The Comics Professor

Green Lantern Annual #1: Of Free Will, Tolkien, and the Wonder Twins

All in all, Green Lantern Annual #1, written by Geoff Johns and pencilled by Ethan Van Sciver and Pete Woods, is one of the most exciting books to come out of the DC New 52 so far. Faint praise, perhaps, but this felt like the build-up to Johns' previous GL events like "Sinestro Corps War" and "Blackest Night," and that feeling has been sorely missed over the last year.

I don't think there will be any major plot spoilers in this post aside from what already appeared in the online preview (the first six pages on the comic). I will show a couple images from later in the comic, but nothing really revealing--but be warned in any case. SPOILERS!!!

As you may have seen from the preview, the Smurfs Gone Wild have decided that the threat to the universe lies not in emotion in general, nor in individual emotions, but in the very willpower that powers the Green Lantern rings--or, as they put it, free will.

We need to be clear on they mean by "free will." He does not mean it as the term is used in metaphysical debates over free will vs. determinism. That sense of free will describes any being's ability to be the "uncaused cause" and "first mover," to be able insert his, her, or its decision-making power or agency onto a world of physical cause-and-effect. It is not up to the Guardians or anyone else to eliminate free will if it exists--it either does or does not. And if there is no free will, no one has it--including our Guardians.

No, what they mean by "free will" is true choice, agency, or autonomy, the ability to make choices independently of external (and possibly internal) authority or undue influence. Free will in this sense can exist regardless of whether metaphysical free will exists, since this variety of free will operates on a psychological level, not the level of elementary particle physics. Even if we are not truly "in control" of our thoughts and actions in a deterministic universe, we will still "make" choices independently of others' choices--in the end, they simply are not our choices at all. (For more on the various meaning of free will, see this article at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Basically, the Guardians don't like that their Lanterns think for themselves, for then you end up with rebels like Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner. (In fact, the middle Guardian above sounds a lot like the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg--he probably thinks the Lanterns drink too much soda too.) They want mindless creatures that will do their bidding--hence, the Third Army. And they're purty, too:

(I would have thought the word "assimilate" had been trademarked by the Star Trek people by now, but I guess not.) These soliders (for lack of a better term) have no mind, no identity, no free will. They will not make their own choices, they will not question the orders of the Guardians--they will be tools, pure and simple.

This story seems like a natural progression for Johns' broader Green Lantern arc, and I'm interested to see how it plays out. I do hope the Guardians eventually return to being good guys, if imperfect ones. Jordan and Guy Gardner disagreed with them often, of course, but at bottom they all sought the good, only disagreeing on how to pursue it. I hope Johns redeems them, or some of them, at the end of this storyline--but if the rest of New 52 universe is any guide, I'm not holding my breath.

I can't end this post without a couple panels from this comic that I found hilarious. First, we have the long-lost Guardians of Middle-Earth:

I guess they're the Lords of the... nah, too easy.

In the scene below, Hal and Sinestro have to combine the last flickers of energy in their rings to summon Sinestro's power battery. I guess Hal was a fan of the old Superfriends show, but Sinestro is none too happy with it.

Green Lantern powers, activate! Priceless.

What do chocolate and radishes have to do with Green Lantern?

At The Atlantic today, Hans Villarica interviews Dr. Roy Baumeister, one of the psychologists chiefly responsible for the ego-depletion or "muscle" theory of willpower. Under this conception, people have a limited amount of willpower at any given time; as they use it, it is depleted in the short term but strengthened in the long term (just like a muscle used in work or resistance training). In the interview, Baumeister describes one of his early experiments in which he tempted people with chocolate while asking them to eat radishes instead; this used some of their reserves of willpower, leaving less for other tasks, compared to the control group who got to eat the chocolate.

In addition to informing my academic work on willpower and character, Baumeister's work was the basis for one of my chapters in Green Lantern and Philosophy: No Evil Shall Escape this Book. In chapter 2, "Flexing the Mental Muscle: Green Lanterns and the Nature of Willpower," I draw from years of stories to show that Lanterns' willpower has long been portrayed as a scarce resource. Below, I list some of the quotes I used in the chapter, showing that the version of willpower used in the Green Lantern stories corresponds with Baumeister's work--some even decades before Baumeister and his colleagues published it!

On willpower as a muscle:

"Your mind is like a muscle unused for years. You forgot how to use the power ring." (Sinestro to Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Rebirth #5, April 2005)

"...the will is very like a muscle. In Abin Sur, that muscle was once extraordinarily strong—so strong that the Guardians of the Universe made him custodian of a battery of power, an amplifier of the will... and of a power ring, a device to focus that amplified will." (Action Comics Weekly #642, June 1989)

On willpower as a scarce resource (which can be replenished):

"[That] took lots of willpower. That—and escaping from the energy net—has left me exhausted. I need to regain my strength." (Action Comics Weekly #625, December 1988)

"I know my ring’s got limitless power—but it is powered by my willpower. Have I got the strength necessary to make this work?" (Green Lantern, vol. 2, #149, February 1982)

"Willpower’s like a muscle, and I’ve gotten better with it year after year!" (Green Lantern, vol. 2, #200, May 1986)

On willpower, focus, and distraction:

"Can’t take much more of this. I’ve been up all night trying to find the alien... . I’m exhausted... keeping this building together is taking all my concentration... all my will!" (Action Comics Weekly #628, January 1989)

"Finding it hard to concentrate, aren’t you? With me hitting you, I mean! And unless you can focus your willpower, your ring can’t work!" (Hal to Sinestro, Green Lantern, vol. 2, #124, January 1980)

For more on Baumeister's work, pick up his latest book (cowritten with John Tierney), cunningly titled Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.

Reaffirming willpower in Detective Comics #874

Scott Snyder and Francesco Francavilla offer up another fantastic issue of Detective Comics with today's issue 874, continuing the re-introduction of James Gordon Jr. in a tantalizing discussion with his father, while also exploring the aftermath of Dick's exposure to the Dealer's hallucinogenic gas in the previous story arc.

There are many intriguing elements to this comic, in terms of both writing and art--breathtakingly simple but expressive art from Mr. Francavilla--but I will hold myself to discussing the theme of willpower that Snyder emphasizes throughout the issue, one that psychologists and philosophers have discussed.

SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD...

Bill Willingham: Turn me evil once, shame on you--turn me evil twice, shame on me!

In a new interview on Newsarama, comics writer (and sometimes artist) Bill Willingham discusses many things, including Fables of course, but also why he left JSA after twelve issues (contained in the trades shown to the left, The Bad Seed and Axis of Evil). In particular, he cites issues with accommodating crossovers and editorial interference, which have bedeviled many a creative writer in the event-crazed status quo of modern comics. (See also: Dwayne McDuffie and JLA.)

I found this passage particularly interesting:

And then comes along this crossover in which the whole plot revolves around just about every member of the JSA turning evil for a couple of issues.

I couldn’t bring myself to do that because, you know, one time something takes control of you and you accidentally turn evil but it’s not your fault? That can be understood. Maybe the second time something takes possession of you and you turn evil, maybe that can be forgiven as well. But by about the third or fourth time that something takes over this person and he becomes evil, you have to ask yourself, like, well, maybe there’s just something wrong with this fellow from the beginning. Maybe he is just evil. Maybe that’s what evil is, is people that are just accessible to being taken over by whatever cosmic hobo happens to be passing through today.

This is very similar to the Kantian description of weakness of judgment and the will that I first laid out in my chapter in The Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination, and again in my book Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character, coming out in May. 

In a nutshell, a person's autonomous decision-making--in which she makes choices according to moral principle, with no influence from internal or external pressures--can be corrupted, or made heteronomous, in two different ways. In the first, she makes the right decision, but has trouble carrying through with it because her will is weak; I call this "simple weakness." For example, a person may be dedicated to healthy eating, and for the most part he sticks to his diet, but nonetheless he slips once in a while. In other words, his judgment is sound, but his will is weak; this does not make him a bad or "vicious" person, but simply lacking a bit in "virtue" or strength.

A person can stay "simply weak" his entire life--and indeed, all of us are a little weak (which is to say, none of us is perfectly strong or resolute, at least not in all areas of our lives). But the worse type of weakness, what Kant calls the "impure will," occurs when judgment itself is corrupted, or when the person lets improper incentives and considerations into her decision-making itself. So the dieter who rationalizes cheating for reason based on the pleasure of tasty but unhealthy food is making the wrong decision, not just failing to carry through with the right one.

And as Kant wrote, it is the impure will that signals viciousness, since it "involves a conscious choice to be heteronomous, a surrender in the endless fight against inclination, as opposed to simple weakness, which represents merely a temporary loss of control" (Kantian Ethics and Economics, p. 59). It's also more susceptible to corruption, because once a person lets nonmoral considerations into her moral decision-making once, it becomes easier and easier to let it happen again:

The impure will involves a deliberate submission, a choice to admit the influence of inclination—as evidenced by the fact that "the calm with which one gives oneself up to it permits reflection and allows the mind to form principles upon it"—and is therefore more blameworthy than simple weakness... (ibid., quoting from Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 408)

Willingham could have been talking about Kant's version of the impure will when he said that when someone becomes evil once, it might not mean anything, but if he becomes evil again and again, then there's something wrong with him--"maybe he is just evil."