A) INTRODUCTION
 
According to my hypothesis concerning volitional intelligence, all men automatise either one of two basic attitudes towards cognitive activity in early childhood.
 
However - according to the philosophy of Objectivism - nothing can determine a man to either think or not to think. According to Objectivism, the choice to think or not is the primary choice - the choice that precedes everything else in a man's life. Free will is free will, as Ayn Rand put it. Before any factor can have any influence on a person's choices, said individual must be aware of that factor. But he cannot be aware of said factor until after he has chosen to think, can he? The choice to think must therefore precede the possibility of anything at all influencing a man´s choice to think!
 
But, on the other hand – Ayn Rand herself used the terms “active mind” and “anti-effort mentality”. This fact at least suggests that Ayn Rand herself believed that an inclination towards mental activity, or an aversion to mental activity, can be automatised - i.e. can be made into a habit.
 
I, for my part, must say that it is perfectly obvious that different individual men have developed different degrees of habitual inclination, or aversion, to the exertion of their grey cells. When you observe such things as people’s reading habits, study habits, level of professional ambition, etc. - it is perfectly clear that some people are more inclined to exert their grey cells, while others are more inclined to just “take it easy” regarding cognition. It is thus an empirically observable fact that people form a habit, usually in early childhood, either to put forth cognitive effort, or to otherwise eschew cognitive effort.
 
And this fact does not contradict the fact that free will is free will. According to Objectivism, it is (but of course) the case that the choice to think is not an issue of suddenly passing from total unconsciousness to total cognitive focus. The choice to think or not to think is instead an issue of passing from a lower degree of cognitive focus to a higher, i.e. sharper, degree of cognitive focus – or to not do so.
 
At every given moment that a man is awake, there is always something going on in his consciousness – every moment without exception. What happens when a man chooses to think is this: Initially, he has something of which he is aware of dimly, way out “on the edge” of his consciousness. And when he chooses to think, he decides to put forth the effort to “pull in” said cognitive content into the centre of his consciousness. In other words, whenever a man chooses to think - he initially has a vague inkling of an idea which he subsequently chooses to make himself more clearly aware of.
 
When a baby begins its life, it already has, automatically and without the intervention of free will, perceptions. The baby begins its mental development by integrating its perceptions into "first-level concepts". The first-level concepts are the ones which can be formed directly from percepts. They do not require that the baby have any previously formed concepts. These first concepts are concepts of simple entities. Such as “mommy”, “daddy”, “pillow”, “blanket”, “ball” etc. This seems to happen automatically and is apparently not controlled by volition. But - I am convinced that when it comes time for the baby to form "higher", more abstract concepts - free will comes into the picture.
 
The more eager the baby is to become (more) aware of reality, the more the baby puts forth an effort to form new, more abstract concepts.
 
Must the desire to be aware of reality be equally strong for all different individuals? I am sure that the answer to that question is no.
 
Early in childhood, the chaff begins to be separated from the wheat. Some babies experience the pleasure they feel when they become aware of the reality around them as a higher value than the "cost" of achieving that awareness through cognitive effort. While other babies experience that the “cost” of cognitive effort is too great in relation to the pleasure of becoming (more) aware of reality. And different babies form different habits regarding their willingness to “pay the required price” for an increased level of awareness of reality.
 
Some babies, just a small minority of them, develop the attitude that it is always worth the effort to increase their level of awareness through cognitive effort. They therefore automate a certain kind of behaviour. They automate a preference for the state of “dis-ease” (to borrow a term coined by the 19th century pragmatist philosopher William James). I.e. they develop a preference for taking the trouble to think. While a massive majority of mankind´s babies automate a preference for the opposite state – the “state of ease” (again using William James´ terminology). That is, they develop a preference for cognitive slacking. They develop an aversion to the taking of the trouble to think.
 
This choice, which according to my volitional intelligence hypothesis, all men face while they are very young, I call “The Ominous Choice”. It is this choice that largely (I will explain this qualification shortly) determines the individual’s life path. Pretty much everything depends on how the little child chooses in this matter. If the child belongs to the small minority that automatizes a preference for thinking – then said child develops a more, or less active mind - and his intelligence tends to increase over the course of the rest of its life. But if the child belongs to the majority, who choose to automate an aversion to thinking – then the child’s intelligence begins to stagnate – due to the kid´s development of a habit of “cognitive slacking” as its default state.
 
The reason for the qualification I made in the second sentence in the paragraph above is the simple fact that since free will is free will, every person can always change their habit regarding cognitive effort later in life. A child who develops an active intellect in early life can subsequently choose at any random point in time afterwards to “quit” and join the cognitive slackers. And a child who develops a passive intellect in early life can, at any given later point in life, choose to get off his butt and develop an active mind (I did that myself in my own life when I was 20 years old – see Chapter Two: Volitional Intelligence - the Evidence).
 
So, you are not doomed to lifelong failure if you make the wrong choice in early childhood. And the rest of your life will not be a straight line and an automatic success if you make the right choice in early childhood. But - since this is about two different fundamental alternative habits - very few people change those habits later in life. Neither for better nor for worse. The Ominous Choice that the individual makes in early childhood usually lasts a lifetime - for better or for worse. Because it is not easy to change a long-standing habit. Every smoker who has tried to quit his smoking habit knows this from experience.
 
B) FREE WILL AND CAUSALITY
 
Free will is a form of causality. Specifically, it is a first cause.
 
But - how then do we explain the fact that in all cultures and societies known to historians, an overwhelming majority of the population has, with a very high degree of consistency, made the very same choice – namely, to form a habit of preferring the state of “ease”, rather than the state of “dis-ease”? In other words, why does it seem as if the frequency of choosing to develop an active or, alternatively, a passive intellect - does not seem to vary much at all from time period to time period? If free will is a form of causality, then there should in reason be an explanation for this (the lack of variation in the choice pattern over time), according to the principle of cause and effect.
 
My hypothesis is that the regularity of the pattern down through the ages has to do with the fact that whenever a person chooses to think, he does not shift from literal unconsciousness to total focus. Instead, the choice concerns whether, or not, to further sharpen the degree of focus which already exists. The choice between thinking or not is a matter of choosing between making the effort to “pull” awareness of something from the periphery of one´s consciousness into the center of his consciousness - or not to do so.
 
Each, and every individual must weigh the question of whether focusing is worth the effort in relation to the value he places on being (more) aware of the world around him. In early childhood, the baby begins to often exert his mind for the sake of becoming more aware of that wonderful reality around him. After the child has for the very first time carried out the process of first thinking and then becoming more aware of reality, the baby is able to (implicitly) weigh the value, to the baby, of the “gain” of becoming more aware of reality in relation to the “cost” in the form of cognitive effort.
 
There is a factor that could motivate (nota bene: said factor motivates - but does not determine) the baby to be more inclined to choose the alternative of placing a greater value on the “benefit” of sparing itself the effort to think than on the “benefit” of becoming more aware of reality. This factor is the phenomenon of energy conservation.
 
C) ENERGY CONSERVATION IN BIOLOGY
 
Evolution selects the kind of behavior in animals which optimizes their chances of survival. Evolution selects away from behavior which entails an excessive expenditure of energy.
 
This explains why lions and cheetahs out on the savannah in Africa typically spend something like twenty hours out of every 24-hour period sleeping and lazing. Even almost all the time they are awake they doze in the shade somewhere. Lions and cheetahs only put forth barely enough physical effort, so as to acquire a sufficient supply of meat from prey to keep them fed well enough to survive. Lions and cheetahs do not carry out any running around, out there on the savannah, in disregard of necessity.
 
D) ENERGY CONSERVATION IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS IN "RATIONAL ORGANISMS"
 
Of course, lions and cheetahs do not possess the attribute of reason. So, they do not have free will. They act on instinct. So, they are determined not to expend more physical energy than is contextually appropriate for the sake of survival. But we human beings are “rational animals” (or, more generally, we are "rational organisms" [NOTE 1]). We have free will – and therefore we do not have instincts. So, we must choose how much mental energy we will exert on the conceptual level for the sake of becoming more aware of reality. I.e. we must choose how hard/much we will think!
 
What are the criteria for making that choice? We weigh the value (to us respectively) of the awareness of reality which thinking provides us with. And this simple fact entails the possibility that some of us will make mistakes regarding the choice whether to give priority to the “pleasure” of mental relaxation (i.e. energy conservation) or to the benefit of a heightened awareness of reality (the expenditure of mental effort in the pursuit of values).
 
Is there any reason for which children might be more disposed to underestimate the actual value of thinking than to assess said value correctly? Yes! How can a young child – perhaps not even five years old yet – know that he must make himself aware of reality for the sake of surviving? Since the child is so young, it is ignorant of the demands of survival. So, it might very well not realize how much is at stake in the issue of thinking or not. So, it makes sense that the young child tends to prioritize the conservation of mental energy over the value which is a higher degree of awareness of reality. This seems to explain very well the broad pattern which is that a large majority of men develop a habitual preference for the state of ease, rather than for the state of dis-ease.
 
Of course, the development of a child's intelligence suffers if he decides at an early stage that it is not worth the effort to form new, more abstract concepts. The child's development is retarded. In particular, the task of forming more abstract concepts than the kid has already formed requires effort. So – a large majority of men, because they choose to make cognitive slacking a habit in early childhood, subsequently never develop an ability to grasp higher abstractions.
 
In adulthood, such men become able to deal with relatively concrete problems such as, for example, earning a living by means of working. But they never develop the ability to grasp such abstract-principle-involving subjects as philosophy. Instead, they develop the habit of taking some supposed authority at its word on philosophical matters. These men of modest intelligence then easily fall prey to such delusions as religions, socialism, fascism, Nazism, environmentalism, altruism, etc.
 
These men, i.e. a large majority of the “masses” (i.e. a vast majority of the common men of mankind), are unable to defend themselves against the intellectual scams which the world´s history has been full of. This circumstance explains the fact that throughout the entire known history of mankind, decent societies have been the exception, and vicious tyrannies have been the rule. People who are only capable of grasping facts close to the perceptual level lack any significant ability to - by dint of their own thinking - see through the philosophical fallacies perpetrated on them by bad intellectual leaders down through the ages.
 
This is the tragedy of humanity – the sad fact that the choice to develop the habit of cognitive slacking is much more frequent than the choice to develop an active intellect.