Howdy. I haven't been making too much progress on my screenplay for the past several days, so you know what that means...time for another blog post.
Today I'd like to blather about a subject that seems to come up quite a lot: free will. Now that's an irritating little term that gets bandied about far too often, isn't it? What is it exactly? It seems to me that too many people want to put a lot of emphasis on the "free" part and elevate the concept to the idea that we have total freedom to make any choice we want in any situation and that by simply making the "right" choices we can ultimately make our lives whatever we want them to be.
Of course, anyone short on naivete knows this simply isn't the case. None of us is created equal. We don't all have the same opportunities or the same capacity to capitalize on them. And that's why I find it a little insulting when people harp on the idea that we always have a choice. Now, it's certainly not the case across the board, but I often find this to be the arrogant sentiment of successful people who like to attribute their success to their good decisions and your failure to your bad decisions. In reality, it's just not that simple.
A crucial part of understanding free will, naturally, is understanding the decision-making process and what goes into it. While it technically may be true that we always have a choice in the sense that we're not robots with someone else at the controls, whatever decision we make in the end is determined by a variety of factors, many of which are entirely out of our control.
Think about it. For starters, our individual brain chemistries work differently, and we have no say in the matter. I love pepperoni pizza, the color blue, and alternative rock. I didn't choose to love any of these things; I just do. I'm hard-wired with those preferences. You, on the other hand, might hate some or all of these. And not by choice on your end, either.
Our inherent, built-in individual preferences extend to many things, including who we're physically attracted to. As much as anyone wants to deny it, our arbitrary physical attractions very much affect the decisions we make about the relationships we enter into. It's why you put up with the hot asshole for so long and ignore the ugly sweetheart. On the other hand, you might value personality more than looks. And guess what? That might not be much of a choice, either. Maybe you're hard-wired to have that preference from the beginning. Maybe you've heard enough advice from the people in your life to realize personality matters more. Maybe you've just had your fill of abuse from dating too many assholes. You don't control what you're hard-wired for, you may or may not control what people are in your life (probably not in the case of family, for instance), and you don't control your tolerance level for abuse. So there may be some small degree of choice in there, but not nearly as much as you might think.
In the same sense that you don't control who your family is, you don't control what environment you're born into. You don't control your ethnicity or the color of your skin. You don't control your genes. In your early years, at least, you probably don't control what schools you go to. You have no choice in these matters, and all of them significantly impact your life. You don't control how naturally attractive or physically capable you are, and people will treat you differently based on your arbitrary standing in these areas. In many ways, you will likely react differently based on the way people react to you. Not much choice there, either.
Laws certainly tend to influence people's decisions, as well. Sure, you always have the choice of killing someone, but you probably don't want to go to jail. Hopefully, you're hard-wired with some empathy to prevent you from doing that anyway. But, then again, you could be hard-wired with serious psychological disorders that drive you to kill. Or you could develop them after being forced to live in a traumatic environment for long enough. Pretty sure you didn't choose that, either.
I could go on. But I won't go as far as saying that we have no choice in anything. There's a danger in going too far down that road where you could get to the point of denying all responsibility for your actions. The playing field may never be level, but it still helps to make the best possible decisions given your knowledge and range of experiences (even if you don't control what those may be). You may not control what conclusions you reach after considering something, but you can control whether or not you consider it in the first place.
And I guess that's the point I'm trying to get across with all this. Due to factors out of your control, you may or may not agree with anything I post. But I hope you choose to read it and consider it. And maybe even respond. You might just change my mind in such a way that I'll have no choice in the matter.
But for now, I'll make my point. Free will is an illusion--partially. Maybe even largely. We make decisions every day, but those decisions are based on many factors that are entirely out of our control. (If this next bit doesn't apply to you, feel free to ignore it:) I only ask that you consider this the next time you're tempted to parade around the term in an attempt to either elevate the human condition or trumpet the generosity or favor of some deity. 'Cuz I ain't buying it.
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