don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Is it your fault if you're a chain-smoking Republican alcohol abuser who eats to excess while ignoring exercise? (If you are any of these things! If not, is THAT to your credit?) Not if you can't help yourself. Increasingly, scientific evidence (and what other kind is there?) seems to suggest that none of us is able to completely choose freely and rationally. That is, we don't have unfettered "free will." It's a scary thought for a wellness promoter to confront, especially one (like yours truly) that puts self-responsibility in the forefront of foundation elements for shaping a good and worthy lifestyle.
 
Before proceeding, a few clarifications of terms seem in order. These clarifications are intended to reduce misunderstanding, confusion, murkiness and apoplexy on the part of readers with strong attachments to one interpretation of "free will" or another. Two questions raised by the term "free will" are: 1) What is it to act (or choose) freely?" and 2) "What is it to be morally responsible for one's actions (or choices)?" A related term worth clarifying is "determinism," the view that everything that happens is necessitated by what has already gone before (or nothing can happen otherwise than it does). Then, there is the god-awful (pardon the pun) notion about a "ghost-in-the-machine," murkiness about brain activity introduced by religious superstition. The latter is herein considered too ludicrous to deserve further note--I leave it for theologians to debate, when they take time from arguments about the number of angels that can do the Macarena on the tip of a needle.
 
Researchers who study the issue from varied perspectives, particularly genetics, neuroscience and behavioral psychology, challenge the extent to which we author our choices and actions, which is how most people think of free will. These discussions often involve the morality of public policies based on our assumptions about causation, such as capital punishment. My focus in this essay is solely on the extent to which we can shape healthy lifestyles.
 
Science-based studies increasingly lead to the conclusion that consciousness, character, desire and rationality--all vital elements in the dynamic of wellness lifestyles, are overwhelmingly shaped (determined) by biological and environmental influences and their interactions. Science seems to be telling us to forget about yanking up bootstraps or expecting too much from good old critical thinking - these have little traction on the controlling "brain-body control system." Instead, get used to the idea that environment (meaning culture and all kinds of social factors) and heredity trump volition, as well as freedom, dignity and moral agency, as motivators. We are overwhelmingly caused by our biology and environment, meaning we are not the cause of our actions or fate. This is not the kind of perspective associated with modern wellness advocacy, or libertarian, Cartesian, interventionist free will thinking. Biological, familial, and social processes rule, say the scientists. We wellites want to believe rationality shapes our characters, controls our motives and selects our behaviors (all based upon intentions grounded in the meanings and purposes we have adopted), but science supports little of that.
 
This causality-driven view, if adopted widely, should change the way we approach treatment, prevention, health promotion and wellness. Why offer worksite incentives for personal weight loss, smoking cessation and all the rest if people don't have the free will capacity to change their lifestyles? Instead, won't it make more sense to emphasize cultural reinforcements for desired outcomes? This is what the late Robert Allen, and more recently his son Judd Allen, advocate under the banners of "shared visions, a positive outlook and a sense of community." If beliefs about the power of free will for choosing lifestyles are abandoned in wellness promotion, we will want to devote more attention to the broader, innate determinants of worseness or dreadful lifestyles--and interventions to modify them. 
 
I asked my editor guru Bob Ludlow, the philosopher photographer of North Carolina, what he thought about all this. He wrote at length, in fact, at greater length (and depth) than my own essay on the topic. Yet, basically, this was his main point, I think: "If you ask ten different people what free will is, you'll get ten different muddled answers. It's just another of those vague, feel-good notions from religion that people prefer not to analyze (and get angry if you do). The acquired ability to think, reason and plan on the basis of evidence enables individuals to transcend the limitations of their nature, or even their culture. Rational thought and scientific method are open-ended, almost unlimited. The power of the human brain, with its capabilities for language and symbolic reasoning, can perform at levels of complexity and unbounded creativity that defy precise understanding. The result may look like "free will," but it's not; it emerges from the combination of our biological makeup (heredity) and our learning experiences.
 
I also asked my anti-guru guru Grant Donovan, the polymath of Australia, what he thought of all this business about the absence of free will in our exalted species. Specifically, I sent him an article which inspired this piece, an essay by Thomas W. Clark entitled "Crime and Causality: Do Killers Deserve to Die?" that appears in the current edition of Free Inquiry Magazine (Volume 25, Number 2). Here's what Donovan offered on the topic: "The circuitous struggle of Clark's discussion, rather than the subject matter itself, highlights the complex and chaotic, self-assembling nature of all life. Or, to put it more succinctly, life is random and meaningless, with or without free will. For every one human alive today, 25 humans have already died without adding anything of real interest or value. The fact that the US is one of the "few places" in the western world that still uses the death penalty speaks volumes for the religious (eye for an eye) paranoia that seems to dominate large sections of the population. Religious retribution, wrapped in the animal drives of genetic predispositions, always makes for a good hanging. Just some self-assembling thoughts."
 
Well, there's something to be said for self-assembling thoughts, I suppose. I hope a few of these thoughts, whether mine, Donovan's, Ludlow's or Clark's, help you to think about free will, heredity and environment in a wellness context. As always, comments will be welcomed and appreciated.
 
Be well and always look on the bright side of life.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of emotional intelligence. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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