Individual Freedom and Categorical Destiny
Some people see themselves as roles which change at various times and due to the various environments they find themselves in. They also see these roles as being reinforced by environmental pressures. These are provided by religions, communities, genetics, natural pressures, and personal choice. Some determinists would say that personal choice is negligible, and depending on their theism would likely weigh genetics and or religions as the dominant choice. Social scientists would probably follow the lines of influential social scientists like Edward Bernays or idealistic people like those within the UN in the global provision for all of the UN Charter on Human Rights as a responsibility and opportunity to shape the environment to encourage beneficial social behavior.
If one sees life as a set of divine destinies following an ultimate arc of history or cascading dominoes courtesy of the genetic traits passed on by parents who provide the environment for those predetermined traits to develop, then what matter does the individual choices we make have in the face of an expanding sun and universe or some apocalyptic judgement day? This also coincides with the way one’s neighborhood has such strong correlations with economic opportunity for children, violence, and chronic health due to everything from the people one grows up around, the pollution in the environment, and the quality of nutrition and education. Someone can choose the mindset and perspective of freedom from expectations or feel gratitude for blessings moreso than focusing on the accomplishments and challenges that are experienced through the prism of the choices in one’s life. Furthermore, depending on the scale that one feels life is determined on a personal, intergenerational, national, global, or universal level then one can either feel a desperate need to control that environment and allow the self to dissolve in some tribal identity or faction which will enforce those improvements through some kind of force or continually get caught in attachment to past events or future dreams. Some methods of force include someone to only barter with the tokens of the faction, taxes and tithes on pain of spiritual or physical torment, or some form of forced labor for survival.
Sometimes those pressures that encourages behavior are more obvious, such as explicit legal or spiritual consequences, and sometimes they are more insidious such as the expectations that might vary by demographic as the proverbial village raises a child including sex, age, or ethnicity which can play a role in how people feel expectations for assertiveness, career, or costuming. While some of these may have been intentionally chosen to establish a tradition which would encourage things like in-group loyalty or the propagation of members within the group, some may have simply developed over time like the stylistic choices of jackets, heels, or hats. These pressures may make someone who associates themselves with a group feel that if there is a certain level of unique personal variation they are no longer a true member. This kind of categorization can be internally of externally targeted. If externally targeted with enough pressure this can either force a repression of the variation or a schism which can range from exile to heresy or civil war.
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If these are internally targeted due to a personal association of some categorical role along with costuming or innate traits, then the individual could feel that they need to somehow signal that they aren’t a member of that category. This could result in a desire to lighten skin, remove body parts, or perhaps some other expression of disgust toward some associated category. I think that the more firm these categorical roles are mentally, the more these roles appear as an ideal for behavior that people compare themselves to. This pressure can limit the way that we feel to express our individuality throughout life. Even small aesthetic choices like hair length, painted nails, or the manner of affection someone may feel is acceptable to show a friend.
Concepts like the anima and animus or a Jungian shadow can also be taken as separate aspects of personal being or even of a society, but I think the interconnected and flowing style of a yin-yang more fully synthesizes these separate parts into a complete whole. Allowing for this balance between what could seem like contradictory aspects of a unified being are important parts of claiming our own person and being from these limiting roles and environmental pressures. Ideals and universal goals can provide targets to aim for, but if these are seem as the ultimate good beyond an individual freedom and interaction, this seems more likely to feel binding and oppressive just as determinism can be. If the environment is has such correlations as pollution with chronic health, educational rigor and depth with economic prosperity, or diet with life expectancy then one could argue that perhaps the benefits to providing that pressure to influence the infrastructure of some level of local to global organization outweigh the costs.
Some people also pass stereotypical judgement of another based on a single role they play in life or some other external characteristics. One can make assumptions that a military officer is a proponent of gun rights, that an Italian’s favorite meal is pasta, or that a young African American’s favorite music is hiphop. There may be tendencies, but there are certainly exceptions. And if one holds to these assumptions and builds off of them somehow one’s whole understanding of another person can be built around one part of their personality which would miss so much more of the person, never mind if the assumptions were false or at least incomplete. This can shape the way we interact with the person such that opportunities are determined simply based off the way we examined the cover of the person based on environment, costuming, and role.
In this way I believe we reinforce the frames or boxes of the world such that they determine the results in life. If someone is not seen as an individual who can choose any path desired based but rather has options determined by innate characteristics they’ve inherited from the society or family they were born into then this can shape the way that they are taught at school. Perhaps some do not have the option to pursue an education but rather are limited to choosing which manual trade to practice. A disability may have those around the person tell them to give up on labor and rely on social services, which requires a substantial amount of effort to overcome the biases to pursue an interest and become a Temple Grandin or Stephen Hawking.
Many people experience challenges and restrictions in their lives that some would find to be overwhelming. Whether this is a physical or mental disability or some kind of socioeconomic status like that of a refugee, those who give up and resign themselves to their fate are those who will lose hope for improvement. This seems to be welcoming the confines of environmental pressures which determine life as opposed to placing personal pressures upon oneself to rise as far as one can on an arc toward some target. Again, these targets could be personal, communal, national, global, or perhaps even beyond. It is only by living within the restrictions of the environment that peace and stability is guaranteed, but this only guarantees past results of the environment.
This restriction expands beyond physical or mental capacity to include the way that some societies put pressure on the expectations of a leader, protector, or nurturing person based on some innate characteristics. It can be seen as inappropriate to break out of these roles and claim personal freedom to determine one’s path forward, perhaps in a relationship like a marriage within strict religious organizations. Some arguments for this might stem from average differences between demographics or historical tendencies in roles. Yet, these tendencies do preclude the possibility of greater variation of individuals within that box of temperament, mental capacity, physical ability, or personal objective intentions. These variations are so diverse within individuals that the categories could dissolve. Perhaps their mere invention was originally to shortcut a judgement of another without wasting time to know the individual.
