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ence, which is always perishable, incarnate existence. Those who have their sights fixed
on earthly immortality are unable to live in the present, and so, ironically, have less to lose
from dying than those who can live in the here and now.
American society, as opposed to individual Americans, behaves as though it will never
die, and to this extent lives in bad faith. Death is a true satirist, a great deflater and de-
bunker. It cuts us down to our true size. Perhaps all bankers, generals, politicians and cor-
porate executives should be required to undergo near-death experiences in controlled labor-
atory conditions. It would transform their lives far more thoroughly than any number of
courses in packaged Kabala, cut-price Sufism, off-the-peg mysticism, or ready-to-serve
transcendentalism. In the case of the more unsavoury bankers and politicians, one might
arrange for the experiment to be a little less controlled than it might otherwise be.
The will was not always thought of as a dominative force. For some thinkers in pre-mod-
ern times, it is a kind of spontaneous attraction to what is good. It is really a kind of love.
For Thomas Aquinas, it means that our bodies have a built-in bias towards the good, which
suggests that we are not free to choose whatever ends we like. It is as though some of our
ends are chosen for us already, simply by virtue of the kind of creatures we are. We are
naturally inclined to happiness and well-being. Far from being a despotic power, the will
on this view is a question of one's deepest desires, which are always at root a desire for the
good. We can, of course, be spectacularly wrong about what the good consists in, but we
cannot not will it.
Since we do not always know what the good consists in, or what our real desires are, the
will is not just a question of conscious decision. It cannot be reduced to the callow post-
modern cult of “options.” To speak of the will of God is not to suggest that the Almighty
has a dazzling range of possibilities at his disposal, like a shopper faced with a bewildering
array of exotic fruits. God cannot will whatever he pleases. He cannot will evil or sickness.
If the will is bound up with our deepest wants and needs, it is not as free as the modern age
imagines, any more than our desires are entirely free. One does not choose to desire for-
giveness or a grand piano. For Aquinas, a truly free will is not one that can will whatever
takes its fancy. It is one that is free from the perversity that drives us to desire what is de-
structive. The will is not to be seen as boundless and disembodied. It is as finite as a coffee
spoon and as fallible as the pope.
There is a sense in which American materialism is a highly spiritual affair. Because the
will to possess aspires to infinity, it has all the disdain for material things of a monk or a
hippie. It hankers after tangible goods, while being in itself unworldly and austere. This
is one reason why it can be reconciled so easily with religion. It is not just hypocrisy for
a chief executive to fire two thousand employees and then read a lesson in church on the
blessedness of the poor. As a form of infinity, the will that drives the system is on terms
with the Almighty. It is an image of him on earth. It is just as bodiless as he is. God tran-
scends the universe as a whole, while the drive to acquire transcends any specific bit of it.
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