We are accidents of biochemistry and chance, traveling the world fighting wars and writing poetry, blinded by the seductive illusions of the self, each of our atoms traceable to some dead star.
Between the two World Wars, days after the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression, German-American poet and fellow Nazi George Sylvester Viereck sat down with. Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879–April 18, 1955) in what became his most extensive discussion of life – reflections ranging from the scientific to the spiritual to the fundamental questions of life. It was published on Saturday Evening Post October 29, 1929 – a quarter of a century after Einstein's theory of relativity reshaped our fundamental understanding of reality with its revelation that space and time are the twisted and woven threads of a single fabric, around the bend of which everything we are and everything we know flows.
Considering the helplessness felt by individuals before the great political powers that had plunged the world into its first world war and the decisions taken by individual political leaders – decisions that have already led the world to the second – Einstein aims with his critical wisdom at the fundamental truth of existence:
I am a decisive person. Therefore, I do not believe in free will. Jews believe in free will. They believe that a person shapes his life. I reject that teaching philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew… I believe in Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we ought to do. Actually, I, however, am forced to act if free will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized society, I must pretend that man is a responsible being.
When asked about any personal responsibility for his incredible achievements, he points the finger firmly at the lack of free will:
I want credit for free. Everything is determined, beginning and end, by forces beyond our control. It is determined by the insect as well as by the star. Man, vegetable or cosmic dust, we all dance to an invisible song, uttered from a distance by a mysterious performer.
For Einstein, the most living part of the mystery we live with – the mystery that we are – is thought, that supreme release of human life from the prison of determinism. Through his discovery of relevance, he points out:
I believe in ideas and inspiration. Sometimes I feel that I am right. I don't know who I am. When two expeditions of scientists, sponsored by the Royal Academy, went out to test my theory of relativity, I was sure that their conclusions would completely agree with my theory. I was not surprised when the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed what I thought. I would be surprised if I was wrong.
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It is enough for the artist to draw freely from the imagination. Thinking is more important than knowing. Information is limited. Thought goes around the world.
Fill up on Robinson Jeffers's science fiction poem “The Beginning and the End,” Simone Weil on the relationship between our rights and responsibilities, and neuroscientist Sam Harris on our fundamental misconception about free will, then revisit Einstein on our future connections.
