Free Will and Acceptance

I've recently read a few things that made me wonder about the individual human and his development. The stages of life that he goes through are dictated by the laws of sociology, physics, and psychology. Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby really made me ponder the issue, as did a blog my friend wrote. So let's get right into it.

From the moment we take our first breath, our first steps, crawl for the very first time, we're bombarded by a garish assault of ads, expressions, norms, and values. You grow up in a Christian house, you'll learn to confess your sins, never to have sex before marriage, and to say a prayer before you eat. You grow up in a Russian household, your parents will put you through a rigorous training course so that you're badass like your distant relatives in the Motherland. My point is, form every angle, we assimilate values of our culture, develop a way of thinking that is in harmony with our way of life, and express values that sync up with what we were raised to believe.

In that sense, is there ever such a thing as free will? Is there such a thing as true originality? What we perceive to be free will is just choosing between brands. What we believe to be original is just adapted from an earlier work with a few variations and spins. I am reminded of Bioshock, a brilliant video game that brought up one of Ayn Rand's classic themes. "A man chooses. A slave obeys." But what is there to choose? We can choose between American cars or Japanese cars, we can choose between an Alfani or an Armani shirt? The point is, we're all subjected to the same stuff, the only choice we have is to choose which one, which company, which style to abide by. We're all slaves. Slaves to the norms, slaves to the culture, and slaves to the values that have been instilled in us since birth. We may try to break the chains, try to become unique, but there's no such thing. We're all the same underneath. It's just a mild variation on what might be different.

What else are we? What separates us from the beasts? We're self-aware. We're conscious of our own decisions, we know the consequences of our actions, and we can think critically. And yet, we are a herd. We're herded along, swindled by the mighty and their impressive rhetoric (irony!). You can claim your beliefs are unique, sensational. But chances are, someone else has already thought of it. We can never truly be original. Even the Constitution was adopted from various other historical documents and other values. The Magna Carta perhaps? Maybe Protestantism? I laugh at the emo kids trying to be "cool" by dressing up in all black, pretending their poetry is self-expressive of their "pain" (I can say with some certainty that at least my poetry isn't as lame as theirs).

That brings me to another point - acceptance. We do all these things, going back to the emo example, those kids dress like that, behave like that, listen to the crappy music to gain acceptance among their peers. Acceptance makes us happy, it lets us know that we're doing something right, it's just "invisible positive reinforcement," so to speak. And that's fine. We all want to be accepted, pretending you don't care what other people think about you is a load of bullshit - even if you claim that, on some level, you will always yearn for more.

What I find funny is that everything we do is to gain some small sum of acceptance from someone. I believe the sociological concept was the "Looking Glass and the Generalized Other." The Generalized Other is the vast accumulation of other people's opinions on us, and we consult it unconsciously. When you look at a mirror to determine whether an outfit looks good, and we ask ourselves "Does this look alright?" we aren't asking ourselves. We're asking the Generalized Other, the opinions of people, of everyone else. If it looks good, that means it's acceptable to others.

I suppose my point is this: we cannot avoid being conditioned by the values of our culture and we can never stop yearning for the acceptance of others. They go hand-in-hand, I suppose. Hell, I am definitely playing by those rules, despite my vehement declarations otherwise. Well, that was cathartic.