The Lottery of Birth: “Creating Freedom” by Raoul Martinez (Book Summary)

This is a book summary of Creating Freedom: The Lottery of Birth, the Illusion of Consent, and the Fight for Our Future by Raoul Martinez (Amazon).

So far, I’ve only read and summarized part one of this book because I was interested in the lottery of birth. The remainder of the book (part 2 & 3) assumes you’re on board with part one, so see if this summary piques your interest.

🔒 Premium members also have access to the companion posts:

· Lottery of Birth Synthesis: How to See Yourself and the World Drastically Differently (+ Infographic)

· Behind the Scenes: Dissecting my own Lottery of Birth Ticket

Quick Housekeeping:

• All content in quotation marks is from the author unless otherwise stated.
• All content is organized into my own themes (not the author’s chapters).
• Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.

Book Summary Contents: Click a link here to jump to a section below

• The Lottery of Birth
• Identity & Conditioning
• Agency & Will
• Choice & Responsibility
• Blame & Punishment
• Luck & Credit
• Moving Forward

The Lottery of Birth: Creating Freedom by Raoul Martinez (Book Summary)

The Lottery of Birth

“We do not choose to exist. We do not choose the environment we will grow up in. We do not choose to be born Hindu, Christian or Muslim, into a war-zone or peaceful middle-class suburb, into starvation or luxury. We do not choose our parents, nor whether they’ll be happy or miserable, knowledgeable or ignorant, healthy or sickly, attentive or neglectful. The knowledge we possess, the beliefs we hold, the tastes we develop, the traditions we adopt, the opportunities we enjoy, the work we do – the very lives we lead – depend entirely on our biological inheritance and the environment to which we are exposed. This is the lottery of birth.“

Existence:

• “Thinking about the lottery of birth draws our attention to a simple fact: we do not create ourselves. The very idea entails a logical contradiction. To create something, you have to exist, so to create yourself you’d have to have existed before you had been created. Whether we’re talking about flesh and blood people or immaterial souls, there is no way around this simple fact.”
• “Either the immaterial soul that survives death has always existed or it has not. If not, it has a beginning, so we have merely pushed the problem of self-creation back to this point. If it has always existed, then, by definition, it could not have created itself (that would imply a beginning!). In each case, the idea of self-creation is incoherent.”
• “Whether we believe that people are born ‘blank slates’ and shaped almost completely by their environment, or in genetic determinism, which emphasises the influence of genes, or in some combination of the two (the only plausible position), the result is the same: we are the product of forces beyond our control. We do not create ourselves.”

Genes & Environment:

• “The implications of neuroscience are clear: biology cannot be separated from behaviour, and we do not choose our biology.”
• “No one creates their own brain. No one even really understands the workings of their brain, let alone anyone else’s. Just as computers do not programme themselves, we do not ‘wire’ the grey matter inside our skulls. This feat is accomplished through endless interactions between our genes and environment, neither of which we control. The upshot is that I did not choose to be me and you did not choose to be you, yet who we are determines the choices we make in any given situation.”
• “At any moment the state of our brain is a reflection of countless forces – genetic and environmental – over which we have little or no awareness.”
• “We no more control our upbringing than we do cell growth in the brain, and formative experiences have a profound impact on the way we develop.”
• “A life-journey depends on a wide range of unpredictable factors. Variations in genes and experience do not need to be large to have an impact on the paths we take. Small variations can have significant repercussions, setting in motion events that result in completely different outcomes. In chaos theory, this is known as the ‘butterfly effect’.”

Society & Culture:

• “We meet the world primed to adopt the way of life we encounter. The society that greets us takes our potential and shapes it.”
• “Cultural transmission is a powerful process, one that has produced both beautiful and ugly outcomes. A glance at history reveals that there is neither a belief too bizarre nor an action too appalling for humans to embrace, given the necessary cultural influences. As much as we condemn the injustices and prejudices of past societies, there is no reason to assume that, under those circumstances, we wouldn’t have embraced the same values and defended the same traditions.”
• “Our entry into this world may be arbitrary, but the world that greets us is not. Numerous forces vie for our attention and loyalty. Our minds are a battleground for competing ideas. The outcome of this battle determines who we become and the society we create. But the forces that win out are not necessarily the ones that serve us best. Over the course of human history, countless people have been conditioned to defend oppressive ideologies, support destructive regimes and believe downright lies.”

Identity & Conditioning

“Across millennia of human history there has been a spectacular multiplicity of cultures, each with the power to mould us in radically different ways. Early interactions, the treatment we receive and the behaviour we observe, begin the process of constructing an identity. Gradually, imperceptibly, we are inducted into a community.”

Socialization:

• “The particulars of our birth largely determine who we become and the representations of reality we construct in our minds. Our environment channels our vast potential into a particular identity. How we end up speaking, thinking, feeling and acting owes much to the examples, opportunities and ideas to which we are exposed. From childhood until the day we die we are subject to a steady stream of influences – familial, corporate, state, school, religious, cultural – working to shape our habits, beliefs, assumptions, ideals and aims: our picture of reality. The goals that appear valuable to us, and the best route to achieving them, emerge from the confluence of these and other forces.”
• “Given the circumstances we find ourselves in, we make the choices we do because of who we are. But who we are has already been shaped by our circumstances. From infancy, the conditions created by our natural, built and social environments send us down a particular path of development, one of many permitted by our genetic inheritance. We adopt a way of life through a process of socialisation. This shaping of our identity is unavoidable – every community socialises its young according to dominant ideas about what is valuable or necessary – but socialisation can take many forms. It can enlighten or suppress, empower or tame, control or liberate.”
• “In all modern states, a massive infrastructure exists to shape people’s identities. From the blackboard to the billboard, the supermarket aisle to the evening news, we are confronted by constant attempts to influence our emotions and priorities. To the extent that this infrastructure defines our thinking, sets the terms of debate and influences our ideas, it exerts a tight grip on our thoughts and actions. It is safe to assume that some of our beliefs, loyalties, biases, habits and values exist simply because they serve the interests of those who have the power to shape them. This has always been how power defends itself. But there are countervailing forces: innate instincts and prior conditioning place limits on how much we can be moulded.”
• “Social conditioning provides us with a common set of assumptions that colour the way new information is interpreted. From one perspective, a war can look like an act of justice and liberation; from another, an act of theft and murder.”
• “Success, responsibility, ownership, work, normality, equality, freedom – the way we think about such foundational concepts frames reality and guides our choices. Moral concepts exert a particularly powerful force. When deeply internalised, the paths permitted by our moral codes need no armed guards to patrol their boundaries.”
• “The shaping of a person’s identity – their beliefs, values, fears and desires – can be an extremely effective form of control. Coercion based on force alone requires extensive resources. On a large scale and for extended periods of time, it is almost impossible to sustain. It will always provoke resentment and risk rebellion. However, through the shaping of identities, people can be channelled down paths without ever coming into contact with the forces guarding their boundaries. They may even cease to notice these boundaries, and forget the reality of batons and guns, censure and violence awaiting those who veer too close to their edge. As philosopher and revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg is often credited with saying: ‘Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.’”

Imagine this Thought Experiment:

• “As we contemplate what we are and the forces that have shaped us, we do just that: we view our beliefs and values, loyalties and prejudices, assumptions and affiliations, not as free choices, but as outcomes of a complex process whose roots predate our existence. Taking this perspective, adopting this ‘objective attitude’ – which is really just an exercise of the imagination, like putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – exposes the arbitrary nature of many aspects of our identity. It provides a rationale for questioning the inevitably flawed maps of reality we hold in our heads, and weakens our ties to the labels, traditions, habits and beliefs that commonly define who we are, at least enough to question, evaluate and reflect on them.”
• “The attempt to view our identity and world from new and challenging perspectives is part of a process that has the power – over time – to profoundly change the self being viewed. It provides a potent antidote to the worst excesses of arbitrary identification; to the sorts of narrow, entrenched, dogmatic worldviews that drive us to kill and die for flags, symbols, gods and governments whose connection to us is no more than accidental.”
• “Standing between reality and our understanding of the world is the arbitrary process by which our identity is formed. If we are not to be misled by the mental constructs we inherit, we have to question them.”

Questioning Identity & Rebelling Conditioning:

• “Humans cannot plant themselves in the brain of another being in order to take control – but they can plant ideas and desires, cultivate habits and values, and instil fears and insecurities, loyalties and beliefs. They can plant them young and from the exalted position of religious, cultural or familial authorities. By the time we have the conceptual tools necessary to question them, the world is already perceived, categorised and interpreted from within the framework of our particular identity.”
• “By the time we have developed the intelligence necessary to contemplate our own identity, we are already very much in possession of one. How we think about ourselves and the world around us will already be framed by the conditioning we have received up to that point. This conditioning informs any choices we make, even the choice to rebel against aspects of that conditioning. It is still possible for new influences, encountered by chance, to have a deep impact on what we think and do, but we’re not responsible for what we encounter by chance – and the influences that we consciously seek out are sought because of who we already are.”
• “Both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of one’s success in the attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and experience.” — Galen Strawson, Philosopher

Agency & Will

“The roots of behaviour go far beyond the will of the individual to encompass the economic, political, familial and cultural conditions from which it emerges.”

Agency:

• “A hundred years from now, with better scientific instruments and a better understanding of the brain, we may be able to detect subtle changes in the brain’s neurochemistry that give rise to all kinds of behaviour which today we attribute to the ‘free agency’ of the individual.”
• “By casting off the defunct ideology of credit and blame, we can get to work on understanding the deeper roots of behaviour: familial, genetic, economic and political. This is a necessary antidote to the lazy belief that the buck of responsibility stops with the mystical ‘free agency’ of the individual.”

Will:

• “There are reasons why people behave the way they do, reasons that take us far beyond the will of the individual.”
• “If we want to define ‘free will’ as ‘the capacity, given the options available to us, to act in accordance with the beliefs and values we happen to hold’ then free will is possessed by almost everyone, almost all of the time. Yet, however we define free will, the facts about responsibility remain unchanged.”
• “The experience of an illusion may persist but our beliefs about it can change and our response to it can be modified accordingly. As Bertrand Russell put it, ‘A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgement based upon it.’ This holds for the cognitive illusion of ultimate responsibility. The perennial debate over the existence or non-existence of ‘freedom of the will’ is fuelled by the cognitive illusion that we make free choices. The fact that the notion of a truly free choice has never been coherently formulated has had little impact on the vigour of this debate. Although we may never be able to break the illusion completely, we can prime ourselves to respond differently by developing our understanding of freedom and responsibility.”

“You” & “Others”:

• “We do not have to wait for advances in science to understand that if someone behaves differently from us in a given situation, it is because they are different from us.”
• “If we had exactly the same brain state and encountered the same situation then, all else being equal, we would behave in exactly the same way.”

But, what about…:

• “Some people defy every expectation, achieving remarkable things in the face of adversity. It is tempting to view such lives as evidence that we can, after all, be the masters of our own destiny, but to do so would be a mistake. Forces beyond our control determine the resources – psychological, physical and material – at our disposal to carve out a new path, and these resources, along with countless other twists of fate, ultimately determine how successful we will be in our attempt. For every unlikely success story there are countless people of equal potential who died in poverty and obscurity due to the crushing force of circumstance. Just because the odd person wins the lottery does not mean the game isn’t rigged for everyone else to lose.”

Choice & Responsibility

“Think of a new-born baby endowed with a genetic inheritance it did not ask for and exposed to a world it played no part in creating. At what point does it become a truly responsible being, worthy of credit and blame?”

Choice:

• “The act of making a choice does little to confer responsibility. The reason for this is simple: we make choices with a brain we didn’t choose.”
• “Perhaps we should see such behaviour not as a product of individual choice or responsibility, but as a product of the person’s neurology.” — Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and a leading researcher in empathetic development
• “When you take into account the influence of genetics; environmental toxins; the treatment we receive from parents, teachers, friends and foes; the role models we have access to; the life options available – among many other salient factors – it’s clear that the machinery with which we make our decisions has been constructed by a process far beyond our control.”

The Myth of Ultimate Responsibility:

• “A choice is either part of an unbroken chain of cause and effect or it is the product of chance. Neither option leaves any room for ultimate responsibility.”
• “The idea of ultimate responsibility is buried deep in the foundations of our religious traditions, political ideologies and legal systems – implicitly assumed but rarely stated.”
• “The more responsibility that is laid at the feet of individuals, the easier it is to justify the many inequalities in our world. If addicts, sinners, refugees, prisoners, the homeless, the obese, the unemployed and the poor can be blamed for their condition, there is little obligation to help them. If we believe that each person bears ultimate responsibility for their lot in life, it is far easier to justify discrepancies in power, wealth and opportunity. If the rich deserve their privilege and the poor their destitution, perhaps things are as they should be.”
• “The nature/nurture debate also has no bearing on the question of ultimate responsibility. What counts is the fact that we are created and shaped by forces for which we are not responsible, not the combination or origin of these forces. We know that our species has been shaped, moulded and modified, and our genes divided, combined and recombined, to meet the survival challenges faced by our ancestors. Who we can become has been determined by this evolutionary process. Who we actually become is determined by the interaction with the environment we encounter thereafter.”
• “We are not, and can never be, free from the forces that shape us. The kind of responsibility that would make us deserving of punishment or reward, credit or blame, is an illusion, a sacred myth passed on from one generation to the next with no rational basis.”
• “Our talents, attitudes, inclinations and opportunities are the products of forces we do not control. Debate still rages over the relative importance of biological and environmental factors but the responsibility myth has been debunked and, with it, the grounds for credit and blame.”
• “To expose the myth of responsibility is not to deny the existence of inspiring and admirable human attributes; it is simply to view them as gifts of nature in the same way that we view the splendour of a sunset. Such beauty is meaningful and uplifting in itself.”
• “Once we discard the myth of responsibility, the framework of desert that leads us to punish and reward also falls away.”

More on Responsibility:

• “The implications are far-reaching: if we don’t create ourselves, how can we be responsible for the way we are? And if we aren’t responsible for the way we are, how can we be responsible for what we do? The answer is: we cannot.”
• “What we do in a given situation is determined by the way we are – and for that we are not responsible.”
• “Intentions reveal character; accidents reveal incompetence. However, since we do not create ourselves, we are not responsible for either character or competence.”
• “Confusion about responsibility arises because the act of making a choice blinds us to the causal relationship that links a choice to a brain, and a brain to the array of forces that shaped it.”
• “Scientific advances will help us to view a person’s choices in a far wider context, one that includes the forces that created the brain making the choices we observe. The notion of ‘individual responsibility’ is just a fig leaf that covers the current gaps in our knowledge.”
• “To be morally accountable, it is not enough to establish someone’s intent, it must be shown that they are ultimately responsible for that intent, and that, as we have seen, is impossible. A psychopath may make many morally horrendous choices, but they will not include choosing the brain of a psychopath.”
• “If we are not responsible for our achievements and failings, we are all on an equal footing: ultimately, no one deserves more joy, happiness or freedom than anyone else.”
• “To deny that we are truly responsible is not to deny the possibility of principled and ethical behaviour. We do not need to hold a person responsible for some admirable trait to value what they are. We treasure the vivid colour, elegant shape and aesthetic beauty of the rose without imputing any responsibility to it. The same is true for all of nature in its complexity and magnificence – including human beings.”
• “Rationality and other forms of competence certainly increase our ability to achieve goals and understand the consequences of our actions, but they do not make us responsible for the goals we choose to pursue – that depends on the way we are, and for that we are not responsible.”

Blame & Punishment

“The belief that people are blameworthy finds no support in science or logic and ignores the most basic truths about human beings. It is an anachronism held in place by instinct, tradition and fear.”

Blame & Punishment:

• “Our assessment of blameworthiness is constrained by our current level of scientific understanding.”
• “No one is truly blameworthy, rejecting retribution as a legitimate justification for punishment and focusing on improving the future rather than exacting revenge for the past.”
• “The idea that people who do bad things deserve to suffer is deeply embedded in our culture.”
• “The belief in a divine system of retribution and punishment, that unrepentant sinners deserve to suffer for eternity in hell, remains a core tenet for much of humanity.”
• “Echoing religious doctrine, philosophers, judges and political leaders have for millennia claimed that the primary purpose of punishment is retribution, in which the suffering of the perpetrator is an end in itself.”
• “The sense that we have the right to inflict suffering on a perceived wrongdoer has justified some of the most inhumane practices in history, from stoning and impaling to burning at the stake, disembowelling and decapitation. It has also shaped our criminal justice system, moulding it to conform to stubborn intuitions about just deserts, retribution, blame and responsibility.”

Inequality & Crime:

• “The most established environmental determinant of violence in a society is income inequality. Less equal societies are more violent.”
• “The most horrific individual acts of violence are almost always symptoms of extreme forms of abuse and neglect.”
• “Having spent over thirty years at the UK criminal bar, and ‘rather a lot of time in prisons’, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC speaks from experience when she writes: ‘For most people, prison is the end of a road paved with deprivation, disadvantage, abuse, discrimination and multiple social problems. Empty lives produce crime…The same issues arise repeatedly: appalling family circumstances, histories of neglect, abuse and sexual exploitation, poor health, mental disorders, lack of support, inadequate housing or homelessness, poverty and debt, and little expectation of change…It is my idea of hell.'”
• “What right do we have to condemn crime if we do not also condemn the conditions that breed it?”
• “In our society, children subjected to the harshest, most impoverished environments are increasingly being criminalised. Kennedy remarks that ‘Ninety per cent of young people in prison have mental health or substance abuse problems. Nearly a quarter have literacy and numeracy skills below those of an average seven-year-old and a significant number have suffered physical and sexual abuse.’”
• “The data show that higher rates of material inequality, within and between nations, strongly correlate with larger prison populations. The more unequal a society is, the higher the percentage of people in jail. And people lower down the social hierarchy, with less income and less education, are far more likely to end up in prison.”
• “The sea of inequality on which the legal system floats makes a mockery of the principle of equal rights before the law. The notion that the law treats all people the same, regardless of race, gender, status or creed, is a much celebrated ideal but, in a society in which the distribution of wealth, power and opportunity are so profoundly unequal, equality before the law is itself unjust. The assumption made by many legal theorists that, with few exceptions, ‘the same rules may be applied to all’ is a fantasy that becomes less justifiable the more unequal society becomes.”
• “Focusing on rehabilitation and root causes makes sense once we stop thinking of crime as a product of an individual’s free agency and view it, instead, as a doctor might view the symptoms of a disease. Although potentially dangerous, violent prisoners are not ultimately responsible for the threat they pose – anyone exposed to the conditions that breed violent crime could exhibit similar ‘symptoms’. Removing those ‘infected’ from society, as we would a person with a deadly virus, may be necessary – at least temporarily – but punishing them does nothing to prevent further ‘outbreaks’. Instead, it draws resources and attention away from discovering the deeper causes of the outbreak. A more humane and rational approach to crime would focus on eradicating the conditions that produced it, and instead cultivate the empathy, self-control and self-worth that is so bound up with ethical behaviour. To pretend, as legal systems do, that the buck stops with the individual prevents us from tackling the cultural, economic and political causes of violence and criminality.”

Luck & Credit

“Different brains have different capacities, and no one chooses their own brain. Whether we are the star pupil or a dropout, disciplined or distracted, motivated or lazy, is ultimately a matter of luck.”

Luck:

• “Warren Buffett recognises more clearly than most the decisive role of luck: ‘Most of the world’s seven billion people found their destinies largely determined at the moment of birth…For literally billions of people, where they are born and who gives them birth, along with their gender and native intellect, largely determine the life they will experience.’”
• “The abilities and capacities we possess can also be chalked up to good fortune. Whether we have the brain of an Isaac Newton or the speed of a Usain Bolt is really a matter of chance. What’s more, the psychological tools to make the most of our opportunities and talents are themselves down to luck.”
• “Ultimately, all that separates the criminal and non-criminal is luck.”
• “What’s more, what we can contribute is also a matter of chance. The opportunity to cultivate our innate potential depends on conditions we play no part in creating.”
• “We neither choose our innate capacities nor the freedom we’re given to develop them; moreover, once these capacities are developed, we do not determine the value the market will assign to them. It all comes down to luck.”
• “Our capacity to be self-disciplined, to persevere, to focus, is just as much a part of our genetic and environmental inheritance as any other capacity. The treatment we receive as children – and whether we are prone to hyper-activity, have trouble maintaining our attention, lack confidence or self-esteem, suffer from severe headaches or depression, and so on – can all impact on our capacity to channel our energies in productive ways. Both the inclination and capacity to work hard reflect the way we are and, for that, we are not responsible. Even remuneration based on socially useful effort, then, fails the test of fairness.”
• “Luck has been the decisive force in the life of every person who has ever lived. And, be it good or bad, nothing we do makes us more or less deserving of the luck we receive. If ultimate responsibility is an incoherent concept, the notion of desert – that we can be truly deserving of reward or punishment – also loses meaning. If we are not truly responsible for what we do, then what we do cannot make us more or less deserving of pain or pleasure, suffering or joy.”
• “Whether we inherit a lot of money or property, are free from oppression and prejudice, are well educated, bright, strong, healthy, resourceful or beautiful, is ultimately down to luck.”

Credit & Reward:

• “The problem lies with the notion of reward itself. A reward is given in return for something. But no concept of reward sits comfortably with our lack of ultimate responsibility. Since we are not truly responsible for what we do, it does not make sense to distribute ‘rewards’ on the basis of behaviour. It does not make sense to apportion rewards at all. The intuitively compelling notion of ‘getting what you give’ ignores the fact that what we can give depends on what we get from our genetic and social inheritance. Whichever way we look at it, all paths to wealth, status and success are paved with luck. This fact supercharges calls for increased equality across society.”
• “Why should the lottery of birth have such an impact on what people own and the opportunities they enjoy? Being born to wealthy parents is a matter of blind luck. The typical argument made is that those with wealth have the right to do with it as they please, including passing it on to their children. Even if we accept this as a legitimate right, it is certainly not the only legitimate right. It ought to be balanced against other rights – most pressingly, the right of all children to enter a world of equal economic opportunity, or, at the very least, one in which they have access to clean water, food, shelter, medicine, education and dignified employment. When the two rights conflict, why should the wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many? To the younger generation, equal economic opportunities can mean the difference between health and illness, education and illiteracy, happiness and depression, even life and death. By contrast, reducing great concentrations of economic power by regulating inheritance need not threaten anyone’s health, literacy, happiness or existence.”
• “Even the ‘self-made’ rich owe a debt greater than their fortune to those who developed the technologies, institutions, laws and infrastructure that made their enrichment possible.”
• “Because high-earning jobs are in limited supply, gifted students from less advantaged backgrounds face an uphill struggle to turn their potential into market rewards.”
• “Some progressive economists have suggested that people should be rewarded in accordance with their socially useful efforts. However, the ability to make socially useful efforts is, nevertheless, an ability. It may be more evenly distributed throughout the population than other abilities, but, no matter how hard they try, the very old, the very young, the severely disabled and the sick are often unable to contribute in ways the market recognises or remunerates.”
• “Rewarding people according to the market value of what they contribute is not fair because the value of our contribution is ultimately determined by forces for which we are not responsible.”
• “The hoarding of vast resources – resources that could save countless people and enrich numerous lives – has been normalised and celebrated in our society, but there is no moral justification for it. No path to extreme wealth entitles us to hold on to it – not in a world in which so many fundamental needs go unmet. The idea that we could ever be entitled to vast wealth – that a disproportionate amount of Earth’s riches could ever really belong to us – is a dangerous fiction, one that has been cultivated to mask naked greed.”

Moving Forward

“We need a movement born of a shift in consciousness, one that will challenge the assumptions upon which our society is founded.”

Questioning:

• “There is another benefit to exposing the myth of responsibility: doing so highlights the fundamental importance of questioning. If we are not responsible for the way we are, if we are not the authors of our own identity, then who or what is? Awareness of just how susceptible we are to forces beyond our control gives us a compelling reason to investigate those forces and, if necessary, transcend their influence. This is important. If democracy is to have any meaning, and the dangers of centralised control are to be averted, it is essential to have a questioning citizenry.”

Equality:

• “Given the huge variation in genetic potential, life experience and social opportunity that we see in the world, to presume that, with few exceptions, ‘the same rules may be applied to all’ is plainly a recipe for injustice, not a solution to it.”
• “We differ from each other in countless ways – height, weight, health, wealth and intelligence, aggression, kindness, courage and confidence – but in one important respect we are all the same. Without exception, none of us is ultimately responsible for who we are or what we do. This perspective creates the possibility for a deep solidarity between human beings, one built on the understanding that, had I truly been in your situation, I would have done as you did. A profound equality emerges from this realisation that provides a firm basis for compassion and empathy … All systems of oppression and exploitation depend on the denial of this equality.”

Compassion:

• “It is also a significant step towards creating a more compassionate world, in which the impulse to blame is overcome by a desire to understand, and feelings of entitlement give way to humility.”
• “From this perspective, we discover a sturdy foundation for equality, empathy and compassion.”

Freedom:

• “The point of identifying our limitations is to give ourselves the best chance of transcending them. It is through understanding the way we are that we increase the possibility of being as we wish to be.”
• “By shattering the myth of responsibility we give ourselves the best chance of expanding the freedom that is available to us, personally and politically. The more we understand the effect the world has had on us, the more we can control the effect we have on the world.”
• “The kind of freedom that would make us truly responsible for our actions – truly worthy of credit or blame – is a dangerous illusion, one that distorts our thinking on the most pressing economic, political and moral issues of our time. Yet it’s an illusion central to our lives. Examining it exposes as false a number of assumptions at the heart of our culture – ideas about punishment, reward, blame and entitlement – and demands a revolution in the way we organise society and think about ourselves and each other.”
• “The more we understand the limits on our freedom, the better placed we are to transcend them. We may well be less free than we like to think, but only through understanding the freedom we lack can we enhance the freedom we possess.”

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