Mythology mobility

Narrative, context and how to think about free will

In 2017 two excellent books — Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari, and Behave, by Robert Sapolsky — convinced me that free will is a myth.

Let’s suppose Harari, Sapolsky and all the other free-will deniers are right, and that every human behavior is dictated by a complex array of scientific and environmental variables (e.g. genes, neurobiology, geography, peer pressure, how much sleep you had last night), some of which remain obscure, abstract and possibly incomprehensible.

On one hand, this view takes some of the pressure off us. No need to beat yourself up over stuff you wish you would have done differently in the past, and no need to worry about stuff you hope you do right in the future. It’s already written in science, so just chill.

On the other hand, with this mindset, we may lose some motivation and accountability. Why think deeply or care about anything when it’s already sketched out by science? If we all just chill and enjoy that leisurely complacent life we may not innovate, or grow, or learn from our mistakes.

Furthermore, free will — like many other religions — can be useful to our societies and the long-term proliferation of our species. Believing in free will can give us a sense of purpose, make us feel better, and help us communicate with each other.

For example, in The Book of Why, Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie articulate the benefit of free will as a communication tool, as applied to artificial intelligence (see my notes on The Book of Why here):

“The illusion of free will gives us the ability to speak about our intents and to subject them to rational thinking, possibly using counterfactual logic.”

The book continues after a few paragraphs:

“I would conjecture, then, that a team of robots would play better soccer if they were programmed to communicate as if they had free will. No matter how technically proficient the individual robots are at soccer, their team’s performance will improve when they can speak to each other as if they are not programmed robots but autonomous agents believing they have options.”

Now we find ourselves in a weird spot where we know we do not have free will, but we also know that believing we do have free will probably makes us all way better off in society.

So what are we to do with that weird and profound knowledge of the dichotomy of free will?

I like the way Sapolsky frames the conundrum in Behave (Chapter Sixteen: Biology, the Criminal Justice System, and (Oh, Why Not?) Free Will):

“I can’t really imagine how to live your life as if there is no free will. It may never be possible to view ourselves as the sum of our biology. Perhaps we’ll have to settle for making sure our homuncular myths are benign, and save the heavy lifting of truly thinking rationally for where it matters -- when we judge other harshly.”

I particularly appreciate Sapolsky’s use of the word myth in the excerpt above because it connects the power of free will to the power of narrative.

In the book Homo Deus (Chapter 8: The Time Bomb in the Laboratory), Harari emphasises and expands on this connection:

“We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.”

Harari continues after a couple paragraphs:

“The narrating self tries to impose order on this chaos by spinning a never-ending story, in which every such experience has its place, and hence every experience has some lasting meaning. But, as convincing and tempting as it may be, the story is fiction.”

I have long appreciated the power of narrative, and now I have a better understanding for where that power comes from: our very essence of being requires us to be both storytellers and story-consumers.

To take this a few steps further, we turn our attention to Joseph Campbell’s classic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (see my notes on The Hero with a Thousand faces here), which highlights the double-edged nature of the sword that is mythology.

“The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today.”

And later on in the book’s closing paragraph:

“It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal -- carries the cross of the redeemer -- not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.”

But my biggest takeaway from The Hero with a Thousand Faces was a deeper appreciation for how the vitality of narrative can be leveraged for good, evil and everything in between.

In other words, the way in which we tell and consume stories has a direct impact on the essence of our very being, for better or worse.

If we want to improve our chances of being healthy and generally better in life, we will want to improve the way tell and consume stories.

For example, when mythology is being used on us destructively, we should try and detach ourselves from our myth-following instincts, and instead pursue some other random call.

Similarly, when the “narrating self” (in the words of Harari) is leading us down a bad path — say, a victim’s path — we should, again, detach and jump to a different narrative.

Alternatively, we can embrace a strong narrative to help pick us up when the going gets tough.

We can also use stories as a helpful way to connect and inspire others, maybe when they need a pick-me-up or guidance.

These last few points seem pretty obvious, but they set the stage for my big point that ties everything together:

Think about free will as our ability to navigate narrative; our ability to recognize the mythology at play and choose whether to embrace or ignore it. Let’s define this skill as:

Mythology mobility: jumping back and forth between inspiring story and scientific reality when it serves you (or society, or the species) best.

Another way I like to think about this is doing whatever you can to set the best context. In this sense, free will can be applied as your leadership message, or where you decide to live, or the type of culture you work to build.

Even though at the molecular level these efforts may roll out in ways that are worlds apart from the way we perceive them to be, the very act of thinking about them (and, more deeply, thinking about the connections between free will and mythology) can itself change the nature of things, change our narratives, and change our lives.

With all this in mind, here are some ideas to improve our mythology mobility:

  • Think strategically about the exogenous stories you regularly consume; design a media diet.
  • Practice regular meditation to strengthen your ability to detach from narrative.
  • Develop an internal mythology sensor that alerts you to incoming narratives so you can identify and navigate the underlying agenda. I’m not sure how one might actually do this effectively — maybe, instead, it’s building a habit of critical narrative analysis.
  • Actively consume as many stories as you can to expand and deepen your familiarity with the terrain. Read many books, watch many movies, talk to many people.
  • Write many things, and try to organize your thoughts into useful, compelling narratives.
  • Create and apply different mythological journeys (more Hero, less Victim) to your own life’s narrative.
  • When the narrative doesn’t progress in the way you thought it would, remember that we’re probably just the sum of a bunch of random biology. Don’t get down on yourself, and don’t blame others: instead, try and jump to a better narrative.
  • When everything falls in line and the narrative progresses as you would hope, remember that we’re probably just the sum of a bunch of random biology. Don’t get a big head or take too much credit. Enjoy the momentum, and keep working hard to set optimal context and strengthen the narrative.

Here are some sources and recommended further reading, listening: