Good News

In the absence of justice,
what is sovereignty but organized robbery?
--Saint Augustine

After fifteen minutes I wanted to marry her, and after half an hour
I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse
--Take the Money and Run (1969)
___________

Slate recently featured a University of Minnesota report suggesting that those who possess the concept of free will behave in a more ethical way than those who believe in fate ("Destined to cheat? New research finds free will can keep us honest.")

Of course, this is counter to the teaching of many mainstream Christian churches which teach that people are either "elect" or not, and that election is preordained. No amount of good works will save you from an afterlife of eternal damnation.

According to them, your free will is precisely this: to choose salvation via proxy. You cannot do it for yourself. On your own, you are wicked and easily misled, tainted as you are by Original Sin. Your only hope of escaping the fire and brimstone is to accept the savior and hew closely to the proscriptions laid out in the scripture.

If you do not "choose life" via abdication of your absolute freedom, and instead opt to go it on your own, the halo which might have awaited will drop from your head and a whole string of events will ensue resulting in your inevitable Fall.

One would think at that point the "in for a penny, in for a pound" mentality might kick in: may as well go whole hog with the project since you are now on the highway to hell anyway.

But instead of good behavior issuing from the idea of fate, a positive correlation was found between fatalistic beliefs and unethical behavior.

On the other hand, if the study participants had the notion that they were in control of their actions, they tended to behave more ethically than if they thought things were beyond the reach of their control. "The results of this study point to a significant value in believing that free will exists."

This ties in to the previous post. Much as a patriarchal church makes of its parishioners children or lambs who are to be led by a shepherd, so an authoritarian government treats its constituents like juveniles, in need of indoctrination and censorship.

The problem is children are not very nice at times, owing to their extreme egocentrism. So the problem with the authoritarian and censoring government is that it engenders some unsavory behavior from its charges. According to this study, if deprived of free will, subjects will sneak what they can, letting their egos take over.

Secrecy is not such a good thing for fostering a robust and ethical democracy. If I don't have much agency over what happens, I'll take all that I can get, because I cannot make a good outcome; I can only appropriate from what I see.

Food for thought.