Who Am I and If So How Many? (28 page)

That is certainly depressing news, especially because Sartre’s philosophy of freedom is so enticing. An early passage in Robert Musil’s novel
The Man Without Qualities
, which I found riveting when I was a student, suggests that life offers not only a ‘sense of reality’ but also a ‘sense of possibility.’ I have felt a deep need to keep my eye out for alternative options since my childhood in the none-too-enticing rural region of North Rhine-Westphalia. But what is the good of this sense of possibility if I have no free will to act on it? If my experience, upbringing, and education really predestine me for social servitude, then all my actions do is replicate social programming, play roles, fulfill norms, and adhere to a social script. What I regard as
my
will,
my
ideas, and
my
esprit is nothing but the reflex of ideologies and cultural patterns. In other words, I have no will at all and no ideas of my own – I merely
ascribe
them to myself.

Gerhard Roth tells us that this is the neuroscientific way of regarding the will and ideas. I cannot really take credit for what I consider my freedom of will, and the fact that I do so anyway stems from my boundless overestimation of the capabilities of my consciousness. What the prefrontal cortex regards as its own attainment is in fact only an auxiliary service. Roth explains: ‘Our intellect can be regarded as a team of expert advisers used by the limbic systemin governing our behavior.’ The actual decisionmakers that ‘set off’ our actions are thus located in the interbrain. They are experts in experiences and emotions, administrators in the domain of feelings, even if they have no grasp of complex reflections and considerations. Nevertheless, only the limbic system decides what we ultimately do, namely, what it considers ‘emotionally acceptable.’

It is hard to deny the pull of the dark power of the unconscious.
The question is only: what does it mean for us? For Gerhard Roth, freedom is purely an illusion. That is one way of looking at it, but does freedom of will really hinge on whether I have a clear picture of my motives? In other words: how well would I have to understand and have power over myself for Gerhard Roth to concede that I have at least some modicum of free will?

Let us look at an example: in the framework of my limited parameters I believe that I know myself very well. I used to have a great deal of difficulty keeping my feelings in check when someone’s political or philosophical opinion riled me up, so I was often quick-tempered and emotional back in college. These days I resolve to stay calm in controversies, and it often works quite well. I had trouble keeping my feelings from getting the better of me when I was younger, but now they heed my will. It’s a matter of experience. When I go to a debate today, I am determined to keep my cool, and as a rule I succeed, so I would say that my feelings have learned to submit to my intellect. Isn’t that proof that my mind guides my feelings as well as the other way around? Once you get down to specifics, of course, the matter is never so clear-cut; my ability to temper my emotions entails my feelings as well. How often have I been annoyed with myself after such heated discussions? The decision to calm down fit the bill of ‘emotionally acceptable,’ or emotionally desired, but I am still convinced that my free will had an effect on my temper. I keep my cool even when certain things seem ‘emotionally unacceptable’ to me.

The point of this example is that feelings can be learned. Things that frightened me as a child no longer do so. Things that I found appealing months ago now bore me. And learning feelings certainly engages my mind, so in this respect, my feelings and mind work together, each shaping the other. Even when my feelings win out in a given situation, my mind helps steer my feelings from behind. Just because this laborious process has yet to be described with the tools of neuroscience does not mean that it does not exist. If we were unable to learn feelings, adults would continue to react like small children, and all hell would break loose.

We are free to some degree, because we certainly chart our own courses, but our freedom is limited by our life circumstances. Still, changes are certainly possible within these parameters. We should be wary of portraying this freedom too modestly or too ambitiously. Those who lack self-confidence do not develop, and those who wish to live out their inner freedom to the fullest according to Sartre’s ideas will soon be in over their heads. Man does not in fact design a plan for life and then tack on a will to suit this plan. It is no wonder that the overwhelming challenges of existentialism eventually fell out of favor, much like the
Judeo-Christian
model of loving others ‘as thyself,’ or the exaggerated psychological challenges of socialism.

The powerful and reciprocal dependency of thoughts and feelings explains why people are so marvelously unpredictable, and why so many fine ideas and good intentions are never put into action – the alcoholic who resolves to give up the bottle, the office worker determined to tell off his boss, life’s many unrealized dreams. As unfortunate as that may be for the individual, it may work out better for society as a whole. A world in which all people attain complete self-fulfillment would probably not be a paradise. And we should also keep in mind that many external constraints serve the positive purpose of furnishing stability and security, and liberation from them does not pave the way to happiness. We don’t necessarily want to be stripped of family ties, fondness for our homes, and cherished memories.

The answer to the question of whether our basic psychological make-up determines our actions or our actions our psyche is thus: it does and it doesn’t. My actions and my frame of mind keep criss-crossing, forming an endless succession of doing and being, being and doing:
do be do be do
. The degree of latitude we have in realizing ourselves varies quite significantly from one person to the next and depends in large part on our material freedom, which is to say our financial opportunities. And this brings us to the next topic we need to examine in connection with happiness and desires: how property and possessions both liberate and limit us.

I’m a nice guy – and very generous. I have decided to make you a present of the trees in my backyard: a gnarled old cherry tree, which I’ve always been quite fond of, and a beautiful weeping willow. You can have both of them. There’s just one catch: you have to promise me not to cut them down or do anything else to them.

What’s that you say? This present disappoints you? Why? Because you get nothing out of it? True. But why is that? Because the only way it makes sense to have or possess something is if you can do what you want with it, at least to some extent, you say. And why can you? Because it belongs to you. The whole purpose of property, you say, is being able to do what you like with an object, a thing, or an animal. Something with which you cannot do anything doesn’t belong to you. Maybe you’re right. I’m taking back my trees. It doesn’t help to own something if you can’t do what you like with it. But why?

Property, you say, is something that belongs to you. It is the relationship between oneself and a thing and is nobody else’s business. Is that right too? Of course, you say. You point to your bicycle and say: that is
my
bicycle! You point to your jacket and
say: that is
my
jacket! The principle underlying your understanding of property was laid out clearly and unequivocally in 1766 by Sir William Blackstone, in the second volume of his famous
Commentaries
on the Laws of England
: ‘There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe.’

Blackstone was a progressive man and very popular in his day. His book went through eight editions in his lifetime and was still considered authoritative an entire century after publication. Blackstone’s aim was to base the judicial system not on traditional ideas, but on ‘nature and reason.’ And for him, property was a ‘relationship between a person and a thing.’ I suppose you see the matter the same way. It is nobody’s business what happens between you and your jacket. But is that really true?

Let us take a look at a book by a second British author, written in 1719, just about fifty years before Blackstone’s
Commentaries
. The author was an unsuccessful merchant named Daniel Foe, and the title of the book was
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures
of Robinson Crusoe
. Foe had led a very eventful life by the time he published his novel at the age of sixty. He was part of an ill-fated rebellion against the king and spent time in prison, then became quite wealthy in the wine and tobacco trade. But his economic good fortune was not to last. The war between England and France cost him a great deal of valuable cargo and drove him to insolvency. Foe opened a brick factory and supplemented his income with journalism.

His two major themes were religion and economics. He was a Presbyterian at a time when non-Anglican Protestants in England were known as Dissenters, and Foe became an active Dissenter, fighting for religious tolerance. His bankruptcy in 1692 shaped his political and economic outlook, and he wrote numerous
impassioned
essays advocating new ownership laws that would do away
with the traditional privileges accorded to nobility and restructure landholding in England. He offered a virtually inexhaustible stream of widely discussed suggestions to improve the economy, society, and cultural life. Foe proudly added a fictitious title of nobility to his name and began calling himself De Foe (or Defoe). There is a certain irony in the fact that Foe embellished his name with the very title whose preferential treatment he fought against so vehemently in his writings. In 1703, the Church and the government sent him to prison for a brief period on charges of ‘seditious libel.’

He wrote his bestselling novel after meeting the sailor Alexander Selkirk in London. Selkirk’s story caused quite a flurry of interest in London. In the fall of 1704, the sailor had protested conditions aboard the
Cinque Ports
, the ship on which he was traveling. The ship had been eaten away by shipworms, and Selkirk did not consider it seaworthy. The captain marooned the mutineer on the lonely island of Más a Tierra in the Juan Fernández Islands off the coast of Chile. The ship subsequently sank, and most of the crew drowned. Selkirk spent four years and four months alone on Más a Tierra, until he was rescued in February 1709 by a privateer, the crew of which included a fellow officer of the captain who had marooned him from the
Cinque Ports
. Selkirk returned to London a hero, until his changing fortune drove him out to sea once again. Meanwhile, Foe expanded Selkirk’s story into a rambling tale of adventure and personal development. He left his hero in solitude for twenty-eight years, and he embellished the story with myriad remarks about religion and economic policy. One of the key themes is ownership.

Let us picture ourselves as Foe’s Robinson Crusoe to figure out why ownership is so important to him. Imagine you are Robinson, spending twenty-eight years on Más a Tierra. The island is quite hilly. A deep green mountain landscape rises from the desertlike barren coast with an impenetrably lush vegetation of trees and grasses. Giant ferns as tall as trees grow along the mountain slopes. The climate is agreeable – not too cold and not too hot. And goats,
left behind by unknown sailors, wander everywhere. Once you have explored the island and figured out that nothing belongs to anyone, you say: this tree fern is
my
tree fern, these goats belong to
me
, this parrot is
my
property, this house that I have built is
mine
alone. You spend days and weeks appropriating everything in sight. You can even say: this coast is
my
coast, and this sea is
my
sea. And that is precisely what Robinson does. But what good does it do him? The whole thing is a pointless exercise. As long as no one else shows up to dispute your right to these possessions, your claims to ownership don’t make a bit of difference.

The notion of ownership becomes important only when other people come into play. I don’t have to tell my cellphone that it belongs to me, but if someone tries to take it, I have to declare my ownership. Ownership does not occur between people and things, but is a ‘contract’ among people, as Blackstone acknowledged when discussing the ‘exclusion of the right of any other individual.’ Blackstone’s remark about the ‘sole and despotic dominion’ over property may apply to Robinson Crusoe, but not to our society today.

I do have ‘sole and despotic dominion’ over a bar of chocolate I buy. I can eat it right away if I feel like it, normally without consulting anyone else. But in a world that is not a deserted island, I cannot simply do what I like with my property. If Robinson had needed to dispose of used oil, he could have just poured it into the sea, but I can’t; in fact, even if I dump oil into the pond in my own backyard, I could be charged with environmental pollution. Once I rent out an apartment, I’m not allowed to enter it without asking the tenants for permission or at least informing them that I’m coming, nor can I simply let my rental apartment stand vacant. I can’t mistreat my dog or train it for dogfights; if I do, I can be hauled into court for cruelty to animals. That is how ownership works, even though the car, the used oil, the backyard pond, the apartment, and the dog all belong to me.

Ownership is a complicated matter. The idea that property is the relationship between me and a thing seems wrong in at least two
ways. For one thing, property is a contract between people, and for another, this ‘thing’ is not simply a thing, but rather a complex matter entailing rights and obligations.

Robinson is not nearly as naïve as he may appear when he hunts around for property and marks his possessions. He knows perfectly well that when he declares himself the owner of all the things on his island he has grown attached to, no one is going to dispute his right to ownership. Property, he would maintain, is more about the relationship between a person and a thing than jurists would have us believe, and he is not that far off. His claims to ownership are an expression of his psychological relationship to things, and things that belong to him mean more to him than things that do not. His property matters to him, and he is indifferent to the rest.

This psychological relationship to property, a ‘love’ of one’s possessions, is one of the most underexamined chapters in the book of the human psyche, which is astonishing because yearning for and possessing objects we claim to love is of enormous significance in our society. A pioneer in research on this subject was a sociologist in Berlin, Georg Simmel, who had great insight into psychological processes. Simmel investigated a wide range of social phenomena, among them the significance of objects for human self-esteem.

In 1900, Simmel, who was then a forty-two-year-old associate professor, published
The Philosophy of Money
. Although Simmel did not mention Defoe’s protagonist by name, the key to
understanding
why Robinson Crusoe marked territory on his deserted island lies here. Acquiring something, even just symbolically as Robinson did, makes it your property. We might say that you absorb it into yourself and adopt it as part of your being. This absorption takes place in two directions: from the things to the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ to the things. In Simmel’s words: ‘On the one hand, the whole significance of property lies in the fact that it releases certain emotions and impulses of the soul, while on the other hand the sphere of the Ego extends both over and into these “external”
objects.’ Possessions thus offer the opportunity to expand
psychologically
, or, as Simmel says, ‘to form an extension of the Ego.’

The objects with which I surround myself are
my
objects and thus an outgrowth of myself. The clothes I wear lend my personality a visible dimension, an image that reflects on me in the eyes of others. The same goes for the car I drive, which shapes my self-image and what others think of me. The designer sofa in my living room gives shape not only to the room but also to me. The visible sign of my taste appears as part of my identity. A Porsche driver, a Rolex wearer, a kid with a Mohawk are identities in the distinctive form of character types.

Even if Robinson is not trying to define himself as a certain type of person – the kind with a flowing beard, leather pants, and a parasol – he is after what Simmel is describing, expanding and extending himself into the things he owns. Once he has built a hut, Robinson feels the pride of the homeowner, and once he has captured and bred some goats, he is filled with the pride of the farmer. In each of these proud moments, Robinson uses
possessions
to craft his self-image. Since there are no people to react to it, he has to play that role as well. In Simmel’s words: ‘That self-awareness has transcended its immediate boundaries, and has become rooted in objects that only indirectly concern it, really proves to what extent property as such means nothing other than the extension of the personality into the objects and, through its domination of them, the gaining of its sphere of influence.’

But why is it that to one degree or another, people find they can ‘realize’ themselves in the possessions they acquire? And why is this acquisition more important than the possession itself, which appears rather dull by comparison? The thrill of making purchases and the accompanying emotional dynamics have yet to be the subject of sustained research. Once hunters and gatherers had weapons and tools, according to Simmel, the ‘extension of the personality’ into objects began. Today, the acquisition of things – and the accompanying images – ranks among the primary sources of happiness in the industrialized world, perhaps because other
sources of happiness – religious belief, love, and so forth – are not in very good shape in these countries. Might the increasingly brief duration of romantic relationships be a consequence of
consumerism
, as is often claimed, with love becoming a market of quick thrills, of acquiring things and tossing them out?

Or maybe it is just the other way around: because love does not guarantee permanence, I look to the reliability of consumerism. Excessive consumption becomes a coping mechanism for angst or an apparent fast track to satisfaction – or both. When the emotions of other people are too complicated, I rely instead on the more dependable emotional rewards and confirmation provided by material goods. A Mercedes is still a Mercedes five years down the line, whereas a person who is dear to you now may not stay that way. This would also explain why the elderly, who are more settled in life, tend to prefer things that retain their value, while young people, who feel less need for emotional reliability, like rapid changes and embrace passing trends.

From a cultural and historical perspective, the ‘love of things’ has skyrocketed in the industrialized nations, and we are
participating
in a huge social experiment. Today’s economy zooms along at a breathless pace unparalleled in history, inventing new things and dispensing with the old. Few societies have called the possession of property into question. Even communism, in the form of Eastern European state socialism, had nothing against private property. The only prohibition was of private ownership of means of production used to create a ‘surplus value’ that would distribute wealth in a capitalist manner. But never in the history of mankind has society defined itself by the
acquisition
of property to the extent that it does in today’s industrialized world.

‘What is property?’ is more than a legal issue; it has psychological implications as well, because property offers a relatively stable opportunity to expand emotionally – albeit at the expense of alternative social opportunities for expansion. The price that the desire for ownership exacts from the owner has been a severely neglected issue in psychology, in stark contrast to the price that
desire for owning things exacts from other members of society, a subject that has been discussed for centuries. At the core of this question is a philosophical problem: if it is true that property results from a contract, what principles govern this contract and a just social order?