Most people believe that they have it. Events happen in our world because of prior causes — there is always a reason if you go deep enough— those causes could just be random and beyond anyone’s control. They just come at us. But when we choose something, is there anything such as free will?
All of our thoughts, conscious, desire and actions are made of neurophysiological substances that we are not conscious and can not control. You did not pick your parents; you did not pick your genes; you did not pick the environment that you were born, but these pieces of stuff determine who you are in each moment and what you are going to do next. And if you think you have a soul inside your body deep down, you did not choose your soul either. Yet, most people would think that they have free will. If you could go back to any event where you had to choose between two choices, you might think you would have chosen differently to get a better result. But there is no reason to believe that this would be true. There is no experiential reason also that would hold it true. Most people are caught in between their subjective experience and objective reality and the physical causes that arise in life: determinism and randomness.
Randomness won’t give any basis of free will. Some people won’t like this idea at all. They might be disturbed by this idea. This could be because of their vulnerability of affecting their whole belief template -and it is okay. But, if you lose the idea that there is free will, it might have positive consequences as it is a matter of truth and reality. If you are getting psychologically destabilized and things are uncomfortable then please do not read ahead. But I think the vast majority would find the below stuff helpful
The goal is to make you experience (not by any charming persuasion and charismatic influence but by the subjective reality of experience) that there is no free will and there is a subjective reality — no matter how the way subjective experience occurs both by the prior causes or mere randomness, your experience of living on the planet do not show freewill. YOU, the conscious witness and determiner of your own life, are not the author of your thoughts, actions and tensions. They simply arise in your consciousness just by randomness. It just needs to be noticed. Now there is a question of choosing voluntary action such as you doing the stuff and voluntary inaction such as your muscle cramp — you can’t choose it. But doing voluntary actions are not free will, you are confined in your behaviour and thought the pattern.
Let’s consider how thoughts arise. If you pay attention, you would see that they just appear inside your consciousness much like you must be thinking about what is going on right now. Now if you think you are blank and the next thing you read would come to your mind. What would be the next thought that you would have — you do not know. But, your thoughts would determine your goal and whether you have met them. This thought coupled with the fact just makes your rational judgement and this makes you human. Most people think that they are the thinker of their thought and they are the author — but there is no thinker but there are thoughts just pepping out of randomness or of prior causes.
The feeling that there is a thinker in addition to the flow of thoughts makes the thoughts just appear into the consciousness. You can not choose what you are going to think. Suppose, you would not be able to control the next thought that you think. If you were able to do so, it would mean that you need to think them before you think them. Where is your freedom of will? What the hell!!
You did not choose the previous thing as well. What is this? You did not choose the past few thoughts. You did not decide to be confused. You did not create this state of mind. And if you are just bored of reading this article, you did not choose this too. Everything is just happening in this case and so is in every case. There is no free will. There is just stuff happening in randomness backed by prior causes encoded in the memory.
Many people might find this dis-empowering. But it does not have to be!
Think of the last book that you have read — good or bad — it does not matter. Choose any. Just pay attention to the experience of choosing is like. And this is as free a decision as you are ever going to make in your life. You are free, completely. Choose……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Now do it for a few times .……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Did you find any free will? If it is not here, it isn’t anywhere.
You must have not chosen — “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”. In your decision
Now do this again.. If you are like me, you might think of three to four books and choose one from it. Let’s suppose “Ignited Minds”, “The Fall” or “Eleven Minutes”. And if you are a Camus fan you would choose “The Fall”. So you go back and forth between three and four options and settle on one without any basis. But without any reason why? You might have a makeup story to tell about it but why you choose to be that way is not really clear to you. When people are experimentally manipulated in the world, the manipulator and the manipulated have different stories to tell themselves why they did and what they did — it barely reaches to the actual decision point of the individual who made the decision. Even if I exactly know why I picked one book over another, I am in no position to say why I picked it in the first place. I hell sure did not choose it.
The fundamental fact of our experience is we are not making this decision but witnessing this decision. When I asked to name a book, you had no control what name would appear inside your head. If you pay close attention to how thoughts arise, you have no control of those thoughts and the results are deterministic of events just occurring in the world in randomness. This has implications both for views of ourselves and for our perception of other people. It also de-establishes the self or the ego. The de-establishment of “one type” riding you always could be a liberating feeling.
IF Freewill is not there then what is there — there is luck — both good and bad. And what you make of your luck is more luck!!
You did not choose your social class; you did not choose your gene; you did not choose your social influence affecting you; even the effort and work to make way for your life is also luck. Most people would not be able to accept this just because this single insight is the antidote to arrogance and hate, and profound basis of compassion living in a less lucky situation than you are living.
Reasoning is not free because it makes us salves within us. It matters the daily chores and societal construct. Maths and grammar rules are rules and from there reasoning comes. Are you free not to accept that? No. Whether you understand is not under your control. ANYONE WHO OPPOSES THIS REASONING WILL BE IN TROUBLE AS THE WORLD WILL OPPOSE HIM IN EVERY POINT.
You are part of reality. Where is the freedom in this? Your beliefs are formed in the perfect crucible of prior causes. Now if you think I am a lunatic, you did not choose this. The universe is just pulling the strings and you were conditioned to think that way.
But there is one thing that can change this conditioned belief is knowledge. And if the change can not be accomplished with knowledge, that means some law of nature is preventing it. So knowledge is literally power. And what we do to ourselves on the basis of ignorance might destroy us. With or without free will, beliefs have consequences and living an examined life would be putting those beliefs in order and the belief about freewill is no exception.
reference — Swami Vivekananda’s writings, Sam Harris -Freewill
