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The ideal of freedom is at the heart of our political and economic system. It is foundational to our sense of justice, our way of life, our conception of what it is to be human. But are we free in the way that we think we are?�
In Creating Freedom, Raoul Martinez brings together a torrent of mind-expanding ideas, facts, and arguments to dismantle sacred myths central to our society—myths about free will, free markets, free media, and free elections. From the lottery of our birth to the consent-manufacturing influence of concentrated power, this far-reaching manifesto lifts the veil on the mechanisms of control that pervade our lives. It shows that the more we understand how the world shapes us, the more effectively we can shape the world.�
A highly original exploration of the most urgent questions of our time, Creating Freedom reveals that we are far less free than we like to think, but it also shows that freedom is something we can create together. In fact, our very survival may depend on our doing so.
- Sales Rank: #102796 in Books
- Brand: PANTHEON
- Published on: 2017-01-31
- Released on: 2017-01-31
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.54" h x 1.54" w x 6.42" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 512 pages
Features
Review
"Exceptional . . . This year's essential text for thinking radicals"�—The Guardian�(UK)
“In this stunning and lucid book, Raoul Martinez re-assesses our past, re-examines our present, and re-imagines our future. It’s such an exciting and compelling read that you almost don’t notice at first how radical it is. Creating Freedom makes me think that we humans are on the cusp of our next big step—and it’s this kind of thinking that will carry us over.” —Brian Eno
“I’ve been working my way through, highlighter in hand, at times thinking, ‘Why bother! Just highlight the whole thing.’ Super impressive.” —David Byrne
“Provocative, powerful and important—Creating Freedom is a rigorous exploration of what’s gone wrong with our society and how to make it right. A book for our time, this radical manifesto exposes the myths at the heart of our system and shows what the ideal of freedom truly demands from us, individually and collectively.” —Susan Sarandon
"Martinez speaks for a generation living through a profound mismatch between their aspirations for freedom and creativity and the thudding conformity a society, driven by the market, demands" —Paul Mason
"Everyone trying to puzzle through how to deal with the madness of the world - and the forces destroying it - should read this book" —Johann Hari
“An impassioned social and political critique with glimmers of hope for change. British artist and documentarian Martinez makes his literary debut writing on a theme taken up recently by writers such as economists Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stiglitz, journalist Bob Herbert, and activist Ralph Nader: inequality, injustice, greed, and entrenched power have undermined democracy and threaten the common good and the future of our planet….An intelligent, rigorous manifesto.” —Kirkus Reviews
‘If you believe you are free, think again.�Strong arguments . . . epic in scope . . . [A] manifesto to enlighten citizens stuck in an illusion of democracy"�—Financial Times
“Thought-provoking . . . sound and persuasive . . . Eminently readable with a an elegance of style not often found in theoretical works. It is no less than a rallying cry to take back the substance rather than the illusions of our freedoms.”�—New Internationalist
�
"Beautifully written, vigorously argued and remarkably researched . . . No one has examined the issues of freedom and moral responsibility in such an extensive and fascinating context, or done more to show that these issues are not ivory tower debates but absolutely life and death issues for individuals and quite possibly for our species" —Bruce Waller�
“ This discussion of the impossibility of ultimate moral responsibility is extremely well written, aphoristic in places, and philosophically right on target.”�
—Galen Strawson
About the Author
RAOUL MARTINEZ is a philosopher, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. Creating Freedom is his first book. It is informed by over a decade of research and is accompanied by a documentary series of the same name. Episode One, The Lottery of Birth – produced, written and co-directed by Raoul – was nominated for Best Documentary at London’s Raindance Film Festival and went on to win the Artivist Spirit 2012 Award at Hollywood’s Artivist Festival. Raoul lives and works in London, where his paintings have been selected for exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
part one
THE LOTTERY OF BIRTH
1
Luck
We do not choose to exist. We do not choose the environment we will grow up in. We do not choose to be born Hindu, Christian or Muslim, into a war-zone or peaceful middle-class suburb, into starvation or luxury. We do not choose our parents, nor whether they’ll be happy or miserable, knowledgeable or ignorant, healthy or sickly, attentive or neglectful. The knowledge we possess, the beliefs we hold, the tastes we develop, the traditions we adopt, the opportunities we enjoy, the work we do – the very lives we lead – depend entirely on our biological inheritance and the environment to which we are exposed. This is the lottery of birth.
We meet the world primed to adopt the way of life we encounter. The society that greets us takes our potential and shapes it. Ancient Greece, Confucian China, Renaissance Italy, Victorian England, Communist Russia – across millennia of human history there has been a spectacular multiplicity of cultures, each with the power to mould us in radically different ways. Early interactions, the treatment we receive and the behaviour we observe, begin the process of constructing an identity. Gradually, imperceptibly, we are inducted into a community.
Cultural transmission is a powerful process, one that has produced both beautiful and ugly outcomes. A glance at history reveals that there is neither a belief too bizarre nor an action too appalling for humans to embrace, given the necessary cultural influences. As much as we condemn the injustices and prejudices of past societies, there is no reason to assume that, under those circumstances, we wouldn’t have embraced the same values and defended the same traditions. We might have developed loyalty to any group, nation, ideology or religion, learned any language, practised any social custom, partaken in any act of barbarism or altruism.
Thinking about the lottery of birth draws our attention to a simple fact: we do not create ourselves. The very idea entails a logical contradiction. To create something, you have to exist, so to create yourself you’d have to have existed before you had been created. Whether we’re talking about flesh and blood people or immaterial souls, there is no way around this simple fact.1 The implications are far-reaching: if we don’t create ourselves, how can we be responsible for the way we are? And if we aren’t responsible for the way we are, how can we be responsible for what we do? The answer is: we cannot.
The kind of freedom that would make us truly responsible for our actions – truly worthy of credit or blame – is a dangerous illusion, one that distorts our thinking on the most pressing economic, political and moral issues of our time. Yet it’s an illusion central to our lives. As we will see, examining it exposes as false a number of assumptions at the heart of our culture – ideas about punishment, reward, blame and entitlement – and demands a revolution in the way we organise society and think about ourselves and each other.
It can seem hard to reconcile the fact that we are not truly responsible for the lives we lead with the countless choices we make every day – what to eat, what to wear, whether to lie or tell the truth, whether to stand up for ourselves or suffer in silence. After all, I’m choosing to type these words and you’re choosing to read them. However, the act of making a choice does little to confer responsibility. The reason for this is simple: we make choices with a brain we didn’t choose.
No one creates their own brain. No one even really understands the workings of their brain, let alone anyone else’s. Just as computers do not programme themselves, we do not ‘wire’ the grey matter inside our skulls. This feat is accomplished through endless interactions between our genes and environment, neither of which we control. The upshot is that I did not choose to be me and you did not choose to be you, yet who we are determines the choices we make in any given situation.
Intuitively, we understand this. We are good at predicting the behaviour of those we know well. If a child, partner or sibling shows a drastic change in behaviour, we look for some external cause – drugs, bullying, overwork. Take the real-life case of a middle-aged married man – let’s call him ‘John’ – who developed an overwhelming addiction to child pornography.2 After several incidents of highly inappropriate sexual behaviour, as well as some time on a rehabilitation programme, John faced a stretch in prison. Suffering from increasingly painful headaches, John was hospitalised the night before he was due to be sentenced. A brain scan revealed a massive tumour in his orbitofrontal cortex. The surgeons operated, removed the tumour, and John’s sexual appetite and behaviour returned to normal. After six months, however, the paedophilic tendencies returned. His wife took him back to the surgeon, who discovered that a portion of the tumour had regrown. After a second operation, John’s behaviour returned to normal.
With the discovery of the brain tumour, John seems more a victim than a moral deviant – someone worthy of compassion rather than punishment. We tell ourselves that the tumour is to blame for his troubling behaviour and, of course, no one chooses to have a tumour. But what if there had been no tumour? Would that have made John more responsible? Would you feel more justified in blaming John if, say, his addiction had been the product of childhood abuse rather than the abnormal growth of brain tissue? If so, why? We no more control our upbringing than we do cell growth in the brain, and formative experiences have a profound impact on the way we develop.
In the 1950s, British psychiatrist John Bowlby showed that a child’s relationship with its primary care-giver has a decisive impact on emotional and mental development. Today, it is widely accepted among child psychologists that if a child fails to form a secure attachment to a care-giver, the likelihood increases of developing a range of behavioural problems related to depleted self-worth, lack of trust in other people and an absence of empathy.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, one of the largest of its kind, looked at the long-term effects of childhood trauma on health and behaviour.3 Its findings confirm what many might expect: ‘stressful or traumatic childhood experiences such as abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, or growing up with alcohol or other substance abuse, mental illness, parental discord, or crime in the home . . . are a common pathway to social, emotional, and cognitive impairments that lead to increased risk . . . of violence or re-victimization, disease, disability and premature mortality.’4 The prevalence of and risks associated with these problems are greater in people who have experienced more abuse. For instance, each traumatic event in a child’s life makes them two to four times more likely to develop an addiction.
Most brain development takes place after birth. This is a distinctive feature of human beings. Dr Gabor Mat�, a physician specialising in the treatment of addiction, argues that physical and emotional interactions determine much of our neurological growth and that addiction is largely a product of life-experience, particularly in early childhood:
[E]ndorphins are released in the infant’s brain when there are warm, non-stressed, calm interactions with the parenting figures. Endorphins, in turn, promote the growth of receptors and nerve cells, and the discharge of other important brain chemicals. The fewer endorphin-enhancing experiences in infancy and early childhood, the greater the need for external sources. Hence, a greater vulnerability to addictions.5
At any moment the state of our brain is a reflection of countless forces – genetic and environmental – over which we have little or no awareness. Advances in science and improvements in technology are gradually increasing our understanding of the brain. Today we can detect and identify brain tumours; two hundred years ago we could not. Back then, John would have been held completely responsible for his actions. No account would have been taken of the effect of the abnormal growth of tissue in his brain because no one would have known about it. The default assumption would have been that an adult is morally responsible for his or her actions.
As modern scientific instruments have increased our perceptual reach, our knowledge of the brain has improved. Observation and experience have taught us that a tumour can have a dramatic effect on an individual’s behaviour, radically changing their personality. We have learned to attribute responsibility for abnormal behaviour to the tumour instead of to the person who happens to suffer from it. The problem with this line of thinking is that our assessment of blameworthiness is constrained by our current level of scientific understanding. A hundred years from now, with better scientific instruments and a better understanding of the brain, we may be able to detect subtle changes in the brain’s neurochemistry that give rise to all kinds of behaviour which today we attribute to the ‘free agency’ of the individual. Neuroscientist David Eagleman writes:
The underlying cause [of a form of behaviour] could be a genetic mutation, a bit of brain damage caused by an undetectably small stroke or tumor, an imbalance in neurotransmitter levels, a hormonal imbalance – or any combination. Any or all of these problems may be undetectable with our current technologies. But they can cause differences in brain function that lead to abnormal behaviour. . . In other words, if there is a measurable brain problem, that buys leniency for the defendant . . . But we do blame someone if we lack the technology to detect a biological problem.6
The more we understand the brain, the more we will be able to account for our behaviour by reference to its specific features, which will be attributable to genetic inheritance and life-experience. We may be able to show that the violence and aggression of an abusive father is rooted in a particular hormone imbalance, which itself could be rooted in childhood trauma. Scientific advances will help us to view a person’s choices in a far wider context, one that includes the forces that created the brain making the choices we observe. The notion of ‘individual responsibility’ is just a fig leaf that covers the current gaps in our knowledge.
Our understanding of the brain is still extremely limited. In one cubic millimetre of brain tissue there are a hundred million synaptic connections between neurons. Current imaging methods rely on blood-flow signals that cover tens of cubic millimetres of brain tissue.7 The upshot, as Eagleman vividly puts it, is that ‘modern neuroimaging is like asking an astronaut in the space shuttle to look out the window and judge how America is doing’.8 Though it may never be attained, a total understanding of the brain would eradicate the idea of individual responsibility entirely. But we do not have to wait for advances in science to understand that if someone behaves differently from us in a given situation, it is because they are different from us. We may lack the technology to identify the relevant way in which their neuro-circuitry differs from our own, but the evidence of the difference lies in the behaviour. If we had exactly the same brain state and encountered the same situation then, all else being equal, we would behave in exactly the same way. This principle holds whether we are using it to explain the exceptional intellectual gifts of Einstein (which, incidentally, led him to reject the myth of responsibility) or the extraordinary moral failings of Stalin.9
Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and a leading researcher in empathetic development, suggests that when it comes to varying degrees of empathy, ‘perhaps we should see such behaviour not as a product of individual choice or responsibility, but as a product of the person’s neurology’.10
We do not hold someone with schizophrenia responsible for having a hallucination, just as we don’t hold someone with diabetes responsible for their increased thirst. In the case of the person with diabetes, we ‘blame’ the person’s low levels of insulin, or the person’s cells for not responding normally to insulin. That is, we recognize the biomedical causes of the behaviour. Equally, if someone’s behaviour is the result of their low empathy, which itself stems from the underactivity of the brain’s empathy circuit, and which ultimately is the result of their genetic make-up and/or their early experience, in what sense is the ‘person’ responsible?11
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to seeing things this way is the intuition that, although as children we are not responsible for our identity and actions, we can choose to change ourselves as we mature and, by doing so, become truly responsible – bad habits can be broken and patterns from childhood overcome. On the face of it, this seems a reasonable claim. People can change and often these changes can be brought about very consciously – that is not in doubt – but it cannot make us truly responsible for who we are. To see why, think of a new-born baby endowed with a genetic inheritance it did not ask for and exposed to a world it played no part in creating. At what point does it become a truly responsible being, worthy of credit and blame?
The problem is that, by the time we have developed the intelligence necessary to contemplate our own identity, we are already very much in possession of one. How we think about ourselves and the world around us will already be framed by the conditioning we have received up to that point. This conditioning informs any choices we make, even the choice to rebel against aspects of that conditioning. It is still possible for new influences, encountered by chance, to have a deep impact on what we think and do, but we’re not responsible for what we encounter by chance – and the influences that we consciously seek out are sought because of who we already are. As the philosopher Galen Strawson put it: ‘Both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one’s success in the attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and experience.’12
Most of what goes on in the brain is completely inaccessible to the conscious mind. Rather than its functioning being a product of consciousness, it makes more sense to say that consciousness is a product of the brain’s functioning. Eagleman writes:
The first thing we learn from studying our own [brain] circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control. The vast jungles of neurons operate their own programs. The conscious you – the I that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning – is the smallest bit of what’s transpiring in your brain . . . Your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Socialism is the answer!
By Jake Banner
The rich stole their wealth and are not entitled to it; everyone deserves a descent living; private property is theft; the government can pay for everything as, contrary to Maggie's popular myth, we never "run out other people's money." Oh, and we're not responsible for our actions because, after all, the decisions we make are made with a brain we didn't choose. We don't have true freedom of choice but must nevertheless choose the values best suited for a democratic and just society. Raul's professors must be proud: another cookie cutter student churned out by academia bent on changing the world into perfect socialist state where everything is held in common, all needs are met, and no one feels challenged by an unfair advantage. And, least we forget--America is rotten to the core. That about covers it. By the way, I don't fault Raul for his naivety. After all, he's not responsible.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
The ongoing damage following privatization of "the commons"
By Ellen Etc.
This insightful new book is part of the interdisciplinary, multi-media “Creating Freedom” project of the same name, which also includes a documentary series, interviews, and paintings. This review is a result of a free-wheeling conversation between a friend and myself about this book.
Like Howard Zinn, author Raoul Martinez presents history from the perspective of those who haven’t written it. His premise is that neoliberalism -- defined as “a modern politico-economic theory favoring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditure on social services, etc.” -- is not natural law, but has become a belief system, an ideology, what one might even consider a ghastly religion.
Prior to the Inclosure Acts in England, “the commons” were the lands under common control, and tribalism was egalitarian. The more we clustered, however, the more we used hierarchy to take care of and benefit our tribes. Beginning in 1604, the Inclosures Acts allowed the nobility to own and control the Commons, so that what were once common resources for all became privatized for the King and his own tribe, called “the nobility.” That model continues today, though the wealthy and privileged are the new nobility who have commandeered and hoard what should be common resources.
Martinez’s brilliance is in the integration of his extensive (and extensively cited) research, articulating how we’ve been deprived of our natural rights and sources to live well, illuminating the cognitive and behavioral habits that imprison not only us, but also our “privileged” captors (the “nobility” or wealthy). Current educational practices solidify and justify standard, individualistic frames around our interpretations: are you ambitious, or lazy? Are you being punished, or rewarded? But Martinez shows that these factors are not as under individual control as we believe believe -- access to resources is dependent on the lotteries of birth and luck. The media reinforces our magical thinking about economic systems and mobility, preventing great masses of people from identifying and reclaiming “the commons,” trading away a fair distribution of resources for the faint hope of making it up to the next economic/social class.
So why do people of good will and great intelligence defend the economic and social systems of privilege? It is a result of systemic ignorance and an educational system that reinforces notions of scarcity, and hopes for individual privilege, rather than educating for the cultivation of genius that would foster the intersection of each person’s interests, best abilities, and their role in community.
Martinez understands the role of King in creating money out of nothing, and that a downstream commodification by the King allows a few to control the banks and corporate structures, At the same time, technology is moving everything authentically toward “free.” The old system is increasingly archaic, but very intelligent people who have been trained in the paradigm in “the service of the King” still resist the wide distribution of goods. (For example, there’s a big lobbying effort underway by cable companies to prevent municipalities from setting up their own wifi at much lower rates.) Check out Stanley Milgram’s extensive work on the psychology of obedience; our inertia continues to support the privatization of everything from intellectual property to genetic information.
What does brain science tell us about authentic well-being? Once a certain level of well-being is established (currently in the $75K range in the U.S.), the individual escapes poverty, and at that point, moral values should push us to democratizing ownership and the workplace. Bankers and those accruing corporate wealth are no authentically happier than those with $75K a year. Catch the gold ring! It’s a thrill, but then what? Perhaps Martinez’s book will provide a new framework to challenge these systems, illuminate the immorality of privatization that benefits a few at the expense of the many, and break up the inertia.
The educational system has distorted our tribal kindness and empathy, but these damages could be offset by new models of exposure, mentorship, and opportunity. What's called for now is a moral sense applied to education, with techniques, methods, and interventions that combat the archaic system of privatization. (In Scandinavian countries, for example, the citizenry doesn’t resent high taxes for public benefit.)
There’s much richness and wisdom in the way this author frames and explains. I encourage others to further explore the author’s ideas in conversational groups. Don’t defend the cognitive prison. If we can use education to link intellectual brilliance with high moral development, we may yet see a future of freedom.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Extremely valuable and delightfully readable; five stars in not enough to do it justice
By Trudie Barreras
There really aren’t enough superlative adjectives to do justice to “Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future” by Raoul Martinez. A quick look at the Table of Contents of this amazing book, which obviously any intelligent reader will do, gives a clear idea of how far-ranging this treatise is. A glance at the 90 pages of notes indicates the depth and breadth of the research. Regretfully, the uncorrected bound galleys I read as a Vine reviewer does not contain the index but doubtless that will be equally useful and illuminating. However, it is in the narrative style that Martinez really demonstrates his mastery. A brief bio states that he is “an artist, writer and award-winning documentarian whose work has been exhibited in London’s National Gallery”. I believe it is the author’s creativity and vision that makes this an extremely vital book for our present day.
The basic premise with which Martinez begins his discussion relates to what he calls the “myth of responsibility”. This is the basis of the all-pervasive notion that adult humans, as a result of some inherent quality of freedom, “create” themselves. Thus success or failure, morality or immorality, wealth or poverty, and so forth, are “chosen” by each individual. This is, of course, patent absurdity. Not only do we NOT choose our genetic make-up, the location and circumstances of our birth, the cultural forces which impact us, or environmental factors beyond even the control of the greater society; we are clearly at the mercy of such factors from our conception onward. Thus Martinez points out that the current cultural bias towards injustice and inequality based on this false assignment of responsibility where none in fact really exists obfuscates the issue and prevents us from dealing with the vast problems the solution of which is a precondition of the survival of the human species.
I will not go any deeper into an analysis of Raoul Martinez’s thought at present. Suffice it to say that a potential reader need go no farther than the first chapter to become convinced – unless he or she is hopelessly mired in preconceived ideas – that this is an extremely valuable and delightfully readable book. Five stars is really not enough to do it justice.
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