So what freedom do we have when we’re strongly constrained by our genes and the rest of our body, by our upbringings and our social and political circumstances, by the very nature of space and time and causality? Whatever the result of the various debates about nature versus nurture, there are certainly some strong constraints upon us and, in a sense, it doesn’t matter as much as some think that we might be shaped relatively more by our ancestor’s environments or by our environments. That is, it doesn’t matter for many modern theories of freedom, personal responsibility, and other diverse issues related to moral nature. In these theories, freedom is defined in terms of freedom from: nature, nurture, and current environment. I’ll label all three of those as ‘constraints’.
Constraints provide structure, you might say they’re necessary for particular entities to exist. Without constraints, there’s no thing to be free. I think that was the real point of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening though it’s often read as some sort of endorsement of the radical freedom which the protagonist sought. Having partly gained it by cutting her ties to first her husband and then even her children, she completed her decay by swimming out into the ocean and entering a sort of formlessness.
Human nature is a set of constraints from which any particular human being draws his characteristics. Those constraints can be good or bad, and often that goodness or badness is a matter of context. We have breakable but somewhat strong instincts against killing other human beings. We feel various sorts of love for various sorts of other human beings or non-human animals. Many of those forms of love might well be ‘re-targettings’ of the hormonal urges we have to protect little creatures that look like us but have eyes as big as plates and ways of cuddling up to us that break down barriers. Other loves may have developed by separate evolutionary pathways but might have been intensified by the strong urges that nearly all social mammals have to protect and play with their young.
Freedom isn’t bad for sure but it’s also not a good in itself, any more than constraints are. Our constraints offer the possibility of moral order or moral disorder but we often need to freely choose the specifics of our behavior, including the natural constraints we choose to nurture.
Freedom as such isn’t the point. A Christian wishes to be Christ-like, those of other traditions have their own ideal state. I’ll just say the goal is to be a good man, not to be free to be good or bad. How many would say a man who develops his freedom and uses it to become a mass-murderer (Hitler?) is a better man than a simple man constrained by genes and upbringing to be a good man? True it is that the simple man isn’t constrained so that there’s a 100% chance of becoming a good man. He can decide to be distrustful or hateful, he can fall in with the wrong crowd or become addicted to drugs, such as amphetamines, that nurture violent tendencies or other drugs that lead him to a deceitful and self-destructive state.
What about those who are constrained to be that which they don’t wish to be? I’ll not speak of the overall moral issues involved in homosexuality, but only of the dilemma of those who feel homosexual urges and don’t wish to be homosexuals? I’ve known a few such individuals, as well as some who varied between not wishing to be homosexual and accepting it.
So what do we say when a scientific research project tells us that there is a strong correlation between homosexuality and the existence of a certain form of a gene? Most claims linking homosexuality to specific genes or brain-structures have failed to pan out when other researchers set out to verify them, but it’s far from impossible that one such claim will be verified. In a recent story, we learn of a discovery that certain genes which pass through the maternal line are correlated with an increase in the fertility of daughters at the same time they’re also correlated with increased odds that sons will be homosexual. See Male Homosexuality Can Be Explained Through A Specific Model Of Darwinian Evolution, Study Shows for a summary.
Excuse my anthropomorphism for the sake of economy of speech:
It’s hard to imagine a reason for nature to make homosexuals for the sake of that trait in the way she would make fertile animals or self-sacrificing sister-bees.
But it’s easier, given what we know of evolution, to think that homosexuality might be produced as a side-effect of a process leading to some reproductive benefit for siblings. A maternally transmitted gene that increases fertility of daughters while disposing some or all sons to homosexuality would be in line with a process which has produced many puzzling or disturbing results.
What can we say about evolutionary pathways which produce such seemingly strange results? First of all, we can simply say that evolution is a theme in a very complex story of which human beings are only part. Like all stories, it has rational underpinnings but it also has many factual aspects. In this way, it’s no different than, say, The Scarlett Letter. If Nathaniel Hawthorne had written a prologue giving the entire history of the Bay Colony and every one of its members, we could still not have known in advance the flow of events in his classic story. If we were able to suspend our knowledge of history after 1776 and then read Douglas Southall Freeman’s biography of Washington, we might well have been doubtful of the chances of Washington’s success as he took command of the colonial army at the siege of Boston. And some of the events and results of the American Revolution were disturbing, such as the transition in post-war years of a true hero, Patrick Henry, into a corrupt political boss.
The story of life on earth, biostory?, is a wondrous tale of great beauty and — at times — great horror and — very often — beauty marred by glitches. In fact, there’s probably never been a creature not marred by glitches. I’ve got myopia, a tendency to tendinitis in my forearms and sciatic nerve irritations in back and legs and a lack of moral courage that I try to overcome by nurturing my faith in God. Human self-awareness has increased the problems coming from our various glitches by leaving many individuals aware that they’re constrained, by nature or nurture or circumstances, to have traits or desires or limitations they desire not. Despite that, the story goes on. Moreover, St. Peter shows us that a moral coward can fill the role of a hero. The rest of us can try to follow him.