her. Because the way, how can she think, how can she be so stupid? And I remember we did the same also with two other people who came to talk to our class.
They came from a different church, some kind of free church. And we didn't even let them talk. We crucified them even before they started talking to show them how brainwashed they were and how wrong they were and how bad they were. And I noticed, I remember in that case, that I noticed afterwards that we didn't even let them talk. And we didn't even see what they were thinking about the thing.
But we were totally emotional.
Richard: Intolerant. Totally. Like medieval times, we could say. So, if we're going to measure something, whether it's right or wrong or just, we have to measure against some sort of universal values, don't we? Because 150 years ago, it was defended, defended to the death in some cases, that slavery was the right way to go. You as a woman, 150 years ago, you couldn't vote.
It was, we have to, when we're looking at these things, measure them against some sort of ideal universal value. And this is something Dr. Keppe talks a lot about.
Sofie: When he speaks about the universals, he speaks about the universal truth. And he says, and he notices in his work, that we all know deep inside. We all know what is, what is right, what is true.
But we have a problem of acceptance. So he says we only understand what we accept. And if I don't accept it, I'm not going to understand it. And I'm probably going to fight with it, and fight with the idea. And the more emotionally I react to something that is happening in front of me, the more censorship I have inside to deal with this.
It shows something very unbalanced inside of me. If I have these very, very strong reactions like we had, me and my friends at school, because of a different opinion or a different religious opinion or scientific opinion, and you react so out of control as we did, it's because of some very strong censorship inside of something, some kind of consciousness that you don't want to deal with and you don't want to see.
And it shows a lot of unbalance in a person. And I remember that when I came to Brazil, I remember that one of the things that really surprised me with Brazilians is that they are very tolerant to different opinions. And even if they don't share the same opinion, they don't start fighting very easily. They say oh really, do you think like that?
No, I think that I have another opinion. And they have different opinions even about these big things, like academic studies, like Darwin or religion or whatever. But they very rarely start fighting emotionally or turn the back against someone just because of a different opinion. At the Swedish consulate here in here in Brazil there is a little guidebook for Brazilians who are going to travel to Sweden and Scandinavian countries and how to behave.
Richard: How to be Swedish? How to be Swedish.
Sofie: And one of the main points is never show your opinion openly, especially not in polemic questions. And I told this to some Swedish people we had here recently and they started laughing a lot and they couldn't believe that this is... Really? Are we like that? Are we intolerant? Like, why? I can't... And they couldn't recognize themselves in this.
But in this book there is an explanation, and it explains that Swedish people never tell openly what they are really feeling or thinking. Even if they have a very strong opinion about, they might not show it openly. They are very softening a little bit and trying to see a little bit what other people are thinking in the society, independently on the universals, what is true, what is correct or not, but what is the social thinking, what are people in this society thinking about this right now, and what are these people around me thinking.
And you kind of adapt a little bit what you're saying in accordance with the norm of the others around you. Now
Richard: you suggested something about this being a little bit intolerant. Are you suggesting that this is an intolerant
Sofie: attitude? Yes, intolerance and a lot of censorship too. Because? Yes, it's a lot of censorship. Because instead of doing like in the past when we are really punishing somebody for an opinion, we are simply not showing our opinion.
Or we are hiding it behind a facade of being something that we are really not. Or really into this concept also of being so tolerant, because we are a democratic country, we are a free world, we are a modern society and we have a very modern way of thinking.
And you can't really show openly everything that you're thinking or feeling. But it's a censorship. We are exactly the same people that we were in the past. We have the same prejudice inside. We have the same problem sometimes when we see something, but we can't show it very clearly. And many times, things in the many times in the past that people overreacted because they saw a pathology or a problem, it was a problem.
And today we're not allowed anymore to say that it is a problem. So we have to pretend that we don't consider this a problem and it's not a problem at all and do whatever you want. And we don't see the limits where something is starting to become a pathology, when something is starting to become a problem for the person or for... We have very much this concept that, no, he has to do what he wants.
Maybe this is good for him, maybe this is good for her.
Richard: I can't judge him. I
Sofie: can't judge, yes. How can you say that this is wrong? And we are trying to fool ourselves and pretend that we don't know.
Richard: As long, Sophie, as you espouse an opinion that's generally held by the society, right? Yes. The moment you begin to express an opinion that's different from the prevailing opinion, then you get exactly what happened in your school.
You get the kind of slammed against the wall approach against that. So it is intolerant in that way, isn't
Sofie: it? I have here an article from one of our biggest Swedish newspapers. And it was a very interesting thing to see how we are in this way in relation to science today, that we were exactly the same as we were with religion in the past.
So, for example, if we, in the Middle Ages, if somebody had a theory or a different religious opinion from, also the world was flat in that time. You couldn't even question this idea because the church has said that the world is flat, so that's it. And if you dared questioning this idea with some scientific, new scientific ideas or some proofs, we know what happened in that time.
And literature was burnt. Anything that was not in accordance with the church and the opinion of the church, independently if it was right or wrong, it was something that was practically burnt at the stake. And last year, I think it was last year, the schools around Europe and also some newspapers around Europe got very surprised because they received books for free. Enormous books, 5 kilo books, more than 700 pages books, explaining that the creationism theory is actually scientifically provable.
You can prove it scientifically. This is the idea of the author of the book. And they saw inside that this is a very beautiful book. It's very well published and very well explained. It's a scientific book from a Muslim country. And they are trying scientifically to show their point of view of the creationism. And what happened in Europe is interesting to see because, for example, in France, the Minister of Education suggested the schools not even to show these books to the students.
They couldn't even mention it and they could never even think of taking this book to the classroom to show it to the students. And this is exactly, if we really see the psychological aspect, we see that it's very similar to the Middle Ages. Some books you're not allowed to see. Some books are supposed to be burnt. Some books are not permitted. Some knowledge is not allowed here.
Because our reaction to it is so exaggerated that it shows some kind of censorship. It's not a normal reaction. If you don't believe the book is beautiful, take a look. This is another theory. They think like this. They are Muslims. They think like this. But no, don't even show the book to the kids.
Richard: So the desire is not to find the truth, but to protect a way of thinking.
And this is a big censorship that I see happening now all around the world, that we don't want to really discover what's true. We want to reinforce the beliefs that we already have. So anything that goes against the belief that we already have, we just exclude. We just say, no, that's garbage, that's junk, that's ridiculous, as if our minds are the purveyors of truth.
Instead of trying to match up with something that is true, like what is the truth? We don't have this desire, it seems to me, at all.
Sofie: And these are the universals that Dr. Koeppe speaks about. He says that all our knowledge comes automatically from the universals in a philosophical sense. He explains it very well in the book The Universal Man, which is also interesting because it's based on Plato's concepts and not Aristotle.
And he himself explains in the book that because of this, in many academic circles, they won't even consider what he's saying because it's not in accordance with the academic studies that we have today that are Aristotelian. So, and he's trying to see the other part. Was Plato correct? And he's explaining about the universals and it's a very interesting study. And he explains that what happens is that we should receive all the time this contact.
When we have insights about something or we feel, when a person is wise, it's because he has a better contact with these universals. He feels what is right and what is wrong and what would be correct to do in this situation. But because of our pathologies we block, because of our envy or sometimes anger, or we don't accept, this is not in accordance with what I would like it to be.
So because of this or a prejudice we already have an idea about the topic, so I'm not going to even listen to what he's saying. So because of this we block. It's a pathological emotional blocking that we do to the real knowledge of things. So these emotional aspects in us impede us from understanding really what to do in situations and how to understand things.
So this is what happens when we read a book. We take a book and we read it and we accept many things like you said. We accept oh this is oh because it's in accordance with what we feel and what we, what we have already experienced, and we think it's fantastic. And then it comes to one point or sometimes one sentence where Cap is writing something that is not in accordance with what I would like it to be, and then forget the whole book.
I'm not going to read anything more. This is a totally emotional aspect. Instead of trying to see what does it mean, this phrase, or in this, sometimes people, ah, the way that he said it. So what does it mean to you? What do you think about this? And then try to see this way in yourself, that it's not the way that he says it or somebody else says something that is really the problem, is how I relate to this, what does it mean to me.
And I remember uh last week a Swedish woman said exactly that to me, because in Sweden really we don't say things directly openly what we think. You have
Richard: to cushion everything, you have to say well it's this but then it could be that. And yes I know in Canada
Sofie: it's the same, yes I agree with your opinion but I also see another aspect.
And here in in many Latin countries or many other countries it's not like that. You can say, you can have a totally different opinion, I don't agree, I think it's like this, and people continue friends. And what happens is that, and I said to her in the sense what do you associate this with, this this way of speaking. I think it's it's it's it's very direct, it's it's very um dogmatic, dogmatic.
Yes she said it's very dogmatic. I said to her but don't you think that inside somewhere you have very dogmatic ideas and dogmatic thoughts, but maybe you don't say them, maybe you don't show it to the others. But don't you think many times that you know better and the others don't know, or that you don't agree but you won't say anything. And she started smiling, she started laughing a little bit, she said yes it's yes it's true.
So it's it's important for us to see why we get so emotionally involved sometimes with the different opinion, why do I get so furious with this. It shows something that is not resolved in me, independently if this is right or wrong, it shows some kind of consciousness that I'm not dealing with in the right way.
Richard: Isn't it a fascinating topic and one that clarifies the field substantially?
Although let's not pretend that on a one half hour podcast we can understand everything. You can write me for more information on this topic or any other topic. Rich at richjonesvoice.com. Good to hear from you. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Talk to you next time.
