Causalism
a way of seeing and being in the world.
A moral and personal practice based on the belief that all human behavior results inevitably from the preceding causes.
According to Causalism, free will is only an experiential illusion within consciousness. This illusion, like many ills of human nature, deludes us. It accompanies us, quite ironically, as we take the only path possible given the entirety of circumstance.
Causalism helps its adherents unearth the beauty and peace in the view that humans do not make choices. ‘Choices’ make humans.
This is a hard pill to swallow. Especially as a different pill has already and unknowingly been taken. Free will, the belief that humans are the prime ‘choosers’ in their ‘decisions’, is the counter-belief of Causalism. From the view of Causalism, free will has been subtly accepted as the underlying macro-religion of the world.
Causalists view free will as:
a belief-system accepted ‘on faith’ and not scientifically valid or definitive
potentially an illusion within consciousness
dangerous if accepted uncritically
Causalism is a dramatically different way of being with an urgent and singular goal: emotional and soulful harmonization with reality as it is.
Welcome,
If you are in no need of improvement, consider stopping here. Further, if you live within a practical belief system that brings great meaning and order to your life, consider stopping here. Otherwise, proceed, but know that the heart of Causalism can never be conveyed in writing alone.
Woven into humanity is a dire yearning for improvement. As with any powerful force, it is accompanied by danger. Today, improvement powers the world, and in the social realm, rests on a belief in free will. This dynamic of improvement has led to material prosperity along with delusions and suffering.
Causalists work to radically rid themselves of this default belief in free will for the sake of emotional and soulful harmonization with reality as it is.
In the view of Causalism, you have never "made" a single "decision" in your life. You did only as you could have done — following the one path your biology and nature permitted. This is a deceptively hard view to face and accept.
The Causalist practice consists of two commitments:
1. Work to replace our default belief in free will with Causalism as the lens to view ourselves, others, and all of existence.
2. Commit solely to emotional and soulful harmonization with reality as it is – not material gain, escape, or status-seeking.
These commitments are as powerful as they are simple. They do not forsake reason or require a leap of faith to be true.
Both are equally necessary. One is an egg and the other a sperm from which new life can come.
The Causalist commitments also highlight a divergence from hypocritical Western, free-will-based ideologies (think mainstream culture, Judeo-Christian religions, and other normative cults). Though claiming to honor the 'freedom' of the individual, many cathedrals of free will dominate their followers by proposing conclusions, first, and instructions for how to think and act, second. For example, you were saved by Jesus (conclusion) and therefore should act in these specific ways (instruction). Causalism does the opposite. Individuals first consider the two commitments as self-evident instructions and then act according to their conclusions that naturally follow.
When starting a practice of Causalism, individuals quickly see how blatantly and unthinkingly the world depends on a belief in free will. One may observe how free will appears in language. Or, how it is unquestionably taken as true. The free will ubiquity may begin to be humorous. Or, one might find how defensive and unsettled others get when their free will is questioned. Depending on how far you go, you may see your reality crumble and wondrously illuminate, simultaneously.
Attempting to adopt this lens is challenging. It may change how you view your past and the future of your life.
We could say we are glad you have made it this far, but our gratitude is to the causes, all of them, that have brought you here to question yourself and reality.
How we live stems from the beliefs we exist within. Living with this simple, yet reality-altering awareness is the heart of Causalism.
What might this cause in you?
1.1. Evaluate the Diet
We cannot choose — but we can see.
We act based on the universe of preceding causes, inputs, and past experiences that have shaped our existence. We proceed, always, in the one way possible. This is even as we genuinely feel we are the ones making choices. This applies equally to the most consequential actions and to the slightest impulses to which we may succumb.
When we take this reality seriously, the extreme importance of inputs is revealed. These inputs create and play through our unique biology to form the realities of our lives. We gradually see that we are the sum of these inputs or, more dramatically, that we are these inputs.
The term 'diet' originates from the Greek word 'diata,' denoting a comprehensive perspective on everything we consume that shapes our lives. This expansive concept of 'diata' encompasses not only food but also music, stories, activities, ideas, and even people. From a Causalistic perspective, it follows that our life depends entirely on our diet. Our diet quality is our life quality. Our ‘diata’ is our life.
There is a powerful, simple, and crucial input that can create a healthy diet: the very awareness of the critical importance of inputs. This is reflexive and powerful. It almost doubles back on itself. The awareness of the truth within the three paragraphs above is itself an input. When taken seriously, this self-contained input causes re-evaluation, filtering, and behavior change.
As we know from experience, permanent behavior change is rarely experienced as a singular act of free will. Prolonged suffering or living with painful knowledge of problems and their solutions cultivates a deep awareness. This awareness, often operating subconsciously, becomes our guide. We are gently led toward good and away from bad.
Instead of the torture of believing behavior change is quick, or worse, accomplished through willpower of your own, perhaps evaluate your ‘diata’. You may find this awareness alone to be a subtle and potent practice. When we face up to the fact that we are our diet, care for that diet becomes more immediate, realistic, urgent, and natural.
Ongoing evaluation, when done honestly, is both challenging and profoundly powerful.
1.2. Follow the Chains Backwards
When observing any facet of your life, try to follow the causal chains backward.
This practice can dig into something as simple as the 'why' of what you had for dinner last night or your entire existence.
Let's examine the latter with an illustration.
Your parents both lived complex lives, interacting with and being attracted to many other humans along their way. Eventually, they met. In one very pivotal moment of their togetherness, your entire existence was conceived. (This is explored further in Section 2.5) But is this where it all started? What about all the innumerable links that brought your parents together? And what about their parents? What about the (at least) 8,000 couples of your ancestors that had to get lucky around 400 years ago, setting off the hundreds of lines of generational cascade culminating in your very existence now?
You reading this sentence is incomprehensibly improbable.
1.3. Bring It Down From the Clouds
There is nothing 'fantastical' or 'up in the sky' about Causalism. It is not weighed down by history and rituals. There is no suspension of reason. In fact, Causalism requires a serious and humble reasoning with its implications: 'What if existence, particularly my existence, really is causally determined? What if I have absolutely no free will?'
Instead of claiming, 'This is the nature of reality!' or 'This is what you must believe is happening up in the clouds!', we ask: if we believe Causalism to be true, then what?
It is a belief-based prompt, not a fact-based conclusion. A beginning, not an end.
(See more in Section 2.6)
1.4. Daily Memento
Consider doing or having something that keeps the two commitments centered in your mind.
1. Work to replace our default belief in free will with Causalism as the lens to view ourselves, others, and all of existence.
2. Commit solely to emotional and soulful harmonization with reality as it is – not material gain, escape, or status-seeking.
Some set a daily alarm, while others keep an object by their nightstand. Some journal at fixed intervals. The memento can be anything that reliably makes the two commitments present.
This is incredibly simple and incredibly hard.
1.5. Focused Reflection
It is often in the silence of contemplation that we can find the shortest distance between cause and effect within. In such a mode, one can contemplate the causes that brought them to that very state of focused reflection. Going inwards, we can get close to the roots.
Such reflection is not a time to 'ask' for anything or 'try' to change. Only to observe the causes that one's life is comprised of. In this deep inner mode, our selves and problems are put in the context of the larger life we inhabit. In this stillness, we subtly observe the reality of our lives as it is. This experience is fertile ground. Contemplation can indirectly sow the seeds of future actions.
Various wisdom traditions refer to this reflective state of contemplation as prayer.
1.6 Doing Good
Socrates claimed, in a variety of ways, that "to know the good is to do the good."
Awareness of how various inputs, or causes, create our life (as outlined in Section 1.1), one might seek out moral learning more frequently. This can be through conversations, reflections, readings, or lectures. Moral substance and beauty can be found in many of humanity's great wisdom traditions and philosophies. These are all more available than ever.
Steeping oneself in moral learning can change the world. To act with goodness, sustainably and authentically, is not an act of free will but an inevitable outcome of who one has become. We become the inputs we are surrounded by (Section 1.1). With this knowledge, one may be drawn to steep themselves in inputs. Ideally, inputs that help them to be the good they seek, and therefore to do it by default.
1.7 Listen to Language
When listening to language, one can hear how free will unthinkingly pervades daily life. Listen for the words 'decide,' 'choose,' and others that convey a belief in free will.
In language, we see clearly the default submission to the belief in free will. Further, we can see how quickly and unthinkingly this belief is held – and the problems it can cause for those who hold it. More often than not, the language of free will is used around self-justifying, troubling, or negative situations.
2.1. Compassion
When something or someone gets in our way, physically or emotionally, an automatic reaction is anger. This has its roots in evolution.
However, from a Causalistic viewpoint, you and everyone else are doing the exact and only actions possible given the entirety of circumstance. Sometimes the result is horrid, and sometimes profoundly beautiful, but everywhere and in every instance it is the only outcome of reality.
When the above belief becomes true for an individual, the world changes as compassion is cultivated for others and oneself.
(See Section 3.3)
2.2. You Did It
Though we renounce the illusion of free will, this does not include renouncing culpability for wrongdoings. For when a wrong is committed, it is still us who brought it to fruition, even though it is inevitable given all of history’s previous causes.
In this Causalistic framework, all of the consequential moral justifications for punishment still apply. Punishment is due to the instrument of the wrong and serves as an example (a deterring cause) dissuading others from similar activity.
2.3. Beliefs vs. Facts
There is a critical distinction between matters of belief and matters of fact. When matters of belief are confused for those of fact, great turmoil can occur. This is a tragic confusion as differences in belief are not only natural, but necessary for collective human flourishing. Without this capacity for difference life itself can be corrupted. Differences of belief, within reason, should be honored. Not tarnished and mistaken as fact. ‘Differences of fact’ is an oxymoron.
The 'debate' between Causalism and free will is often relegated to the dungeon of facts. Here, we elevate it to the realm of beliefs.
2.4. Eternal Chains
At any point in human history, no matter how far back, you have many, many ancestors who were living lives as emotionally rich and complex as your own. A small but crucial change in any of your ancestors' lives could have prevented your existence. Today, you affect eternity in more ways than you could possibly fathom.
We are vital threads within the grand, unbroken tapestry of life and humanity.
2.5. You Are Incomprehensible
Life is an incomprehensible gift.
'Incomprehensible' is not used here poetically. It is literal.
Here is an intimate story of the beginning of your own existence:
Out of about 300 million sperm that occur in an average ejaculation into a vagina, only about three million, around one percent, enter the uterus. After swimming upstream to the fallopian tubes, penetrating natural acids, and fighting through the cervix, they reach a "divergence in the wood" where only one of the two fallopian paths lead to an egg. Still yet! White blood cell cilia divert hundreds of thousands, allowing only about 500 sperm to reach the egg, which still is protected by an outer shell. Yet, your sperm cell made it through, fertilizing the egg first and starting your individual life.
At less than ten seconds old, you were already 1/300,000,000 — having survived a 99.99999997% chance of non-being.
Now think about the odds for the ten years prior that led to this critical point of your being. Before you were even born, your odds of existence were literally incomprehensible. To put this in less seminally microscopic terms, think of something you truly cherish: a friendship, an opportunity, a partner. The odds of you two finding each other in this time and this place are on another gigantic magnitude of probabilistic incomprehensibility.
There are countless paths of potentiality at any juncture, but out of the many, there only ever is one actuality, no matter how improbable. E pluribus unum. We live in the barely probable actuality which we casually call reality. We can either shrug this off or view it as an unfathomable marvel worthy of being honored.
These probabilities date back to our thousands of ancestors' long struggles and strife. Many of their paths may have been much more challenging than the cozy existence we enjoy today. Despite their hardship, they are irrevocably and fundamentally part of bringing you to today.
We didn't 'choose' our genes, the age in which we were born, our level of intellect, our appearances, our geography, or any of the other absolutely fundamental attributes that shape our existence.
When contemplating this incomprehensibility, we may begin to see that our life, with all its genuine difficulty, is an incomprehensible gift. What is the natural response to receiving a genuine gift? Within the Causalistic lens, opportunities to give thanks begin to emerge constantly.
Fortunately, we cannot comprehend, and often forget, the profundity of these improbabilities — otherwise, one may be permanently stuck in paralyzing awe.
If you feel gratitude for any gift or gifts, perhaps dwell on such feelings and express them. You may cause more goodness and gratitude in the world. At the very least, such contemplations are an endless source of mesmerization.
2.6. Causalism and Science
Benjamin Libet found in 1983 that when 'making a decision,' the brain's reasoning or decision-making area illuminates well before the awareness area illuminates. This indicates that our decisions are biologically made before we are conscious of them.
For those who will cite quantum theory's postulates about particle indeterminism as the basis for not being able to believe in the very human (non-particle) Causalism stated above, we would recommend lightening up and not jumping to find reasons for 'wrongness' as a method for avoiding improving one's soul.
While Causalism is adamantly not unscientific, all scientific considerations, including those listed above, fall far outside of relevance here. We are concerned with matters of belief (Section 2.3), not empirical facts.
Individuals, neighbors, friends, and humanity risk war when facts are mistakenly crossed with belief. Misunderstanding the crucial subtlety in this distinction has allowed contention between religion and science to persist.
2.7. No Pride, No Envy
Following the logical chains of causes (Outlined in Section 1.2), it no longer makes sense to be prideful of one's accomplishments. Anything one has done was all that was possible. Achievements are to be experienced, not mistakenly claimed as property of one’s own.
When we extend this logic outwards to others, it makes jealousy similarly nonsensical. All of us are locked into experiencing our own paths. We don’t cause the path and we don’t own the path. Causalism helps us remember this freeing truth.
The problems here surround esteem. Specifically, how illusions created externally can create and destroy it. Focused reflection (Section 1.5.) turns esteem and its sources inwards and upwards.
Here we see all forms of envious comparison revealed in their true form: illogical murderers of happiness and wellbeing.
2.8. No-Separate-Self
All existence is completely and literally interconnected. This is a natural and straightforward conclusion of Causalism. There is no separate self -- just one sphere of interplay.
This logic becomes illuminated as it moves from intellectual to emotional realm. It is one thing to think of your connectedness to all of humanity and the universe – and another to feel it.
Some practices call this being struck by awe or bliss or living in the body of Christ or Nirvana.
2.9. Reconsidering Reality
The mind-body problem has kept philosophers arguing for centuries.
The problem arises when we distinguish a body that is purely physical and a mind that is purely spiritual. How do the two connect and what implications does an understanding of the situation have for us? While seemingly abstract at first glance, the implications are tremendous and present in our daily lives, shared humanity, and our views of ourselves and reality.
Due to our immediate and rich processing of sensory inputs (sight, sound, touch, etc.) it is easy to grasp and think in the context of a physical universe. This is the body part of the mind-body problem. It is much harder to make sense of the spiritual part of our nature, for it is less definitive and invisible. This is the mind part of the mind body problem.
The mind-body distinction is directly connected to whether the universe is to be thought of as primarily material in nature (body) or spiritual in nature (mind). When it comes to the origins of the universe, materialists (body) cite the big bang and the spiritualists (mind) claim creation by an intelligent deity.
This division has held humanity in its grasps for centuries.
Let us now zoom out to consider a reframing of this problem. Causalism, which is an exercise in abandoning one’s belief in free will, is a lens or mode with which we can view the world. This lens and mode is the exact opposite to free will that the vast majority use by default. Free will and Causalism are intellectually irreconcilable beliefs. They are exactly opposite. Any reconciliation between them creates immediate contradiction. However, we can reasonably understand the differences between how reality shifts when we use one lens or the other.
Might we do the same with the mind body problem? Instead of viewing each side of the debate as stone cold fact, treat them as alternative beliefs through which we view all of reality? Perhaps we can use both the mind and body lenses.
For example, we can accept that causes have physical and spiritual components. For example, telling someone you love them has great spiritual implications, but it also requires the firing of many synapses in your brain, contraction of vocal chords, and airwaves to carry the vibrations to your lover’s ear. Other less spiritual events, like a tree falling in a remote unexplored forest may have many physical causes (loose roots from rain and heavy winds) but not as many immediate spiritual implications - at least not for humans. However, there still is the fact that the causes that led to this event actually happened. The metaphysical existence of the causes alone can be abstracted from any of the literal or physical details of the cause itself. Even the most material of causes still have the solely spiritual attribute that they exist.
In this view we can see how any cause can have both physical (body) and spiritual (mind) properties. In this abstracted view of a cause, it now also exists not only in time and space but also outside of them. The cause can be treated as something that belongs outside of its material manifestations in reality. Beyond its physics, its existence alone allows it to be a real and specific spiritual thing.
By making room for the spiritual reality of causes, completely outside of their physical attributes, we open up a new plane of reality. The plane of non-material things having a legitimate spiritual existence. This plane seems to be where the most important and intimate elements of humanity exist. When we love another, express our feelings, or notice a familiar idiosyncrasy of a close friend, these matters have little to no weight in the physical world. Of course they have physical roots, origins, and attributes – but the parts of them that matter most belong within the spiritual dimension, the world of the mind.
By expanding our view of causes beyond just physical properties but vitally important spiritual realities - we start to see the fertile fields from which emotional meaning grows. We may realize the distinctions between mind and body are nuanced and only with both does harmonization become a reality.
2.10. Sum of All Causes
Every event in the known universe has a cause.
For example, a tree falls and kills a girl's cat, which makes her cry:
The wind (the first environmental but invisible cause) blew the tree over. The force of the tree falling (physical and visible cause) killed the cat. The cat being dead (resultant cause) and the girl seeing the dead cat (observational cause) call up emotions (psychological cause) that lead her to cry (behavioral cause). This is a crude example, but the same can go for microbial functions in one's liver or how two people fall in love.
These causes are different and can be viewed as pure phenomena. We do not have to know any details or interior aspects of how they work or where they are. We only need the basic idea that they are occurring and are linked together inextricably.
This creates a metaphysical dimension around the known universe of 'causes.' An invisible, abstracted layer, outside of our comprehension of time and space, dictating all that occurs.
2.11. Freedom
Once one becomes accustomed to living in the mode of Causalism, the choppy surface waters of life can calm. We begin seeing others and difficult situations 'from above' -- with more understanding and nuance. Anger does not come as quickly or in the same way. In some instances, frustration seems not only unproductive but also illogical.
Renewing the confines of the two commitments can be an endless exhilaration that yields unparalleled freedom.
3.1. Causalism is a Tool
Causalism does not claim to be, or have, the truth.
Causalism claims to be a tool.
That notwithstanding, one is encouraged not to dwell too long on words, definitions, and dualistic classifications. Whenever one finds themselves in the swirling loops of classifying the unclassifiable, one might use this as a sign to return to Causalism’s two commitments where the simple and sturdy instruction can re-center one in relation to their task.
3.2. We are Seekers, not Stayers
We seek the improvement of our souls, not merely contentment.
In this seeking we may find it vital to remain open and resist the decay of stagnancy. At best, openness permits us to learn and adapt to all existence has to offer.
Further, though tempting, we must not sit idle in the endlessly beautiful fields of Causalistic contemplation. For Causalism is only a tool, or an educational palace of soulful transformation.
If inner harmonization was all we sought, we might be accused of selfishness. Internal peace is good, but our goal is to reconcile with reality. While this begins within, it manifests throughout.
Harmonization is a full life experience.
3.3. Easy Not to Do; Difficult to Do
Living within the two commitments of Causalism is challenging not only because 'not doing' is often the easier route. It is that Causalism goes against two of the major default modes of human nature: stagnancy and free will.
Stagnancy’s danger is self-evident. It is why many traditions consider sloth to be a deadly sin. Other traditions state their singular entry requirement as embracing the difficulty of perpetual inner change.
The second default mode, free will, is more complicated.
The best argument for free will humanity has today is as follows:
“It feels like I have it.”
The feeling is powerful and has become a bedrock of society. It is the default human view. The feeling alone causes belief in it. If this is the historical mode of your entire life, it will be understandably difficult to fight against for the sake of the exact opposite.
To this end, living within Causalism requires a constant state of reflection and reevaluation. This is hard but rewarding work.
For example, perhaps you forgot something you intended to bring with you on your way. At first, you may be frustrated with yourself for the ‘error.’ Upon reevaluation, you realize there was no way the universe could have otherwise unrolled than for you to have accidentally left that item behind. This does not mean it didn't happen – it did! But, the emotional implications of the situation are profoundly shifted. You are fully experiencing the difficult emotions as you really were the one to cause the misfortune — but, there was none of your ‘choice’ involved, no matter how much it feels as such.
The need to constantly put a check on your default mode (free will) inherently leads to a practice of contemplation and reflection.
Living in a mode of heightened, introspective awareness allows one to fight against the sometimes dangerous impulses of feeling.
This state of contemplative being is similar to what many of the great traditions of humanity prescribe.
3.4. The Fallacy of Losing Motivation
Often, those who initially hold tight to the proposition of free will imagine that to practice Causalism would lead to complete apathy; laying around all day in paralysis, completely unmotivated. This is entirely misguided. Motivation and free will only appear to be linked in this manner at first look. Under further investigation, they are not connected at all.
Do humans do what they do simply because they feel that they can? Because they have the free will to do so? This does not seem to be the case, or even a logical candidate to explain the actual impetus behind what humans do. Individuals do what they do because of who they are, their desires, their past causes, and their abilities — not crudely due to the happenstance that they believe they have the free will to do so and figure ‘why not?'
The idea of free will alone is almost never the starting reason for why people take action. Instead, free will is merely the lens with which they view and make sense of their lives which has nothing to do with their motivation or who they are.
3.5. The Freedom of Non-Utility
If we have the freedom to speak, then we must also have the freedom not to speak.
Anything that is truly 'free', should have the attribute of optional utility allowing it to be or turned off or put aside. Otherwise, it is not truly free.
If free will is so free, ask someone who believes free will is the driving force of their life to completely stop using it. Envision what their life would be like if they completely ‘turned their free will off’... tLife would be functionally impossible if free will was responsible for all that those subscribing to free will attribute to it.
And even if one was to 'try' this experiment (as they were causally determined to do, due to their strong headed nature) they would likely grow tired of the useless attempt and soon return to their previous mode of life along their own causal chain. Not due to their free will, but because this is what that individual would have done regardless of what beliefs they use to make sense of those actions.
Most of what we do is unconscious action, and some of it rises to the level where uncertainty has us ascribe the belief in free will as a pacifier for difficult situations.
3.6. Limits of Causalism
Causalism is not a religion. It is a tool (Section 3.1.)
It is important to acknowledge the inherent lack of a moral code in Casualism. This puts limits on it as a practice. Causalism allows us to be aware of our diets (Section 1.1) that are made up of inputs from other belief systems and traditions from which we can derive a basis of goodness (Section 1.6.)
Causalism serves only to open one to a new way of experiencing life. Like a summer fling flush with enough love and learnings to last a lifetime.