The Hand guides the Head as much as the Head guides the Hand
Unfree Will
The other day I wrote about Unfree Will. This is the conclusion many neuroscientists have reached, that in many ways our idea of Free Will is an illusion. We do not, it seems, consciously, freely choose the things we do. In most cases it seems we begin to do something and then, a moment afterwards, our conscious brain sees what we are doing and assents to it. Then by an odd alchemy in the brain, this assent is ‘back-dated’ two moments so that it seems to us we decided before we began to act. This has been shown in tests to be the case, and that our idea of conscious choice is no more than an illusion.
‘A man can do what he wants, but he can’t want what he wants.’
It seems that the right hemisphere of our brain, or our ‘unconscious brain’ and the hand choose for us. Our left hemisphere or ‘conscious brain’ only observes. But it can also categorize, interpret, and plan. The right brain lives only in the present moment. The left brain can go into past and future. The left brain can also influence the right brain through their common tongue of dreams. We can dream of a future situation, and in the dream we can rule our dream acts with full free will, not touched by the needs of our bodies. We can go this again and again, until these rehearsals act as guide to the right brain, and it starts to see that ‘in this place and time, this is what I ought to do.’
Another way to gain more control over what we do is to change our surroundings, as I wrote earlier. This is summed up in the example of tying a string on our finger when we want later to remember to do something.
Conundrum
This raises a paradox all the same. How can we choose to tie the string on our finger when we can choose nothing at all?
There is no simple answer I know of, and this whole area of thought is being researched even now. There is much I don’t know about it. But maybe part of the answer is that in our imagination, in dream, hypnotic trance, and meditation, we free our left brain, that part of us that we think of as ‘I’ more than any other single part, from the shackles of the body, the ‘other’ part of us, and we talk to our right brain, the ‘unknown’ part of us. It might be in these states the two brains join as one, and only heed the dictates of the hand indirectly, from a distance as it were. The body after all only responds to what is now about it, and that is the dream we give it when other physical senses are not touched strongly. Through rehearsals and visualizations in these states we can train our hand and our right brain to act as we would choose, as if we did indeed freely rule our own acts at the moment we begin them.
There is another face to mastery, and that is the power to say No. our left brain becomes aware of our action not after it is done, but while it is being done. We see that we have begun to do something, assent to it, affirm it, and believe then this assent came before. But must we give assent? What if instead we said, ‘No, don’t do that — put that away — I didn’t want to do that.’ For so long as we trust that we choose our every act, we condemn ourselves to walk in trance and give over all conscious control. But as soon as we come to see that it is the right brain and the hand that chooses, we gain greater freedom to inhibit our acts and nip them in the bud. Jean-Paul Sartre is said to have claimed that man’s only freedom lies in the power to say No, and this notion agrees with him. And yet this has its limits if the hand’s wish is too strong. Try to stop scratching a persistent, bedeviling itch. You can stop it once, twice, maybe thrice. But if the itch goes on, odds are you won’t be able to keep from scratching it forever. (It has also been noted, by the way, that in denying ourselves one pleasure we weaken our resolve to deny ourselves some other pleasure.)
An Outside Force
When we think of all this, we see we can win at least some rule over our deeds and our lives. But I doubt that most of us can ever win full rule. Only enlightened souls can reach so far. And I think that leaves the rest of us still lacking the last bit of rule that might change our lives to the best, in the way we most fondly hope we might.
For that, we need another’s help.
We need an outside force.
We need someone else, someone who is dedicated to our best goals, with wisdom, who is not touched by our right brains.
I think this is the life coach, and not the psychologist. The psychologist can only work on and through our left brains (though some psychologists are also hypnotherapists, and some act as coaches). but lacking rule over ourselves, we can’t trust that the change in our left brains will show itself in what we do or how we act. The coach, on the other hand, doesn’t care what we feel or think or imagine. He only cares what we do.
If we choose a coach, trust him, and give way to him, we will be more likely to do as he says and not as our right brains want. If he can shame us, so much the better.
Sometimes it is enough to make public what we plan to do. Then even without an official coach, we will feel more pressure to follow our plan, since we know those who will see what we do, and we told them what we planned.
A Physical System
The hand learns best by real experience. Physical reward or punishment teaches it best and most directly. Then it follows that a coach is more effective when he controls us physically — at least so far. This means a system of physical rewards and punishments can help, whether we administer them ourselves, or ask another to do so.
Better Coaching
Our first coach we find inside ourselves. Through plans, intentions, imaginative rehearsals repeated over and over, we guide and shape what the right brain and hand choose to start to do. Through constant watch and use of No, we can stop, often enough, our body carrying through when it starts to break our plans and intent. We can also make our surroundings help us to stick to our plans. And so we can hope to make our will into habit.
Our second coach we find in the people always about us, in those places where we would change our acts. If we tell them openly and often how we want to change how we act, we build pressure on ourselves not to be shamed by failing in front of them. And we can ask for their help to remind us and tell us when they see us fail.
Our third coach and maybe our last hope, is a stranger, whom we take on as master, to tell us what to do. And in the last choice we can grant him the power to punish and reward us along the way.
(Composed with pen on paper Tuesday 29 January 2008)
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