Free agency, hypnotic surrender, and the final frontier

By Michael Timm

It was 1989. I was seven years old. In a movie theater which no longer exists, I was watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with my parents.

I was scared by this movie. What scared me was that Doctor McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, and a whole bunch of other fine men and women get brainwashed by Spock's half-brother, Sybok. Sybok has "freed from pain" an entire ad-hoc terrorist army of downtrodden settlers at Paradise City, the capital of the so-called "Planet of Galactic Peace" in the Neutral Zone, allied with neither the Earth-led Federation or its enemies, the Klingon and Romulan Empires. Sybok has made psychic contact with a being at the center of the galaxy he believes to be God and he wants to hijack a starship to take him there. ("God" turns out to be a hostile psychic alien exiled to the center of the galaxy and imprisoned beyond the "Great Barrier.")

As I look back now, I can explain and grapple with what frightened me about the brainwashing: the characters' loss of control, the subjugation of their wills by an external force that functioned through persuasion rather than brute force—and with wide success. As I am now a bona fide adult, facing different forms of persuasion is a common, real-world concern to be confronted (mostly) on adult terms.

As a child, however, viewing adult characters of authority having their wills usurped—then willingly surrendering to a will not their own—was traumatic and troubling. (It unsettled in a way not like other cinematic or televised conflicts: In a gun battle or a car chase there may be violence and death, fear and loss, but characters are their own agents, pursuing their own goals, fighting one another and perhaps within themselves—but they fight and struggle and win or lose, they aren't taken over.) The brainwashing depicted in Star Trek V represented, to me at least, a pattern of any and all forces that can usurp the will of a conscious being. Forces like sex, drugs, music, religion, hypnosis, hysteria. It was seduction. It was surrender. For a child learning and confronting his sexual instincts and how these seemed oftentimes to trump the will, the prospect was evocative and distressing. What was to be done?

In the movie, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock defy Sybok's brainwashing attempts. (Scotty defies brainwashing by being too busy and dedicated to the Enterprise.) Spock allows Sybok to enter his mind and share his inner pain, but he rejects Sybok's implication that he is trapped or defined by his childhood pain. Because Spock has already found a place for himself in the world, already crafted a sound identity that brings him meaning and allows him to create meaning in the world, Sybok cannot "free" him because he is already a free man—"I hide no pain," Spock says. Kirk resists even Sybok's attempt to share his pain. He argues that he needs his pain because his pain brings him strength, provides him with his identity and a reason to struggle, to fight, to live. He, too, is a free man—"I need my pain," Kirk says. So, ultimately, our heroes persevere and all ends well, with even Sybok convinced of the vanity and arrogance of his ways. The Klingons kill "God," beam Kirk up, and Kirk and Spock embrace as brothers who know themselves and each other.
But it's only a movie.


Navigating the Siren Straits

In the real world, we face numerous seductions—and I would argue most are more than mere temptations. A temptation would seem to be something that lures or distracts a free agent off course. A seduction would seem to be something that manipulates the free agency of the agent so that the agent's course changes.

One of the great rhythmical passages of the "Our Father" prayer is "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

Should we rather substitute, "Lead us not into seduction"?

Before a glib answer, let us recall Odysseus, that man of men described by a blind poet. When approaching the Sirens, whose seductive calls would entrance sailors to their deaths, Odysseus fashioned wax for his sailors' ears and instructed them to disobey him while their ship passed through the Sirens' territory. But he wanted to hear, he wanted to be seduced. But he didn't want to incur negative consequences, so he had his men lash him to the mast, ears open.

Odysseus tricks his way to be safely led into and through seduction, but without losing his life, his crew, or his ship. And, honestly, who wouldn't really choose that over not hearing the Sirens' calls to begin with? This is why we still read Homer's Odyssey today, and appreciate stories retold with this structure. There is great appeal in such an approach. We humans like to be entertained, but we also like to be seduced, aroused, borne beyond the familiar geography of our own will power—and we are more willing to take such risks if we can be safely lashed to a mast.

This raises a question.

Is our modern paradigm for facing seduction modeled on Odysseus, his crew, or Jesus' prayer?


Journeying into Seduction?

First, a note on "Our Father." I shouldn't have been, but I confess I was surprised to learn that the prayer authors/translators had taken some liberties with the biblical passages attributed to Jesus.

The passages relevant to the discussion on how to face seduction (if based on the "Our Father") are as follows: "do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one" (Matthew 6: 13) and "do not subject us to the final test" (Luke 11:4). The "final test" is glossed in my Bible in this way: "Jewish apocalyptic writings speak of a period of severe trial before the end of the age, sometimes called the 'messianic woes.' This petition asks that the disciples be spared that final test."

Nothing here about "temptation" at all. Needless to say, nothing about seduction.

It's dangerous to trust Wikipedia, but as I have little time on my own deadline for more authoritative research, a brief mention will have to do. Apparently the Greek "peirasmos" is the culprit term here, which can mean "temptation, testing, trial, [or] experiment" depending on context. Assuming the historical accuracy of my St. Joseph New American Bible's interpretation of "final test," its editors presume that "peirasmos" means this really, really miserable time for people at the cusp of a new sociopolitical era. Thus, the root of the prayer does not necessarily, and certainly does not directly, lead to a petition to avoid "temptation" as we understand it today and as I was taught the concept growing up among movies like Star Trek V.

I will suggest why I feel parsing this translation is significant shortly. But first, what about Satan's temptation of Jesus in the desert? How does it compare to Odysseus' approach to the seduction of the Sirens and how does it compare with the Lord's Prayer text?

Jesus has trekked out into the desert for 40 days and nights of fasting and has what Native Americans might call a vision quest. We might reasonably assume Jesus' mind is in an altered state from the self-denial and meditative focus of fasting for 40 days in the desert. It's then that "the tempter," according to Matthew and Luke, speaks to Jesus, confronting him with three tests.

The voice of the devil suggests Jesus use his supernatural powers to convert stones into food to sate his hunger, which Jesus rejects by stating that "one does not live by bread alone." The voice suggests Jesus worship him and in return the devil will provide Jesus with all the power and glory of the kingdoms of the Earth, which Jesus rejects by reciting the First Commandment that there is only one God and God alone deserves worship. Finally in Luke (second in Matthew), the voice suggests Jesus throw himself down on the rocks, suggesting that God's angels will protect him. Jesus spurns this temptation by citing another text: "You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test."

The common understanding of the story of Jesus' temptation is that Satan wants Jesus to abuse his own power and use it for selfish ends—to save his own life and serve his own self—while his greater mission beyond his own self-interest would presumably fall by the wayside. As a moral lesson, that's fine and good. The AIG derivative investors would have done well to consider it.
But considered against the actual text of the "Our Father" and bracketed against his all-too-human plea in the Garden of Gethsemane to not have to go through with the plan—to avoid his own final test—it reorients, to me, the meaning of the "Our Father." To flip the famous Steve Miller Band lyrics upside-down, here's the modern translation: Pray that you don't have to go through hell to get to heaven—do not subject us to the final test.

If accurate, this seems an incredibly psychologically immature position to advocate.
If he means what he says, Jesus here is not really hoping to be lashed to Odysseus' mast or put wax in his ears—it seems he'd rather avoid the straits and the Sirens entirely. But while we humans can choose how we navigate, we cannot choose the seas upon which we sail. So relying on circumstances to arrange themselves so that we are not tested is not a good strategy—especially if one is not a god.

Jesus' ultimate decision, of course, is to be fixed to a different sort of mast. And his actions in this regard ultimately accept psychological responsibility that his earlier words seem to belie. He faces his final test. And apparently passes with flying colors.

But one more point here, and the one I really wanted to raise by bringing up the temptation in the desert.

The traditional language of the Lord's Prayer suggests that the people praying it are seeking to avoid or defeat temptation. (This presupposes that there are bad, magnetic forces out there—sex, drugs, music, religion, hypnosis, hysteria—that can sway the free will into torrid valleys of sin. Temptations, to me, were and are closely related with any and all manner of Siren calls.) This relationship always seemed to go without question. (After all, who would want to be led into a torrid valley of sin?) But I am questioning it now.

For me, as a child and perhaps for many others, "lead us not into temptation" equated with an almost Buddhist desire to avoid desire and attachment, a Washingtonian desire to be free of entangling alliances, and a Hindu desire to be clean of untouchable filth. The words galvanized the moral hackles, aligning or realigning the will on a path toward righteousness—as though a bird whose internal migratory compass is realigned with the Earth's magnetic field after the disruptions of a fierce electrical storm.

But the original language of the prayer doesn't seem to have anything to do with keeping on the straight and narrow or plugging the ears to seduction at all—it's not about sex, drugs, music, religion, or hypnosis. It's about accepting psychological responsibility but wishing you didn't have to.

This point seems clear based on the kinds of tests delivered to Jesus in the desert. To me, they aren't seductions like those the Sirens offer—there's no positive allure of sex, wisdom, or mystery. And Odysseus knows the Sirens will destroy him if he weren't lashed to the mast. They would destroy him by utterly controlling his will and he would want to do whatever they commanded. He would willingly destroy himself. By lashing himself to the mast, Odysseus is simply and cunningly permitting his curiosity and desire to be sated, but severing his will from its usual agency. He can appreciate the beauty of hypnotic surrender to the Sirens without the usual consequences of a hostile takeover. It's about seduction and sensation.

Satan, in contrast, challenges Jesus about power—he can sate his hunger, he can build an empire, he can play frivolous games with his powers and his life. It's not about what the devil can offer Jesus but what Jesus could do for himself. The devil is not attempting to "take over" Jesus in the sense of subjugating his will. He's trying to persuade him to make the selfish choice. If Jesus were to fail these three tests, it is not because the devil has succeeded in becoming God but that Jesus as God has made the wrong decision. We might as well consider this story the metaphor of Jesus' internal struggle as being part human, which is reconfirmed in the garden.

It is worth noting, however, that the power of the voice is what carries both the Siren song and Satan's tests.

The biblical passages indicate the devil speaks to Jesus; they do not depict a red man with a goatee and a pitchfork, nor do they evoke the burning angel imagery that another blind poet would dictate centuries later on the British Isles. It is a voice that approaches Jesus when he is fasting in the desert.

Having recently learned some firsthand experience about the empirically amazing effects of hypnosis, I think this is highly significant. (In these and other myths and stories—think also: Phantom of the Opera—the power of the suggestive voice is a central story component with both empowering/liberating and enslaving/subjugating effects.)

Like Spock, Jesus listens to the voice that promises to free him from pain but refuses to be hypnotized by the tempter's suggestions. In this, perhaps, he sets himself apart from mere mortals who are far more suggestible, especially after not eating for 40 days in the desert.
The point is that it's not the seduction or the temptation that is the problem in and of itself—it's the choice behind the seduction or temptation. What are we being seduced for or to do? What are we surrendering our will to or for?


Surrendering the Will

Surrendering to seduction is both freeing and binding.

It's freeing because the rational component of the mind is derailed from the will when someone "lets go," whether under hypnosis or in a deep (or shallow) trust relationship. Trust is earned through work and relationship building. Hypnosis induces an altered state where the psychological energy level required to do work is lowered and the will is then easily pushed or pulled. There's a spectrum of mental and psychosomatic effects between these two poles.

It's binding for the obvious reason that personal control is sacrificed, ceded to another controller. When this controller is external, we call this brainwashing. When the controller is internal, we call it acting on impulse or instinct. Either is a reminder that the agent, while seemingly autonomous, is not always or necessarily so. There's also a spectrum of possibilities between such external and internal forces—mediated by causes and catalysts the like of, you guessed it: sex, drugs, and music.

Seduction and surrender are a key component of advertising and marketing, enticing agents to modify their values and behavior according to exterior considerations. There always has to be some mutual advantage offered or advertising wouldn't work at all, but at the same time seduction always seems to offer something negative, guarded, secret, or dangerous as well. Enticement and an appeal to abrogate the will are some elements at play here: see that red Coca-Cola can—that looks good and the brand appeals to me, so I'll derail the rational part of my mind and simply plop it in my shopping cart without thinking. It's easier and more pleasurable to simply let go and just buy the Coke. Yes, I could evaluate the costs and benefits of each and every kind of liquid refreshment for sale, but that would take too long and besides, what I really want is the Coke anyway…This is a kind of self-hypnosis that programs how we behave in many, many repeatable everyday circumstances already. (I don't necessarily like it, but it's true. And the alternative, exercising conscious critical judgment about everything, is worse and possibly impossible, from a utility standpoint—if you want to ride a bike, you don't think about riding a bike, you just do it. If you want to throw a baseball, you don't think about it, you just throw it. Allowing autopilot to take over is what allows humans to get through the day without computational overload. We "free" our minds to handle the tasks that demand conscious attention, relegating others to nonconscious processes.)

Seduction and surrender are also a key factor in sexual relations. If human agents are not "turned on" they are less receptive to each other and are not as likely to conjugate anything except verbs. They get turned on by, in effect, turning some inhibitions off. If someone is "uptight" or "not in the mood," nothing's going to happen. Without some element of mystery or foreignness to the self, without some "letting go," tension, by definition, cannot be released, nor intimacy expressed.

While it's not always the Siren call or the voice of Satan whispering in your ear, there is always the trigger moment, always the two diverging roads in the yellow wood, the point at which the choice is made or not made to derail one's own will, to shift the chain as though shifting a bicycle gear. Hypnotic trance derails the entire chain, but in everyday life, we shift up and down regularly and automatically, according to external and internal stimuli—words we hear sung or spoken, music we hear that lifts or depresses our mood, work that sharpens or dulls the attention or intellect, food we've enjoyed for years despite its unhealthiness, keywords or images noted on the internet or magazines, habits we've developed that bring comfort, or those we've observed that drive us crazy.

To answer the hypothetical question posed at the outset of the previous section, I think we model our behavior with regard to experiencing seduction on Odysseus, even if we pay lip service to a pure, pious avoidance of seductions and temptations. We want to be seduced—it feels good and it's necessary to how human beings live life in the modern environment bombarded by stimuli—but we don't want to lose the ship. Problems emerge, however, if the ropes are too thin, the knots too loose, the mast too flimsy, or trust in the crew's wax misplaced. For if we engage into behavior patterns where we repeatedly lash ourselves to the mast, who is steering the ship and where is it headed?


Freedom Isn't Free

One maxim that has always resonated with me is that "Freedom isn't free."

I have seen this statement in many contexts, but the one that sticks with me was in Ripon, Wis. at a small veterans memorial across from my former bank. The pedestrian could enter a little stone area commemorating the fallen of the United States' many wars. "Freedom isn't free" was prominently displayed at this mini courtyard.

Depending on my mood, this area would mean different things to me. Occasionally, it seemed a shallow remark, an easy public note to honor soldiers living and dead whose service was remembered without regard for any particulars of that service or the politics of their conflicts. In that way, it seemed a dangerous cheesecloth to veil over military service of any kind, a way of valorizing it regardless of context.

But at the same time the broadness of this statement, "Freedom isn't free," seemed suspect, it also seemed deeply true.

On those other days, it meant to me that anything worth anything costs something, that everything costs something, that what we say we value is never guaranteed, that we must continually earn what we value, and that others have lived lives that serve as a reminder and example to this at times horrible and joyous truth.

Along these lines, "Freedom isn't free" also assumes a universe in which choice-making beings create the conditions for freedom, whatever it may be. While freedom may occur in nature or may occur naturally, freedom of this kind is neither natural nor necessary. It isn't free. You don't get something for nothing. This kind of universe is familiar to those who respect the most fundamental physics principle: the law of conservation of mass and energy. It is a universe of change, filled with Heraclitan dynamism and replete with opportunities, but a place whose contours are ever in doubt and always subject to new forms shaped by various forces. But these shapes and contours and forces are all contingent. They affect one another and depend upon one another. None of them happen in isolation or independence. They are not free. So the freedom in the "Freedom isn't free" universe is a shape, a contour, a particular kind of tension created by some force or forces stretching and smoothing surrounding surfaces so that they are sensitive to this particular quality, "freedom," which might be defined by assuming that this surface minimizes interference with other surfaces and promotes and preserves the integrity of the substance of the surface itself and maximizes its identity in relation to all other possible surfaces it may encounter.

Freedom of this kind does not come from nothing, but from work. It requires effort, it takes energy to maintain. It is like flying in an airplane. The shape of the airplane allows for flight, but movement is required to enact actual flying, and to achieve movement of sufficient speed, engines are used. Freedom is also like electricity in the same way. The natural properties of a coil of wire and a magnet allow for an electromagnetic field, but they must be moved mechanically to enact actual electrical current. A piano contains the same potential for sound, but a person must play it to enact actual music.

Ex nihilo nihil fit: From nothing comes nothing. More than just a theoretically sound sound bite, everything we really know follows and reinforces this assumption. "Freedom isn't free" is really just a layman's way of restating Ex nihilo nihil fit.


Free Agency & Slavery

And if that's true, then philosophically the Steve Miller Band—and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils for that matter—were right all along: "you got to go through hell before you get to heaven."

Unfortunately, sometimes this is too near the reality for many people who find themselves caught in circumstances beyond their control, but without the benefit of sufficient ear wax or strong enough oarsmen. I will just relate my reflections on one such possible person on whom I recently read a news story. The story was about a minor league baseball player who overdosed on drugs and died. I didn't know him. But his story was pathetic—in the sense of inspiring pathos, not in the sense of the common usage of having low value.

He had been traded for $665 worth of baseball bats. Like African slaves traded for molasses and rum in our nation's sordid history, he found others placing a financial value on his head. What was he worth within the system he found himself sequestered? What would balance him on the economic scale? Ten pieces of shaped wood.

I do not know why this man overdosed on drugs. But I can speculate. I speculate that his self-worth was unconsciously crushed by the casual and inhuman way in which he was equated to physical property. (There is an opportunity for a more lengthy Marxian divergence here, but I will stick to my point.)

My speculation is this: He was not free.

He became locked within a system that had branded him with an identity leaving him no flexibility or opportunity for escape. Had he excelled at baseball, perhaps he might have overcome the stigma, but it was his relative quality as a baseball player that had initially earned him his stigma of being traded for bats—all the worse because his trade was not intended to malign him: it was a consequence of supreme utilitarian indifference. So if he couldn't play his way out of this identity, he could walk away from the game. Which he reportedly did eventually decide to do. But the identity now tagged to him, I speculate, and overwhelmed his attempt to escape its shadow. Perhaps he turned/returned to drugs in an attempt to find freedom. He found death, which may or may not have finally freed him.

He was not a "free agent," literally.

After his trade, he wasn't actually any less valuable as a person. His trade for the bats hadn't changed anything about him except perception.

But perceptions form realities.

The human voice is powerful because our minds and bodies understand the world through a set of interrelated concepts. We have words for these concepts. The words and concepts hang together. Under certain circumstances, if the words are touched, the concepts are touched. The concepts are, in effect, the mind and the body as a system itself, and so words can and do change the mind and the body. This is why and how hypnosis functions. And on a larger scale, I speculate it is why and how the minor leaguer was made to feel crushed.


The Final Frontier

I do not consider Star Trek V one of the best Star Trek films. It has its problems as a movie.

And yet.

There is something about this movie that still appeals to me today, as I turn twenty-seven. It's about friendship, that some bonds are deeper than pain, deeper than pleasure. It's about self-knowledge, that it's attainable but that it continually needs attaining. It's about questing for the ultimate, but discovering the ultimate within. It's about how we deal with the fears that make us vulnerable and make us who we are.

The Final Frontier it refers to is not, and never has been, outer space. It is the exploration of what it means to be human. At its best, such exploration is like the freedom one feels when standing on a great open plain or on a cliff before a great body of water—a feeling that the whole world of possibility is open before you.

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Michael Timm is a freelance writer. He has written and is seeking representation for a novel, The Philosopher of Milwaukee. He has been assistant editor of the Bay View Compass newspaper in Milwaukee since 2005. His writing has also appeared in the Alliance for Children & Families Magazine, Riverwest Currents, Shepherd Express, and Wisconsin Trails Magazine. He earned his B.A. at Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., in 2004 studying both anthropology and English. His totem animal is the platypus.