Free Will?

Bodhidharma

I was thinking about this for quite a long time yesterday and i have come to the conclusion that in the world we live in, it doesn't exist. I am starting to notice that i am becoming more and more concerned about the route one HAS to take in life.

You know the one. You spend twenty years in a system that tries to stifle your individuality so that you get a piece of paper that says you can now enter another system in which you will spend 40 or 50 years, than you might get a gold pen, then you die.

OK, that is life.That is what you do, if you dont, society will punish you. A good example is a "mad" man. He's walking around on all fours, naked and barking like a dog. Someone sees him and before you know it he's in an insane asylum. Why? Because he doesn't feel like being miserable five out of seven days for the majority of his life!NO! As a society we cannot stand to see someone deviate from the track. If we're miserable, everyone should be.Asylum!For what? To be re educated to be one of us, a thought less worker bee.

Anyway my basic point is that with all the possibilities in the world and the short time span we have here, Why do we live like this? I think the nature of society has killed free will, if indeed it ever existed. What do you think?

jeep

Hi Bodhidharma
I think Modern Society has seduced us into a Humans Having rather than Humans Being experience.
My thoughts on free will and how we live is this, To acknowledge free will is to allow yourself choices and no matter what life brings, you always have a choice about how you react to it or how you behave in a situation.
For example your post prompted me to examine just how much stuff I possess that I dont use, then I thought about what I need and thats a break, so if I choose to gather all this stuff up and get it sold on ebay I then have funds to take a break.
I think we have just forgotten our personal possibilities because we have been hand reared social ones.
Thanks for the inspiration!:D

Bodhidharma

Do you think those millions and millions of microorganisms in our bodies think that they are doing what they want? Do they have free will or are they acting in a machinistic way for the benefit of the bigger picture (us)?

Is there a bacteria in me thinking " i am important, i matter. I'm not just an invisible component of a lager machine". Sound familiar?

egon spengler

societally I think our lives are to a great extent determined. Although as for innate free will thats another question. As Ive heard it depends on whether our brains obey quantum or classical laws.

Goodshape

Bodhidharma wrote:

Do you think those millions and millions of microorganisms in our bodies think that they are doing what they want? Do they have free will or are they acting in a machinistic way for the benefit of the bigger picture (us)?

Is there a bacteria in me thinking " i am important, i matter. I'm not just an invisible component of a lager machine". Sound familiar?

That sounds like a fair analogy. Surly we are all organic creatures - animals - at the end of the day. Along with free will (which I think we have, more than have not) we also have base animal instincts to deal with, which propagate bio-survival, emotional, semantic and sexual thoughts and behaviours in order to keep us alive.

These instincts have been around a lot longer than any notion of 'free will' and even with all that we know and have learned, they can still make us fear that which doesn't fit within the rules; for the basic purpose of survival.

Of course the human race can move beyond that. I think it's an ongoing process of discovery (both of the world around us and of the abilities within ourselves to look at things a little differently) which has been going on since we first arrived on this planet.

For the time being, and for better or worse, we live in a society that has rules and (an increasingly diverse) idea of 'acceptable behaviour'. Your choice at the moment is to either pick a way of life within that society, or step outside and look for your answers somewhere else. I think the only real thing stopping you from taking the second option (assuming it is what you 'want') is those basic mammalian bio-survival instincts which tell you it would be better and safer to stick with the pack (family, friends, people you know and things you are familiar with).

dream brother

i've been thinking about this for a while myself. I've just started a new job, and beginning to feel that thats it, i'm working till i'm 65! But i also feel like i have so much to do beside slave away at work.
i think as a society, your choices are really limited straight away, you do your leaving cert, apply for a CAO course and straight away you're after fallen into a little box which is only gonna get tighter and tighter as you grow up.
As for free will, everybody has the choice to make their own decisions but i think to a certain extent. There is alot of outside motivatiors like money, power, family etc which tend to have alot of pulling power when it comes to making these decisions.
I'm still questioning all this so i'll get back to ramble so more, but for now i must be gone.....not a matter of free will though....

DadaKopf

Surely this thread is more about the philosophical side of free will versus determinism. If, for example, thought processes and behaviours in one person can be identified by scientific investigation to occur as a result of a causal chain, then what space does that leave for 'free will', if everything is determined.

This the philosophical question, not so much how the social world (and our internalisations of it) produce limitations on our actions but, much deeper than that, what are the sources of our thoughts and actions in the first place?

I wouldn't say a watch face has freedom to tell the time.

But Daniel Dennett says that the mind is so complex that, even though causal explanations can be accounted for (though only a fraction now), things are so complex that we may as well just call it free will.

I have no answer to this question. I don't really care. But what I *do* care about are impediments to desire or intention erected by social reality, social relations, power.

But maybe that's for the politics board.

McGinty

Personally throughout my limited life experience I have lived outside the box, I cannot be easily defined into one societal category, however at the same time to live within a society, to get along, I play along the rules to a degree, I desire to fit in, but there isn't just one route and thats it, to be honest we have more choice nowadays then in previous times, and we are lucky. However on a philosophical basis, I am not sure whether my actions are determined by genetics, lifestyle, society, upbringing etc, but I feel free, I feel that I am the master of my own destiny and is this not enough, even if I am deluded, this is what I feel, and if that is the case then therefore I have free will.

Rubberbandits

This point may be quite deviatory to this topic (even forum) but maybe to understand free will we must approach the matter from a cosmological point of view and address the true nature of time. If (like Einstein claims) time is relative and not constant it poses the question of whether it exist in different forms or even in different forms simultaneously (parallel universes). Time may even be a loop. If this was the case then all events could already have happened or be pre programmed, thus eliminating the idea of free will & maybe even proving the existence of a God. Or maybe Im talking out of arse again.:D

SantaHoe

Bodhidharma wrote:

I was thinking about this for quite a long time yesterday and i have come to the conclusion that in the world we live in, it doesn't exist.

Has it ever really existed though?
There has always been 'action and reaction' and learning the consequences of our actions ahead of time would always have shaped our will.
I think 'free will' is a relative term used as a measure of the range of motion you have within one system versus another.
I wouldn't take it quite so literally tbh.

the real ramon

you can live outside the system if you have enough will to do so: God helps those who help themselves etc. - it's irrelevent if God exists or not, the quote still rings true any way, you can at least bypass a lot of the system if you want to, just be prepared to have your will tested a lot

Patricide

Heres my thoughts on free will, we have the ability to make decisions, in the morning i could choose not to go to school but unfortunatly in our society we are punished for this by not being able to get a good job after school.

However its not just society that would punish our free will, i could choose not to drink water in the morning but then nature would punish me by killing me.

We have free will allright just there is the problem of cause and effect that holds the general population of the globe back from using it.

Theese are just my opinions anyway, i dunno if its what your looking for there just my opinions.

judi

first off not everyone in an asylum is totally 'mad'. ive been there, and i actually quite enjoyd it. so define 'mad'...we are all mad if we were all sane then i would really start to worry. sounds to me like you've been sucked into the spinning wheele of life and your just dying to jump off but your too scared?? JUMP for hell's sake...go against everything society has thought you we only get mixed up in this pattern if we let ourselves, we are all responsible for our own actions. there are only two things we have to do in this life 1.Live 2. Die. the rest is up to us, what we do and how we do it. sure i go along with society at times but if goes against my morals it's up to me to stand up for what i believe, nobody can do this for me. are you getting my point...do something mad.. give up your job...go travelling and be a hippie...make a reveloution it's got to start somewhere. but if you've not got the balls for it no point in crying over 'spilt milk'!! good luck:)

BlackSabbath

if i could make a wish, it would be to go back in time and be a kid forever.. everything is better as a kid because you have nothing to worrry about. you're free when you're a kid. life should be about fun, nobody seems to have fun anymore. from an adult point of view now, i'd rather be in a roman legion than sitting on my ass all day to study and work, that's for sure. that's my contribution to this thread.:cool:

Bodhidharma

judi wrote:

first off not everyone in an asylum is totally 'mad'. ive been there, and i actually quite enjoyd it. so define 'mad'...we are all mad if we were all sane then i would really start to worry. sounds to me like you've been sucked into the spinning wheele of life and your just dying to jump off but your too scared?? JUMP for hell's sake...go against everything society has thought you we only get mixed up in this pattern if we let ourselves, we are all responsible for our own actions. there are only two things we have to do in this life 1.Live 2. Die. the rest is up to us, what we do and how we do it. sure i go along with society at times but if goes against my morals it's up to me to stand up for what i believe, nobody can do this for me. are you getting my point...do something mad.. give up your job...go travelling and be a hippie...make a reveloution it's got to start somewhere. but if you've not got the balls for it no point in crying over 'spilt milk'!! good luck:)

First off, I didn't mean that everyone in an asylum is "mad", that is what you are perceived as if you go against the grain by a society that does not accept any deviation from the norm.

Secondly i am not trying to jump off the "spinning wheeel of life". Thats a totally ignorant and insulting thing to say to someone.

So your solution is for me to start a revolution. Wow thats great advice. I'll see if i have the balls.

The path of your life is chosen for you by the circumstances you are born into. Do you think a starving child in Africa can " do something mad... give up his job... go treavelling and be a hippie". No he cant. Only someone with money, and lots of it has that choice, since the vast majority of the world have barely enough money to survive, your "solution" is totally unfounded.I think that you are totally missing my point. "Free Will" is just another way of saying " i have money". The only way to get this money, for most people, is to agree to a life of servitude.

If anyone wants me I'll be in the Bolivian Rainforest with my band of rebels.