Free Will

A brief stop to indulge my passion of thinking about the nature of life. I have been listening to podcasts about the Free Will and I have some ideas that I want to explore. Usually, I just keep them in my own journal, but I think it is high-time I posted something here and I actually think that this thought seancé was not messy and impossible to follow like all the rest so I will post it here.

So, free will. What a concept. I will start by saying that knowing what we know about human psyche, it is very difficult to “defend” the existence of free will.

But it feels very authentic, I feel like I’m in total control of the contents of this post right now, I decide what gets on the Word document. I know there is a myriad of influences on my “conscious” decisions, I can’t say that I formulated the exact science behind these influences, but I am familiar with the basics of the field. And still, it baffles me, how can it be possible that I don’t have control over my decisions?

The last time I was pondering on this, I felt the explanation that fits me was that I have control over some decisions. Like if I concentrate, if I do the math, I can take control from the subconscious. It isn’t a perfect idea of freedom, but it is better than nothing. Then I thought, why is this idea so important for me? Why do I care if I have free will, even if I don’t, I have the illusion, don’t I?

Then I thought, why do I have this illusion then? What is the purpose of it, even if there is any? Is it an evolutionary advantage, or a by-product of all that we have been through during the evolutionary process?

Consider one second that the free will illusion is an advantage. At this point in time, it certainly seems so, how depressing would it be to have irrefutable proof of our powerlessness over our lives? That would irrefutably remove any concept of “meaning of life”. If I thought that I had absolutely no control over my actions, what is the point of all this? What keeps me going is the belief that the actions I take would change my existence and my environment.

And not in a way that I’m a tool for a higher purpose, in a way that leaves me enough space to feel like I’m expressing my “self”. So, self-expression is very important, even if I sacrifice my will to be a tool, I should feel like I’m making that decision consciously.

Then, one could conclude that free will is the core component to form a meaning of life and the concept of the meaning of life is what keeps us going. And the meaning of life IS what keeps us going, the wording of the phrase leaves no room for relativity, each of us has a perceived meaning of our lives, the actual meaning of your life is relative but the existence of it is out of the question. All of us experience it, knowingly or otherwise. And in fact, that relativity makes it an absolute for all of us, and it might be a completing factor of our evolutionary advantage. Free will, coupled with the meaning of life is the ultimate advantage to survival. However, there is a point I’m missing here. Free will and the meaning of life is definitely an advantage, but what about the illusion of free will and the meaning of life? What is the point of creating such complexity, how could it be beneficial to evolve with an inherent need to have a reason to live coupled with an illusion that it’s achievable? I will try to understand it with an example, a person, that craves for a reason to live and is under the impression that it can achieve it, or a part of it, but in fact, it has no control over its actions.

Under these circumstances, the illusion is absolutely necessary. If there is going to be a need for a meaning of life, we either must have free will or an illusion of it. Then, maybe, what is important is the evolution of this meaning of life is what is important.

I suppose at this point we can say that the meaning of life is what keeps us going. That makes it an evolutionary advantage. Was it always like this? I’m not sure if prehistoric people had this concept. Staying alive is what matters, survival is the meaning of life. And this is sort of embedded in all of us. Survival. But now it’s more than that, is it not? We don’t just care about survival. We want more. I suppose one can argue, at different points of the history of our civilization, different things were naturally selected, like the birth and fall of the Roman empire. It may certainly be that some “motivations” were naturally selected and as we evolved technologically and societally, the cycle of natural selection for the meaning of life became shorter and shorter and evolved into what it is today.

I think there are several things hidden in this idea. So, if all this were true, that means at some point, natural selection and evolution gradually became a conscious process. We knew that we were trying to survive, not personally, but as a group, as a tribe, as a nation at some point. Even perceiving that must be splendid for those people. I suppose during the flow of history, some rejected the idea of “survival” for the sake of it, took to the higher intellectual pleasures like art and philosophy. And probably, what survived in that period also defined the “criteria” of natural selection for the next one. Hence, the meaning of life, once equivalent to survival, evolved with us.

I’m going to stop now because I’m not sure if I can follow my writings. I thought about why free will was so important for me. Then I realized, free will is important for me because that meant I have control over what I can achieve in life, and I can make my life more meaningful. Making my life meaningful is very important to me.

Then I wondered, where did this idea of the meaning of life start? I theorized, for prehistoric people, the meaning of life was survival. That was the sole purpose of their lives. At this point, I again theorized that the criteria of natural selection, survival, gradually shifted. It was physical prowess, then it became acting as a group, then it became the knowledge of how to plant seeds etc. At some point, ideas came along. Ideas, or stories, meant a lot for us. They gave us the much-required flexibility for the survival of our race. This requires maybe another thinking séance but the point is, as time went by, survival started to require different things.

If that were all true, this would be the summary of why we crave meaning for our lives. And what does it mean about free will? Maybe we should start by thinking about prehistoric people again. What does free will mean to them? Isn’t it completely meaningless? They wanted to survive, but there were so many things out of their control, I can’t imagine that they thought they had free will. In fact, our religions could be proof of this, Islam for example stresses that Allah is the ultimate will and our wills are nothing compared to his. So, people must have felt like their actions and plans meant nothing.

To jump to the conclusion, I think my (and our culture’s) obsession with free will can be attributed to the zeitgeist. It could be as simple as this, we look around, we see that humans are the dominant race and they can do a lot of stuff, so we think, we must be doing these knowingly. The idea is also embedded into the foundation of our culture, the individual and its will that allows it to take responsibility and allows us to hold it responsible.

What would a serf know about free will? As with most of our concepts, free will is not absolute and it doesn’t exist for everyone (unlike the meaning of life). A serf would just not think about it. Simple, and that makes it non-existent for that serf. In a serf’s world, it doesn’t matter if free will exists or not, this debate doesn’t even happen.

Then I suppose we can definitely say that free will is an illusion. Or I’m just tired because I feel like I’m basing my hypothesis on what feels like a trick. But it’s not a trick, is it? Free will actually doesn’t exist. We just live by, that is all. Some of us are lucky enough to think we have some sort of control over our lives, but they actually don’t. But they need that feeling of control because otherwise, their lives become meaningless. Which is unthinkable, because we are all slaves to the meaning of life.