Individual Choice [SFI-7]

As a volitional being, you are free to choose what you think and what you do, but there is one thing you have no choice about, and that is whether or not you will make a choice. Even if you try not to choose, that is itself a choice. The one thing in life you never have a choice about is whether or not you will choose what you think and what you do.

This fact is the very heart of independent individualism, because, no matter how collectivist one’s views are, or how dependent they are on their society or social relationships, in the end, all they are and do is what they have chosen.

Evading Individualism

Of course the realization that everything one does is chosen is the realization that one is totally responsible for everything they do, or fail to do, and for most people, that realization is terrifying. To avoid facing that terrifying truth, most people resort to evading choice. Since choice cannot in fact be evaded, all such attempts to evade choice are forms of self-deception and delusion.

This self-deception extends to all areas of one’s life, but the most important aspects of choice that most people avoid are choices regarding their fundamental beliefs and values, the principles by which they “understand” the world the live in, and what they are living for.

The extreme attempts to evade choice and the consciousness of one’s own responsibility for their own life are the obliteration of consciousness itself, with the diversions of “entertainment,” so they don’t have to think about it, or even with alcohol, or drugs. Most attempts at evading the necessity of choice, are less extreme, and the less extreme versions of evasion all involve embracing some lie. Some of those lies are, the authority lie, the altruism lie, the collectivism lie, and the subjectivist lie.

The Authority Lie

Reliance on authority is probably the most common way people attempt to evade the responsibility for their own choices. That dependence relies on a kind of self-imposed humility, an attitude that means, “who am I to know,” as though admitting one’s own deficiency in knowledge or intellect allowed them to pass off their responsibility to someone or something else.

That “authority” might be a leader, one’s religion, a teacher, or some supposed expert, or anyone presumed to have some special knowledge or insight unavailable to common people, or at least to the individual who relies on that authority.

There is something very peculiar about this resorting to authority, however. While they admit they trust their authority to tell them what to do because of their own lack intellectual ability, they are nevertheless certain they have enough intellectual ability to choose the right authority.

A good example is religion. Most people depend on their religion to tell them what to believe, and what is right and wrong, but what religion an individual embraces they must choose themselves. How one decides which religion to choose, assumes they know enough about religion, before they have one, to make that choice. However one goes about choosing a religion, once a religion is embraced, since it is the accepted authority one bases all their choices and beliefs on, that religion will be held with total unquestioned conviction.

This is a great delusion, and those who think they have somehow evaded the responsibility for choice by relying on the authority of their religion, or any other authority, to tell them what to believe and what is right and wrong are simply deceived. Whatever an individual thinks, or believes, or does, they must choose it, and the consequences of their choices will not be determined by their esteemed authority, but reality itself, and it will not be their authority that bears consequences of their choices, but they themselves who must bear those consequences.

The Altruism Lie

“I did not do it for my own sake,” is a common excuse for anything one does which at once relieves them of responsibility for what they have done and the fact they have chosen to do it. The lie of altruism, that what one does for others, especially as a sacrifice of their own interests, is morally right, but whatever one does strictly for themselves and their own interests is immoral, is a subtle evasion of the fact that everything one does is by their own choice, and everything one chooses is what they are interested in choosing, and, for whatever warped reason they have that interest, it is their own.

The Collectivist Lie

Collectivism is frequently altruistic in nature, because the individual is expected to sacrifice his own interests to the interests of the collective. Whether that altruistic view is held explicitly or not, whenever some group or society is held as the ultimate end of moral values and the interests and purposes of individuals are subordinated to or determined by that group or society, it is collectivism. There are many things wrong with collectivism among which is the belief that the collectivist view somehow relieves one of the responsibility for choice. It is, after all, the group or the society that chooses. This lie is repeated every time someone evokes some supposed collective decision as an excuse: “the committee decided,” “it’s company policy,” or “I don’t like it, but I have follow the regulation,” all of which are lies—only individuals decide, policies are written by individuals and can always be changed, and no one is forced to follow regulations, they choose to.

The Subjectivism Lie

Those who evade their responsibility for choice very much dislike that others actually prefer to make their own choices and gladly bear responsibility for them. The evaders frequently evoke the subjectivism lie both in their own evasion of choice and against those who embrace choice.

The subjectivism lie is usually presented as follow: “Everyone can’t just decide for themselves what is right and wrong. One person will decide stealing is wrong, another might decide stealing is right if they can get away with it. It would be chaos. There would be no right or wrong, because everyone would just be living according to their subjective whims.”

It is significant that the proposed solution to this “subjectivism” is almost always some from of authoritarianism, altruism, or collectivism, and not, as one might suppose, objective reason. It is obvious why this is. Objective reason is carried out only by individuals thinking and choosing for themselves. Objective reason cannot be carried out under an authority, or by sacrificing one’s own thoughts or values to others, or in conformance with some group or social consensus.

Since individual objective reason is rejected by those using the subjectivism lie to evade responsibility for their own choices, ironically, all that is left by which they can make choices is the very subjectivist whim they supposedly oppose. They may think that by accepting some authority, or sacrificing their own interests to others, or conforming to some socially accepted standard relieves them of the responsibility for their own choices, but in fact it makes them victims of all those non-objective irrationalities on which, like it or not, they still must choose what they think, believe, and do.

Choice Is Life And Freedom

The independent individualist does not evade choice, but recognizes choosing, for a human, is life itself. To evade choosing would be to evade living.

The volitional nature, which is the human faculty of choice, is freedom itself. The behavior of non-living inanimate objects is determined entirely by what happens to them, forces outside themselves. For living things, except human beings, their behavior is determined by their nature, their instincts, and their biological requirements. Only human beings are not required to live or behave in any particular way be either external forces or their biological nature.

There are obvious physical and biological limitations, but within the bounds of physical possibility, nothing about human behavior is dictated or determined, and every human must choose what they think, what they believe, and what they do, and that necessity to choose, is not a limitation, but the ultimate possibility and freedom to be and achieve anything.