There is/there is no/ free will.
Do we decide what we do? Ofcourse, we do. We are also
responsible for what we do. We are not primitives decided by fate or herd
manipulated by systems or animals driven by instinct. This question is seen as
an insult by most, and affront to their self. There is though complexities
involved. Is what we decide decided by us? Human beings pride themselves for
free will unlike animals who are motivated to action by desires and instinct.
Humans have intellectual capacity to pause their instinct to deliberate and to
choose with their free will. The question though is: Is this decision really
based on free will? Answer is as complex as life itself. Many philosophers
assert that there is no such thing as free will. It is an illusion. We are
driven by chance, or atleast choices are significantly shaped by forces that are
outside our control. While scientific insight into human neural circuitry
points to decision already in action before our free will -that is our mind,
has even decided. We feel we have decided but a subconscious process has
already begun before conscious self claim the free will. Brain activity can
predict a choice before conscious decision is taken. Indeed, UN has even
created framework to protect neuroright as human right. Brain data is valued.
Schopenhauer, one of the world’s prescient philosopher whose
ideas have influenced thinking of best minds over centuries, asserted that
humans have no free will. Human decisions are determined by body’s reactions to
stimuli and causes, and motives. Schopenhauer famously wrote that “we can do
what we want to do, but we cannot choose what we want”, and what we want is
determined by our nature, evolutionary pressures and contexts, causal factors
beyond human control. For free will to exhibit it must be determined by nothing
at all. Since that seems an impossibility does that mean that free will is a
lost cause, and that we are, for all our pretentions, predetermined? He however
adds that with deliberation relative free will is possible, which brings about
a relative freedom from an immediate determination to action. Even one of the
most vibrant mind Einstein admitted “I
claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as
the end, by forces over which we have no control”. Einstein adds “I
believe in intuition and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do
not know that I am”. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is
limited while imagination encircles the world. What emerges from brief analysis
of these two brilliant minds is that free will is restricted and needs nothing -no
influence, to exhibit, while intuition and imagination better approximates what
is expected from free will in a given situation. So, although free will is
controlled by forces beyond human control a combination of knowledge,
imagination, intuition, and awareness of nothingness, makes the probabilities
of thought overlapping free will a high possibility, hence human assertion over
unknown factors to decipher the nature of reality.
This gap between
decision and free will is the fertile ground that determines how human mind
evaluates the world and assert its indelible presence. It is difficult to know
whether decision is based on free will, we can only intuit, we feel “we are
right” and only know when the decision is made. This decision is free will. If you
intend to know free will it vanishes. The intention destroys the free will. Since
we know that there are unknown variables, indeed unknowable variables -as the
world is limitless, but we also are aware that these variables are quantified
or addressed when the decision is highest estimation of reality. Free will is
what we decide. At quantum level the world is made up of probabilities of event,
binaries are exhibited when we observe. Non quantifiable reality vanishes in
this observation. To grasp reality is therefore essentially play of words. We
don’t take decision through matrix of binaries but complexities of increasing
probabilities for free will to align to the intricate realities we face. This kind
of high probable estimation of reality can happen when subconscious is
cultivated in nothingness, what Schopenhauer refers to as “determined by
nothing at all”, -so that all fiction driven reality denying externalities of
culture, tradition, influences, habits, reactions so on are negated. You have
to keep an open frame of mind receptive to senses, knowledge, and imagination
that ensues. There are no goals, as goals create intent hence influences the
reality into narrow frame thus away from nothingness that compose much of reality.
It’s an awareness of not trying to get anything out of life. What saint Lao Tzu
-a constant source of wonder for best minds, keep emphasizing wei wu wei
-do not do. In this fertile purposelessness there is an awareness that acts
without acting, action by inaction. (Hindu seer’s ‘detached action’ is coopted into devious overwhelming
degradation without meditative quality or deeper meaning with nothingness -it
works in the frame of ‘duty’). Meditation equips to connect deeper nature of
reality, and all the wise people beginning with Buddha have emphasized on leaving
mind in its state with nature. The presence. Here and now. Just be, the being
that is human. Shoonyatha. Lack of desire must be understood from this context,
and not negation of life. “Don’t try”, you don’t try to create, write a poem (Bukowski)
or work your imagination. Creation originates from accumulated thoughts,
actions and experiences, but can near aesthetics of art and expression of
creator in stillness. Scientific/technological/philosophical/artistic
expressions of quality nurtured in this vacuum before finding
practical/objective ways of expressions (this intent of action is the appearance of objective reality or goal, it collapses all the possibilities into action in awareness). This is also how species evolve. More you travel without purpose more
you are aware; it is an iteration for deeper self with reality. Aim of music is
to listen. Art is to watch. Dance is to dance. Sing is to sing. There is no
goal, not winning or to be best, it limits, the moment it is judged it is lost,
loses the presence hence cannot produce. It is a quantum reality. Miraculous Kabir
looks beyond nothingness, the observer is the ego, the observation tarnishes
the reality with its projection. To have goal is to conform your will thus reducing
your humanity -this precisely what systems like market and religion has done. Religion
tries to equate awareness into its staid futile ways by obfuscating the
semantics of faith and fate into rational and vibrant. They create fear of
‘unknown’ and manipulate immense as ‘power’. They degrade humanity into its
lowest denominator. Power creates and controls binary of success and failure, hell
and heaven, leading to predictable and replication of past. It grants
favour/boon/blessing to control fate denying the everyday complexities and surprises
of life. Goal degraded market value system create hierarchy of merit to pander
and perpetuate the system/program without adding anything meaningful. Striving
for narrowest estimation for highest gain. These impresses herd into limited
controlled imaginations hence overwhelming mediocrity.
So how to have awareness
and senses attuned to give high probable estimation of reality for meaningful
response or decision or as Einstein says “I sometimes feel that I am right”. A
society that intrinsically value excellence will be better placed than an ignorant
malevolent one. Russell proposes an ‘intellectual culture without emotional
atrophy’. Intelligence needs to be cultivated, it is alert curiosity, an
aptitude for acquiring knowledge, an open minded and inviting mind. He values courage
as “impersonal outlook on life”, that something which takes us beyond self
without effort, where instinct is free and intelligent is active. “Perfection
of courage is found in the man of many interests, who feels his ego to be small
part of the world, not by despising himself, but through valuing much that is
not himself.” Love, knowledge and art holds possibilities for impersonal life. Pleasure
of being alive and inquisitive to surrounding will by its very nature make it
easy for objective study of situation.
Truth is eternal to the approximation of our reality. It is not flawed but not entire. We can only attempt to understand. This humble realization is the wisdom on which we strive everyday reality and the possibilities, and very likely, awareness of better future, a larger truth that encompasses more. A deeper pattern of reality, a better understanding. Perceptive writers like Szymborska refer ‘i don’t know’ as an emphasis to our eternal humility, an apprehension of mystery that we are part. Camus brings in vacuousness hence the beginning of awareness of human condition, the absurdities that create path for comprehending complexities. This moral vacuum is what modern human faces when ‘god is dead’ hence an opportunity to explore emergent reality using critical mind without restrictive priori.
