FREE WILL... A CURSE?

So I lived as the only child of a divorced mother... and I was terrified of losing her. It was one of my worst nightmares.
In those days, I saw this live-action film, Fly Away Home. The opening credits of this film still leave a profound impression in me. For the heroine, Amy, a middle-class tween like me living in our days, lost her young and beautiful mother, whose only child she was.
And NO, the recording artist Aliane Alden was not killed by disease (whether a heart condition, consumption, fevers, or whichever pathogen it may be). She died in a flash of light, while driving recklessly... and talking on the phone.
while a distracted Aliane spoke on her cellular phone... the mother died.
I was obviously terrified. I zapped and intrenched myself in my room.
Thus, I will NEVER drive passenger with an adult who is speaking on a phone (neither with an intoxicated one).
The death of Aliane Alden is not only "the tragic death of the heroine's mother". It seems to include a cautionary message for adults as well: "Do NOT drive on the phone, OR ELSE you will die and your child will be left to her fate in a hostile environment without your love and guidance."
As graphic as it is compelling, isn't it?
It sounds like one of those Victorian cautionary tales. Character arcs which end with a gruesome end (most usually, death) for a wrongdoer.
Hereby follows a list of such character arcs:

FATAL

• Peter, from the Crying Wolf type of folktales: Do NOT cry wolf too often, OR ELSE the others will leave you on your own when the real big bad wolf appears. And you will be eaten alive.
• Red Riding Hood, in some versions of the story: Do NOT consort with big bad wolves, OR ELSE you will be eaten alive.
• Frey (Norse myth): Do NOT give your only sword away to your prospective in-laws to get the girl you love, OR ELSE you will be killed in the battle of the End of Times, run through with the very sword you had given away (since you will be disarmed, you will be a particularly challenging target).
• Ajax (Trojan Wars): Do NOT go mad with anger if another person has received the honours you wanted for yourself, OR ELSE you will butcher a whole flock of sheep thinking your rival is among them, then regret having killed so many innocents and, ultimately, stab yourself.
• Icarus: Do NOT fly too close to the sun, OR ELSE you will fall from the sky and drown.
• Niobe: Do NOT insult Apollo and Artemis by saying you have many children more, OR ELSE the twin gods will shoot all of your children dead, and your darling husband too, and you will be turned into stone.
• Erysichthon: Do NOT cut down any sacred trees, OR ELSE you'll be punished with insatiable hunger, until you finally devour yourself.
• Onan: Do NOT do it with yourself following a ghost marriage to avoid that the children you sire will be considered your nephews, OR ELSE God will strike you down.
• Judas Iscariot: Do NOT turn a good friend who happens to be persecuted to the authorities for cashing in the reward, OR ELSE you will wind up regretting what you have done and hang yourself.
• Hamlet: Do NOT try to avenge the death of your birth father and expose your stepfather as the usurper who killed him, OR ELSE you will get a poisoned rapier run through you (and many of your loved ones will die as well).
• Lord and Lady Macbeth (both of them): Do NOT become regicidal usurpers, OR ELSE, after you've been enough weakened by endless remorse, the rightful heir will return and have you killed.
• Othello: Do NOT label your partner as intolerably unfaithful (even though your right hand says she is), OR ELSE you will kill her, then regret it deeply and commit suicide.
• Iago: Do NOT resent the fact that another person has got the honours you wanted for yourself. IF YOU do, do NOT plot against your rival, OR ELSE you'll have bystanders dragged into your plot and killed... and you will be executed.
• Desdemona: Do NOT try to intercede for a friend's sake TOO passionately, OR ELSE your husband may believe you are unfaithful with said friend and strangle you in bed.
• Vladimir Lensky (from Eugene Onegin): Do NOT label your partner as intolerably unfaithful, OR ELSE you will be shot through the heart in a duel to which you had challenged your best friend and alleged rival.
• Maria (from Esaias Tegnér's Axel): Do NOT grow impatient for your military lover to return. IF YOU do, do NOT cross-dress and join the army of your land if it happens to be your lover's nation's enemy. OR ELSE, you'll fall on a battlefield, shot by an enemy officer who turns out to be your lover.
• Bentley Drummle (Great Expectations) Do NOT be arrogant or abusive towards your partner, OR ELSE you will fall off your high horse (literally).
• Paulinchen (Struwwelpeter): Do NOT play with fire, OR ELSE you will burn to ashes.
• Suppenkaspar (Struwwelpeter): Do NOT refuse to eat at all, OR ELSE you will starve yourself to death.
• Private Snafu (Spies): Do NOT get drunk, OR ELSE you will slip a secret to a sexy enemy spy and your ship will be sunk by the enemy. And worse, you'll end up in Hell...
• Marvolo Gaunt (Rowling's Potterverse): Do NOT abuse your daughter in any way. OR ELSE, she will wind up a heartbroken and jilted "fallen woman", who'll die after birthing a child who will get bullied into the magical terrorist of the millennium. So you will die of old age, but terribly tormented.
• Aliane Alden (Fly Away Home): Do NOT drive on the phone, OR ELSE you will die and your child will be left to her fate in a hostile environment without your love and guidance.
• Hadnagy István (my own version of Ha majd a nyarunknak vége): Do NOT expose yourself too much on the battlefield, OR ELSE you will get shot in the chest and have a punctured lung. Once recovering from your wounds, do NOT return immediately to the battlefield, OR ELSE you will die of exhaustion.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE has so many cautionary character arcs, many of them tied to the Lannisters, that it counts as one of the most anvilicious 'verses of them all:

• Rhaegar Targaryen: Do NOT elope with a girl who is already betrothed, OR ELSE her fiancé will start a war and break your chest on the battlefield.
• Robert Baratheon: Do NOT start a war if your fiancée runs off with someone else, OR ELSE, no matter if you've killed your rival, you will have lost your beloved to childbirth, and you will be forced to accept an unhappy marriage of convenience, become a cuckold and an alcoholic, and finally get killed by a wild pig.
• Eddard "Ned" Stark: Do NOT do research on the love life of the royal family, OR ELSE you will lose your head (literally). And your widow and fatherless children will be in dire straits.
• Oberyn Martell: Do NOT brood over the death of your dear little sister so much that you would challenge the one who killed her to a duel, OR ELSE he will break your head apart.
• Robb Stark: Do NOT break the promise of your life by rejecting your betrothed in that marriage of convenience to marry a girl you actually love, OR ELSE you will get stabbed in the back and lose your head.
• Renly Baratheon: Do NOT underestimate your less popular brother and/or another religion, OR ELSE you will get stabbed in the back (by a dementor, no less).
• Lysa Baelish: Do NOT be jealous of the love your second husband feels for your niece, OR ELSE you will be defenestrated.

THE LANNISTER CLAN'S FATAL MISTAKES DESERVE A SEPARATE ENTRY. FOR THREE GENERATIONS, LANNISTERS HAVE MADE ERRORS THAT SHOOK WESTEROS.

• Tywin Lannister: Do NOT attempt to live your children's lives, having your daughter marry someone she does not love, or blaming the youngest, that imp, for your lady wife's death in childbed... OR ELSE, your twin children will become lovers, the imp will call you out, your eldest grandson will be a bastard in both senses of the word, and you will be shot by your own sons (the imp, in particular) with a crossbow bolt to the solar plexus.
• Cersei Lannister: Do NOT cheat on your soused spouse with your more attractive twin brother, OR ELSE you will plunge down into alcoholism yourself to regret having had a spoiled brat drunk on power, who will abuse both his fiancées and get tragically poisoned at his wedding feast, the event of your lifetime.
• Joffrey "Baratheon", né Lannister: Do NOT pick on any girls, imps, direwolves, or anyone who looks helpless (whether human or animal). Do NOT abuse any of them above. OR ELSE you will die young and painfully, poisoned at your own wedding feast.

IN REAL LIFE, SOME PEOPLE HAVE ALSO CROSSED NOTEWORTHY LIMITS, FOR INSTANCE:

• Marie Antoinette of Habsburg: Do NOT live at the expenses of the common people, OR ELSE you will lose your head after your rebellious subjects have beheaded your husband and locked you away in a tower, leaving your children orphaned and threatened by the new regime.
• Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden: Do NOT outride your unit on the battlefield, OR ELSE the enemy, seeing you on your own, will shoot you more than once in the chest and back.
• Albrecht von Wallenstein: Do NOT turn against your liege lord and try to take his crown, OR ELSE he will have you stabbed to the heart with a five-foot pike.
• Gustavus III of Sweden: Do NOT deprive the nobility of its privileges, OR ELSE you will be shot in the back during a masked ball.
• Adolf Hitler: Do NOT carry out genocide of minorities coupled with mass invasion and attempted land war in Russia, OR ELSE you will have to shoot yourself so that the invading army does not take you alive.

NON-FATAL, but nevertheless PAINFUL examples

• Arachne: Do NOT challenge Athena to a needlework contest. IF YOU do, do NOT offend her by depicting her father Zeus as a pervert. OR ELSE, you'll be changed into a spider.
• Narcissus: Do NOT be cold to all others, OR ELSE you will wind up passionately falling for your own reflection, starving to death, and becoming a flower.
• Orpheus: Do NOT descend to the underworld to retrieve your late partner, OR ELSE you will lose her anyway.
• Karen (The Red Shoes): Do NOT leave your ailing mother to attend a society event, OR ELSE you will need to have your feet cut off to stop dancing until death.
• Ingrid (The Maid who Trod on the Loaf of Bread): Do NOT use your journey bread as a stepping stone to cross a swamp without soiling your uniform, OR ELSE you will be plunged into the underworld and paralyzed in a niche full of disgusting herps and bugs.
• Konrad the Thumbsucker (Struwwelpeter): Do NOT suck your thumbs, OR ELSE you will have both of them severed.
• Cassio (in Othello): Do NOT get drunk on duty (no matter how much they try to ply you), OR ELSE you will have to ask your lord's wife to intercede for your sake, which will arouse his jealousy, and you will be nearly killed but survive... yet you will have to leave the army for having had a leg cut off.
• Theon Greyjoy: Do NOT betray your loving adoptive family to live up to your estranged birth family's expectations, OR ELSE you will have countless loved ones killed, and then become the eunuch sex slave of a ruthless sadist. Which is neither easy nor pleasant.
• Jaime Lannister: Do NOT be arrogant, OR ELSE they will cut off your right hand. (At least, you'll have to learn to fight with the left one).
• Kate and Peter McCallister (Home Alone): Do NOT use an alarm clock that is plugged into a socket, OR ELSE, a late night power outage or power loss may reset the alarm clock and cause you to oversleep and then, while hurrying to catch the plane, forget your youngest, favourite child at home.

IN GENERAL

• Despots, tyrants, and the like
• Usurpers
• Terrorists
• Gold diggers (female status seekers)
• False brides
• Traitors
• Impostors
• Chessmasters who plot against others
• Arrogant people

TEND TO END UP BADLY (AT LEAST IN FAIRYTALE AND HOLLYWOOD)

Long story short, there are many stories about people who kill themselves, lose loved ones, or wind up with some other kind of trauma due to the decisions they have made. It is true that the saddest words of them all are "It could have been".

Have I told you the one where my Philo teacher...?
OK, time to turn to one of my age-old philosophical obsessions: THAT WITH FREE WILL AND HUMAN WEAKNESS.

The problem of pain was and is a riddle without an answer.
Grief. Disease. Oppression. Pain. Despair. Things that we humans can not accept at all.

"If all the wicked people on Earth were black, and all the good people were white, what colour would you be?"
Sounds like an interesting rhetorical question...
Well, there is an anecdote about a little girl who was asked such a puzzling question, and she innocently replied: "Half black, half white!"
Fifty-fifty. That's actually what every person endowed with a free will (even the "infallible" Pope of the Catholic Church) would be.

Gottfried von Leibniz, a Baroque-era courtier, mathematician, and philosopher, clearly told physical evil (pain, death, grief, the blues, violent deaths caused by accidents and natural disaster), founded on the laws of nature; from moral evil (oppression, warfare, persecution, murders...), caused by humans' wrong use of their free will.

As a teenager, I wondered why we humans are able to do wrong: to untie knots of love,  to declare wars, and to persecute outsiders. I asked my wise and well-spoken Philosophy teacher (who currently resides in Stockholm, and whose wife I met in the Swedish capital a month ago) the question. He replied: "Because we wouldn't be free if we could only do good."
Free will is both a blessing and a curse. If we are free to do wrong, we can do wrong. But if we only can do good, we are not free. Now, what is good actually? There lies the quid of the question!
Let's say, like Gatty's lovers of pleasure, that earthly enjoyment/happiness/joy/pleasure is good/right, while disturbance/discord/warfare is bad/wrong. The snag is: we humans are too self-centered and stubborn for "the magic spot where discord had never entered" to be a reality.
Moving from economy to life in general, we find the fallacy of humans striving for earthly enjoyment while not caring for fellow humans (0r other species). A striking Swedish proverb reads: "One's person's bread is another's death".
 A sad but true paradox. 

The sinner is here called Pandora: "Everygift", since the gods have circled aroud her like the fairies around newborn Sleeping Beauty and given her each a gift or two: a pleasant appearance, a good mood, a taste for the arts and music... Hermes/Mercury, the trickster on Olympus, called Quicksilver by Hawthorne ("mercury" is "Quecksilber" in German and "kvicksilver" in Swedish), gives her both the box, with the interdiction to open it, and the gift of curiosity: thirst for knowledge and/or for pleasure. He has arranged for her not to fear the unknown, so that the box can be opened. She's got both the lock and the key (like, in Genesis, the Eternal Father placed the forbidden fruit -and presumably the serpent as well- within Eve's reach): it is a test of character. A tricked test whose only outcome was, perhaps, for the rule to be broken: it was expected of Eve to taste the forbidden fruit, of Pandora to open the forbidden box. Which makes this kind of stories theodicies: what kind of deity would allow evil (physical and moral) to exist, keep it in one place, and then entrust that place to someone who, most surely, would let it all out?

In "The Chasm of Confusion", whose arc words are "Good and evil share the same face", a few more quotes resound with relevance:

 But... why? A Naacal just can't be evil!

We Naacals are nothing but humans, with their strengths and with their weaknesses.

The cold is necessary. The warmth of springtime is less pleasant than the fact that it comes after a harsh winter. Light cannot exist if there isn't any darkness. Life is precious just because death is inevitable. Everything has its opposite. These are the positive and negative forces of the universe, endlessly balancing each other.

Now comes the tricky part: We can do wrong because we are free... but why are we more inclined to do wrong than right? Is it due to the forbidden fruit and the sin of Eve, as the Church says? I doubt so, leaving the nature vs. nurture debate in place of the religious explanation.

 Is it nurture, due to the individualism prevalent in our culture since the Age of Empires? Or is it because we humans are self-centered in general? 

What's notable is that this weakness is not reserved to us smallfolk: the heroes of tragedy are royals, generals, nobles... even the Pope is a person, and even the gods of most cultures have their feuds and their love affairs.

So: Is it nurture, due to the individualism prevalent in our culture since the Age of Empires? Or is it because we humans are self-centered in general? Or a combination of both factors?

When we make decisions, why do we often make them on impulse, without nearly thinking? Why do we decide to drink on guard duty, talk on the phone and drive, skip our homework, call the kettle black, throw rocks at our pets, become gold-diggers, feel jealous, disappointed, betrayed... even betray others?

Aren't cautionary tales and tragedies overrated nowadays? Aren't they useless when it comes to influencing behaviour?