Free Bird, 1978 – collage and foto by Smith
Lady’s been pondering free will versus a deterministic Universe.
She’s leaning toward everyone’s actions flowing from a combination of chemical interaction mixed with past events leading to a fixed future.
She says we are what we are because that’s how we’re constructed from our pre-programmed DNA, that basically the Universe was wound up once and will tick along in predetermined tocks until it runs down and everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen has previously been decided and cast in stone from the very first second of existence. In such a world, there’s no need to try because you’re helpless not to do what it is you’ve already been programmed to do
Unsurprisingly, I disagree.
I see DNA more as a default inclination, the original sin mentioned in the bible. We are pre-programmed through our DNA for fight or flight and need and greed in a life of strife. In this analogy, the womb would be the Garden of Eden which we are all evicted from at birth to try and survive in a world that’s based on eat or be eaten.
I agree we’re born to be selfish, to take what we want and view our own wants and needs as more important than any others. But that doesn’t mean we HAVE to act on these inner drives. We can choose NOT to eat that piece of chocolate cake our mind or stomach demands, maybe to even share it instead with someone who actually needs it. I see this rising above our programming as the salvation the bible promises.
In Lady’s predeterministic world, you are what you are and since there’s nothing you can do about it, there’s no need to try to improve or feel guilt about what you can’t or didn’t do.
In my world we each are responsible for overcoming our more animalistic DNA inclinations as well as rising above any uncouth cultural conditioning. For me, we are responsible for everything – for each action we do, or should have done and didn’t. I’ve always strived to be better than I am, and feel great guilt for falling way short.
Of course it’s not all as simplistically cut and dried as this. I wrestle daily with the fact that I was born with a tall, strong healthy body, a quick mind, and an easy affinity for creating words and images. I’m not responsible for initially having any of these; I was simply born that way. Unless you believe in reincarnation, my gifts are the lucky result of chance because I could just of easily been born dumb and defective.
But it is my responsibility to take what I was given and do the most with it, to accept my shortcomings and failures as my own rather than trying to blame them on fate, destiny, DNA, or predetermination.
I may be fucked up (and I am, believe me), but I realize I’ve had a lot of help in my fucked-up-ness thanks to being culturally conditioned by a sick society that teaches me the size of a man’s wallet or a woman’s breasts are more important attributes than what’s in their hearts or the value of their thoughts and actions. I feel it is my job as a human to rise above such low brow conditioning and to quell and control my DNA programming in order to create my own life on my own terms. Just because I’m born inclined to lie doesn’t mean I have to lie–it’s up to me.
There are myriad extenuating factors in all our many failures and weakness, but these factors should not be used as excuses to absolve ourselves from the responsibility of rising above them. This is how I believe we develop our spirit. Most folk are born soulless and asleep, and die the same way. They come from dirt and return to dirt. But it doesn’t have to be this way – you can come from dirt and die into light. It’s up to you.
As I wrote long ago, if your own corner of the world is a shit hole, then you are the feces.
The unfunny punch line to Lady’s and my disagreement is my philosophy promotes guilt and worry while hers abnegates both – yet I worry much less and feel less guilt than she does. Would her philosophy actually make her happy and cease her guilt worry, I’d gladly embrace it over my own.
(Just for full fair disclosure – I don’t believe in god or any religion, but I do believe in a Conscious Universe which I talk to daily. You might say I’m having it both ways. I daily say my Nam Myoho Renge Kyo Buddhist chant to help align my ego with the Universal Flow. At core I am a flow surfer.)
DNA
The man walks through the door
The door is red
The man is not
And neither has a hump
detail of Voodoo Lounge, 1968 – collage and foto by Smith
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