In Chapter Thirty (Decision/Indecision) JP introduces Eddie to a conceptual get-out-of-jail-free card called Determinism, which appears to absolve him from all of his misdeeds and prejudices.
Making the case for pre-determination:
In the Oscar-winning movie “Inherit the Wind”, Spencer Tracy plays a lawyer defending a local teacher who has been accused of teaching a science lesson contrary to the beliefs of religious fundamentalists in the town.
The movie’s story was based on an actual event known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Tracy’s character was based on Clarence Darrow, the defence lawyer at the 1925 trial. When Darrow wasn’t protecting teachers from religious zealots, he saved murder suspects from the noose. Having lost his first-ever murder trial, Darow modified his approach so effectively that none of his subsequent defendants were executed.
Darrow attempted to mitigate the criminal’s actions as a consequence of fatalism – the idea that a person’s actions can be explained by their background. Or, as Darrow described it in one of his trial summations:
“I can hardly imagine that here in the twentieth century there are men who seriously say that for what Nature has done, for what life has done, for what training has done, you should hang these boys…. Why did they kill? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of a boy or a man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.”
Or as the author John Galsworthy more eloquently put it: “Life calls the tune, and we dance”
If Determinism is correct, we cannot be held responsible for our heredity and environment, so our choices and actions – even our very thoughts and impulses – are pre-determined.
‘On the bright side, Eddie,’ said JP, ‘the Determinism deal works both
ways. We can’t be blamed for taking the piss out of people, as that’s just part
of the same logic.’
‘So this nature/nurture thing could mean I’m off the hook for everything
and anything?’
‘Sounds like it to me,’ said JP.