is this permission to say whatever comes into your head?

Q: If one takes what you are saying as permission to say whatever comes into your head, without taking responsibility for the (very possibly) hurtful effect it might have on others -- not because of their baggage, but because of your insensitivity to other people's feelings, then I think that's very wrong. I'm not certain that that is what you mean, but it'd be very easy to understand it that way. It takes a very high level of consciousness before one always says something appropriate to the time, place, and company.

55th St, 2016

A: No, I am not “giving permission” for you or me to say whatever comes into our heads. I am saying that you have no control over what you say, permission or no permission. Ultimately, in my view, you will say what you say and refrain from saying what you refrain from saying, and any story you tell yourself about having chosen what to say or not say will be a kind of lie you tell yourself. That imagined “choice” is not a choice at all even if you think it is. In my experience, there is no “myself” with the power to make such supposed choices.

The controller is a story you tell yourself. You have been trained since infancy to tell it. Both the words you imagine might be harmful and the idea of not saying them come from the very same place—your brain—and whether the words are spoken or repressed is the outcome of complex interactions and negotiations among countless neurons. There is no unique group of “myself” neurons in the brain in control of that negotiation. That myself is a ghost in the machine.

The idea that we are responsible for our behavior is inculcated in children beginning in early childhood. It may be necessary to program the infant brain in that way so as to render the new human fit to be part of society, but if you have been properly programmed to be polite and not offend, there is no reason to take pride in it. It’s no different from a dog that has been housebroken through rewards (“good dog” plus a treat) and punishments (“bad dog” plus a swat with a rolled-up newspaper).

You were toilet-trained like that yourself—without the swats, I hope—and trained in countless other ways. It is the totality of that training—modified by countless other experiences that are part of your history, plus innumerable present influences—that does any supposed “choosing.”

I am not saying that we should not teach children to be civil. I am saying that the awakened minds among us take no pride in being the way they are, nor shame. They have come to understand that in each moment things just are as they are, including what they see, feel, think, and do, and no little homunculus in one’s brain controls that. Our behaviors are the outcome of countless forces, some known but most unknown, not the rational “doings” of one central character.

I am saying that no one is to blame for anything.

Societies may hold their members accountable coercively by means of social pressure and legal consequences, but not because there is actually a “someone” who can justly be held accountable.

If you understand this, lucky you. All the energy previously employed in dithering, considering, judging, and all the other background noise of so-called “self-control” will be liberated. Then you are free to be as you are, which is, I am saying, all you ever can be.