Choice: Why did I write about this?

"There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask "why me?" and "what if?". When you look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions."-Max Payne (Sam Lake, writer).

As psychologists--clinical psychologists in particular--we hold to one premise: people can change; behaviors, thoughts, feelings--all of it--can be altered, if only a little, to better help the client. To be honest, I've never fully believed that people could change, or rather, I believe that the statement "people can change" isn't enough: people can change, yes, but it is very, very, VERY difficult. It takes a lot. Many individuals are rewriting years and years and years of patterns and behaviors when they enter therapy. This isn't easy. Here is an interesting side note: Don't quote me on this (and if someone is reading this that does know the specifics please correct me), but if I remember correctly, research has demonstrated that nearly 50% of a client's improvement can be attributed to other things besides therapy and the therapeutic relationship/modality; this includes changes in lifestyle, a new job, new girlfriend/boyfriend, etc.

Anyways, I thought about that and then this quote came to mind (the one above). Don't laugh. Yes, Max Payne is a video game, but the writer is prolific. The movie sucked, I know. Mark Wahlberg can act, but he couldn't get into the character, couldn't pull off the gritty, noir, silent fury of a man that Max Payne is--and the story for the movie was crap. I'm digressing again. Here's the point: Max Payne is about a man who comes home one day to find his wife and baby girl murdered. You play as him while shooting down bad guys and doing all sorts of crazy action sequences, but the most memorable parts come in between those scenes. The story comes in the form of a comic strip, where Max narrates to the player about what he's thinking/feeling and the reader is shown, well, comic strips of his life. This quote comes in the second game at a point in which Max comes to this realization that this is how it was always going to turn out, this is how his story would end. In a sense, "we are who we are" comes to mind. Once he was set down the path of vengeance (cheesy metaphor)--that is, the murdering of his wife and daughter--there was nothing to stop this particular outcome.

It's an interesting notion, the idea of fate I mean. If I were to do an armchair analysis of Max, it would go something like this: Max believed in joy, free will, in things that were just, but that changed (irony, I know). There are no coincidences in his world; there is no such thing as cruel chaos. The murder of his wife and his child were necessary, and the choices to follow made by Max were really not choices at all. This was who he was, what he had to do. But I am missing part of the point he tried to make with that quote aren't I? People believe in the illusion of free will, of choice, but Max has a point when he says "if you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions."Our choices make us who we are, or does who we are determine our choices? I don't know. It's not a question that is truly answerable. But it is something Max isn't afraid to face head on. In his life, he knew that his story was always going to end the way it did.

But that's his story--not yours or anyone else's. What do I believe? I don't know. I believe we always have a choice, that we are acting agents in our lives, that we can change; for some those choices make a hell of a difference where someone ends up, but for others... not so much. We are who we are. Personally, I think the capacity for truly choosing, for having free will, diminishes as we grow older. When we are young, life is fresh and the possibilities are endless, but from the womb we are influenced by our mothers, our fathers, friends, and teachers--combined with these social influences is genetics and some would call the totality of the concept "personality" (see turning it back to psychology now). 

But at what point does our plasticity or capacity to change become too narrow? And when faced with a choice, at what point can we be 99% sure this person or that person will choose this way or that way? Research has supported that the ability to change diminishes as one grows older. Isn't that in short free will? Maybe free will isn't an illusion but rather is something we can only acknowledge after we've lost it. Max Payne is a perfect example.

I'll leave you with a quote by Sam Lake again. One of my favorites. It's when Max has to trudge through a fun house to get to someone for information, all the while he's thinking about where his life has taken him, and if he can escape the horrible tragedies that lie ahead--in truth, can he escape himself?

"A funhouse is a linear sequence of scares. Take it or leave it is the only choice given. Makes you think about free will. Had our choices been made for us because of who we are?"

Enjoy the rest of the week,

--Matt