The first cry of a newborn baby, as ear-piercing and shrill as it can be, is also one of the most euphonious sounds in the world. Like a tiny fanfare, a baby's first cry out of the womb is a resounding celebration of a new, beautiful, and complicated existence. It also serves as a call for protection, love, and mercy from an unfamiliar world. And from a scientific perspective, the first cry out of the womb is (literally) the most important cry of a person's life. See: during the nine months between conception and birth, babies receives their oxygen supply through the umbilical cord. When they're delivered and have to start breathing on their own without the help of their placental crutch, that first vociferous cry is what clears the excess fluid from the mouth and lungs, and kick-starts the baby's respiratory system to stimulate it, and to get it used to life in the outside world.

So from emotional to physical necessity, there's a lot of function to be packed into one little howl. 

As that baby grows though, and their cries become a little less enchanting and a little more incessant (and sleep-depriving), those tears are typically understood with less complexity. Most phonetic research suggests that baby cries fit neatly into five categories: "Neh" = hunger, "Eh" = upper wind, "Eairh" = lower wind, "Heh" = discomfort, and "Owh" = sleepiness. And don't get me wrong, categorization like this is pretty crucial when raising a baby who can't communicate other than with nearly-indecipherable syllables such as these. But as that baby becomes a toddler, and that toddler becomes a little kid, an unconventional pattern seems to emerge; the older and more complex someone becomes in terms of thought, emotion, verbal ability, and self-awareness, the narrower the function of their tears.

I mean, for a newborn, the first cry is an expression of the otherwise inexpressible wonders attributed to that journey into a new stage of existence. For an older baby, those emotions can be boiled down to hungry, uncomfortable, sleepy, and gassy. A young child is usually taught to only cry when they're sad, and as an adult, a good cry might as well be an annual event.

Well, when I was a kid and I was in my "only cry when you're sad" stage, I remember experiencing what my nine-year-old self considered to be the most miserable of all earthly miseries—my brother having moved out of our shared bedroom. I didn't understand why it was so hard for me to let go of our bunk beds and double dresser, or why I was suddenly crying every evening, but I remember one day, my dad sat me down and together we wrote out a list of all the types of sadness we could think of, in order to help me process what I was feeling and why I was feeling it. On a lined piece of notebook paper with the words "Sadness List" scribbled in crayon across the top, we wrote something along the lines of: 

1. Disappointment — sad because I wanted something to happen but it didn't happen
2. Regret — sad because I didn't want something to happen but it happened
3. Grief — sad because I lost something important to me
4. Loneliness — sad because I'm alone
5. Shame — sad because I'm embarrassed

I don't remember what else was on the list, but after mulling it over that night, I remember deciding that I was feeling disappointment because I wanted to continue sharing my room with my brother but I couldn't. 

I carried that list around with me in my school backpack for a few years, and whenever I felt sad, from regret when I did poorly on tests to grief at the loss of important friendships, I had it as a tool to help me navigate my sadness, and more importantly, to feel my sadness in an appropriate and comprehensive way. And what I learned after using my Sadness List a few times is that often my situations didn't fit neatly or exclusively into just one category. When my brother moved out of our shared room, for instance, sure I was feeling disappointed, but I was probably also feeling a bit of loneliness at nights since he wasn't around anymore, and I was most likely feeling a bit of shame too, because I was embarrassed that I relied so much on my siblings.

I guess my point is that we're complicated beings with complicated feelings, living in a complicated world. Injustice, hatred, and brokenness are just as real, and just as much a part of our plight as humans as is pleasure and joy. Life, at times, is a beautiful mess, and feeling it— like really feeling it— isn't a sign of weakness at all, but in a way, it's a sign of profound strength.

I mean, one quick Google search is all it takes to get an extensive account of all the health benefits of crying— you're releasing your body of toxins and hormones, you're strengthening your immune system, you're avoiding weight gain, you're lowering your blood pressure, you're clearing up your skin.

But to me, a good, strong cry transcends the physical, and touches on something a little deeper. 

Try to think back to a time when you were crying, say, in front of your friends at school. You probably felt pretty embarrassed or ashamed. You may have been holding back your tears for dear life, or hiding them behind a forced smile. We don't like to cry in front of others because it makes us feel vulnerable and defenseless. Crying in front of others exposes a different side of us. It puts all our ugliest, most potent emotions on a pedestal and shines a spotlight on them. 

So when we do cry in front of others, whether it's crying in the arms of a loved one or over the phone with a close friend, or whether it's lamenting to God through prayer, it almost always feels like an act of faith. It says "I trust you," and it says "this relationship matters to me." It forms and strengthens meaningful bonds with the people around us, and sometimes it's what gets us the help we need.

One of my favourite movies, Inside Out (2015), explores this idea in a really heartfelt and imaginative way. The film follows 11-year old Riley and the five personified emotions that live in the headquarters of her subconscious: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. When Riley's family moves to San Francisco, leaving her friends, school and hockey team behind, Joy tries her best to keep Riley the goofy, happy little girl she always used to be. Riley grows more and more distant from her parents and her best friends though, and it's only when Sadness takes the wheel up in HQ and Riley acknowledges how she really feels that she can learn, grow, and mature both in her relationships and in her own self-awareness.

In our search for meaning in this chaotic and confusing world, it can be tempting to fall on easy answers. Answers like "I'll never get hurt if I don't do anything to deserve it" or "I'm not really hurting because I don't have a good reason to be" or "my hurt isn't valid because someone else is hurting more." But the truth is, there are some things, like sadness and hurt, that we simply don't and can't understand, at least not entirely. Sadness is more complicated than "hungry, sleepy, or gassy," and it's more complicated than "disappointed, lonely, or ashamed." To me, crying is a way of recognizing and accepting that complexity, and giving up the need to figure it out.

And that's why everyone needs a good cry from time to time.

One of the assignments from the philosophy course I took this summer was to design a philosophical comic strip that outlined a key metaphysical concept of our choice. Now, I'm no Bill Watterson but between my limited comedy writing skills and my best friend's compensating artistic talent, this is what we were able to come up with. 

Hopefully it goes without saying, but the philosophical concept I chose to comicize was determinism, which along with the concept of free will and the perhaps less-well-known theory of compatibalism, has drastic implications both on the future, as well as on each individual's present, daily lives.

You've probably heard of free will before— it's the theory that human beings have the ability to make their own conscious choices that have influence over the future. Free will permits us to act at our own discretion without the constraints of necessity or fate. 

Determinism on the other hand, is the idea that all our choices are already predetermined, and that there is nothing anyone can do to change the past, present, or future. There are a couple different approaches to determinism, including causal determinism which theorizes that cause and effect relationships invariably lead from one to the other to determine the future, theological determinism which theorizes that a God determines the future, and biological determinism which concludes that the genetic programming of living creatures establishes everything they do, which consequently determines the future. Each of these methods differs from the others, but fundamentally, they all suggest an external influence, independent from human will, that has authority over human action and human thought. 

And if you're having trouble coming to terms with the implications of free will or determinism, perhaps you'll be more inclined to adopt compatibilism, which in simplest terms, is a compromise between the two theories. A compatibilist would suggest that humans get a small amount of options in an essentially determined universe. If the universe was a road trip, compatibilism might allow you to choose the radio station and snacks for the drive, even though you have no say in the destination.

The Determinist Argument

The Free Will Argument

A lot of free will adherents would call on German philosopher Immanuel Kant's arguments against determinism, which touch on a concept that the Christian tradition would label our "moral liberty." Essentially, humans have an undeniable innate obligation to chose between right over wrong, which is made apparent through the inherent guilt we feel when we neglect that duty, and as Kant put it, "if we are not free to choose, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness." Of course, some would suggest that we don't ought to choose the path of righteousness, but this counterargument is simply ignorant to the structures our society is based on. Incarceration systems, the Nobel Peace Prize, and everything in between is more or less established on a universal accountability for doing the right thing.

But moral liberty aside, one of the biggest problems I have with determinism is that it contains a logical fallacy. The fact that a determinist would even attempt to convince others of their position shows that they rely on the free will and volition of the people they are trying to convince. The theory of determinism implies that everything, including an individual's thoughts and beliefs, are determined by some kind of preexisting cause, which means it would be impossible to change another person's stance.

* * * * * 

As you're probably discovering, free will and determinism are far more complex and far less fathomable than they're often credited as. But whether you're compelled by the implications of the free will argument, convinced by the assertions of the determinist argument, or merely disoriented and confused by it all, assumptions of free will run through every aspect of our lives. From politics, welfare provisions and incarceration to world sports championships and Academy Awards, a general acceptance of free will is the foundation for a functioning society. I mean, can we really justify imprisoning criminals for crimes they had no choice but to commit? And are anyone's accomplishments truly deserving of praise if they were simply predetermined? Even the century-old American dream— the belief that anyone can make something of themselves regardless of their start in life— is entirely based on the ideals of conscious, intentional choice.

The importance of free will also transcends society's constructs, and appertains to individual moral conduct. A 2002 study was conducted by psychologist Kathleen Vohs and Jonathon Schooler, in which one group of participants was asked to read a passage arguing that free will was false, and another group was given a passage that was neutral on the topic of free will. Each group was then asked to perform a number of tasks (eg. take a math test in which cheating was made easy, or hand in an unsealed envelope full of loose change), and the participants who were conditioned to deny free will were proven more likely to behave immorally.

There is advantage to regarding free will as real, not because it is necessarily true (although I believe it is), but because, in the words of Barack Obama, "values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will."

And that's why we should believe in free will whether it exists or not.

When I was a kid, my parents never engaged my siblings or me with the Santa Claus story. It wasn't that they thought it was immoral per say; Santa was just never something we did as a family. For a while, the height of my understanding was that Santa was nothing more than a television character— just a fictitious accessory to make Christmas more fun. So maybe it's simply because I don't have much experience in the Santa department, but nonetheless, I can't help but wonder what role his story plays in a family's dynamics, and whether or not that kind of deception is as innocent as we take it for. In other words, I can't help but wonder whether teaching kids about Santa is "right" or "wrong."

The criteria for what is "right" and what is "wrong" has been debated by philosophers for generations, and there are countless different approaches— called "ethical normative systems"— that aim at providing concrete answers. These systems, although they are widely diverse, can be divided into three broad categories: virtue ethics, duty ethics, and consequential ethics.

Virtue Ethics

Duty Ethics

Consequential Ethics

Spirit

Mind