A Walk with William James, Part 2: Habit

I have written a great deal about the volitional capacities of humans. Specifically, I've repeatedly made contrasts between two positions: Weak Volitionalism and Strong Volitionalism. Summarizing greatly:

Strong volitionalism: The view the the human "will" is very strong, it is able to easily overcome genetic and environmental influences.

Weak volitionalism: The view that the human "will" is very weak, it struggles to overcome genetic and environmental influences.

I've often argued in this space that churches need to adopt weak volitional models in their spiritual formation efforts. By contrast, most churches I know of have strong volitional models in place. Basically, the common church formulation is this: If people possess strong volitional capacities then churches need to do very little to change people. I've been arguing just the opposite: Since people possess weak volitional capacities churches will need to do MORE to effect change in people's lives. Schematically,

This is the dominant model in most churches:

Strong volitional people + weak church interventions = Big Behavioral Change

But this is what I think is actually going on:

Weak volitional people + weak church interventions = Little Behavioral Change

What do I mean by "weak church interventions"? Basically, in most of the churches I know the main spiritual formation interventions are rhetorical persuasion (preaching) and pedagogy (teaching). These are weak interventions in that they rely on mere words to effect behavioral change. Revisiting our equations, this is what is going on in many churches:

Weak volitional people + (rhetorical persuasion + preaching) = Little Behavioral change

How to change this? We need to add a stronger piece to the church interventions. What is that piece? I think it is habit formation. And that brings us back to William James.

One of the greatest pieces of psychological writing ever written is James' chapter on Habit in this magisterial The Principles of Psychology, one of the first psychology textbooks ever published. In this post, I'd like to share the wisdom from Habit as I think it presents a very different vision of behavior change compared to the ascendent models in most churches.

James starts Habit with this observation: "When we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits." Later, James calls habit the "enormous fly-wheel of society" and "an invisible law, as strong as gravitation." His point is simply this: Despite our feelings to the contrary, from the time we wake in the morning to the time we go back to sleep most, if not all, of our actions are deeply set in the grooves of habit. It follows, then, that much of our happiness and virtue, or misery or vice, is due to the kinds of habits we have acquired over the years. The goal, therefore, is to learn to cultivate habits that lead to virtue and holiness.

How do we do this? James states: "The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." We do this, according to James, by making small, daily choices that build up a fund or reservoir of virtue: Habit is "to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund."

How do we build this fund of habit? James gives some specifics: "Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know."

In addition, we must practice the habit of saying no to ourselves: "...do every day to two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws neigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin."

Finally, much care should be taken to not lapse while the new habit is being acquired: "Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again." These lapses add up to a failed character-formation project: "The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way."

In all of this, James shows his weak volitional assumptions, dismissing the efficacy of mere words to effect habit acquisition: "No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved."

The big idea here is that habit-formation is a slow, intentional and gradual process. Habits, like coral reefs, accrete. More from the poetic pen of James: "We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar."

This realization means that every little choice counts: "The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well, he may not count it, and a kind of Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out." But, concludes James, "Of course, this has its good sides as well as its bad one."

May the church learn to harness the good side.