Evolution Revolution
If GOD were to get mad at us should we disobey him, then, wouldn’t that make him a dictator?
Freewill is something that drives us to choose and face results of a situation. From those results we learn. What we learn we apply in other situations and face more different results that expose us to more ‘new’ knowledge which increases our experience. We use this experience to achieve what we desire and reach our goals. The kind of goals we set for ourselves determine the kind of human beings we are. The thought behind the goals determine our nature and the ability to stay on track defines our determination. All this characteristics constitute a person as a whole.
So freewill does exist if we believe all the above characteristics exist. Otherwise we have no right to judge anyone for being what they are because they are destined to be that way!
I like this post, very insightful.
Just a thought on thoughts: if the above characteristics are true, then thoughts determine our nature, which negates free will; we are determined and controlled by our thoughts, and the only way thoughts are changed are by other thoughts, which we still do not determine. Would love to hear more of your ideas on this.
This is going to be intense 😉
Nature and free will are two different things. Nature ‘influences’ free will. If a person’s nature is bad, he/she will make bad choices. And why is the nature bad? Because of bad thoughts going on around in his/her mind. Our thoughts greatly affect our free will and hence the outcome of a situation. Thoughts strike our minds every second and we choose which ones to prolong so we can explore those thoughts further. While exploring our thoughts, we often learn a lot of things and those lessons help us in dealing with further thoughts and/or real life situations.. So think of exploring a thought the same as exploring a situation. The only difference is, one is in our head and the other is real. The mind ultimately goes through the same transformation in both the cases. Hence, free will also applies while selecting a thought and free will also applies while dealing with a situation.
Nature and thoughts influence ones free will to enact, and its the free will, that helps decide one’s nature and the kind of thoughts that go around in one’s head. Free will exists at every step where the mind has to make a choice. Be it while thinking or enacting. The actions performed in real life make up the past and the past determines the outward personality of a human being, which often conflicts with the true inner personality.
Which one is better? The inner one or the outer one? The major confusion amongst us is because of this effect. We think differently and enact differently sometimes, which throws people off-balance. That’s why there are bridges or wedges between two people. I would like to divide free will into two types. ‘Free will to think’ and ‘Free will to enact’. A lot of people can synchronize the two and function at optimum levels most of the time. Most don’t even realize that this thing is happening. They just be.. and go about their lives like nothing is important. That’s because they have the ability to synchronize both free wills.
There are a lot of things to consider while living life and these are some of the major ones. Free will to think, Free will to enact, Nature and Thoughts are the building blocks of a personality. Rest everything else is the cement and the finishing touches.
This is a very interesting point, and I agree that free will is based in chosing between one thought and another in your actions. I’m not sure if I agree that there is a different inner and outer personality. Perhaps to the individual who is making the choices they see themself as different within and without, but I think your outer actions will always show the real you–one personality. You can choose in your mind to WANT to believe something. Belief being another word for how you decide to choose one thought over another. But if you watch your own actions over many years, you may see that you don’t believe what you thought you should when you were young. Your actions played out something other. This is what you truly believe, like it or not. You will only act on who you really are….
You may say, but I can act falsely and do something I don’t enjoy to impress others. That is the outside me. I say, this action shows that you believe it is important to impress others more than you believe in doing what you enjoy. The real you is false in this sense, denying your base desires, but it is true in reaching to earn approval of others. You chose that because that is your true character even though it seems against yourself. An interesting paradox of human nature.
In my opinion, you are what you do, not what you think you should do or say you will do.
A lot of people seem to have an inner and an outer personality, I have observed it closely amongst most people around me. Their outer actions and their justification about it later, make me confused as to what to believe?
I agree with you on the fact that ‘You will only act on who you really are’ but sometimes the shift in being changes from inner to outer and to inner again depending on the previous experiences and future desires.
You are what you do is only applicable to the outside world but sometimes in the inside world, things are different. You really don’t want to do what you are currently doing.. What about then? for eg: If a person is a musician but he is teaching students geography and truly wants to be a musician but has no resources to become one.. How can we call him a teacher when he is truly a musician? (Dumb example, but you get the logic..)
Yes, I think I understand more of what you are saying. But it seems you’re considering how the personality is pushed and pulled by environment rather than two different belief systems or impulses that are inner. I think one of the hardest thing about life is dealing with limitations imposed by environment in so many ways, and yet how one deals with them and/or overcomes them reveals character most of all. I am a dancer, and I would have been a phenomenal one if my family had supported that career and if they had resources for training when I was young. But my outer life was not that way. My creative self dealt with this by making art, and my quiet environment gave me lots of time to develop skills in visual art and writing. It’s been a satisfying trade off, and I still love to dance, though I am not a performer. One could argue I’m happier or stronger for the struggle.
Thank You for sharing your experience, it puts a lot of things in place for me.. I understand a little better now.. Dealing with the limitations imposed by the surroundings, in a long run, helps tune your inner and outer self to start running in sync.. It’s very important to have and maintain that balance, else hell may break loose on the inside or on the outside..
ROAS- enjoying reading through your blog and interesting converstions. I know I am jumping late on this thread, but there is a thougt process I heard a couple years ago that has always stuck with me and I find it applicable here. It goes something like this- There are 3 versions of you that exist. Who you think you are. Who everyone else thinks you are. Who you actually are. The closer these 3 get to being the same the happier your existence.
I am a big fan of the book The Four Agreements and it echoes this sentiment. Be true to yourself first and foremost. Understand that every other person lives within their own head and you can not control them. Then it is not necesarry to judge, only to understand.
Again – love your blog and the offshoot sites as well.
Damn, I thought there were 2 versions, i had completely ignored the “Who you really are” one.. 😀
This just got more intense.. thanks for the dough!! 😀
That certainly was intense! If I am not mistaken, you say that at first glance, we are what we think and do (so if I think about eating chicken. . . ), though that may be quite different from who we really are. You have two pairs, one being the inner and outer selves, and one being Free will to think and Free will to enact. Would I be mistaken to say that both free wills belong to the inner aspect, and all that follows from there (Nature and Thoughts, Personality) are the result of the decisions made, which is the outer personality? Perhaps I missed something. . .
Either way, what you say is very well thought out and articulated, and dense with information; every time I read over it I gain something new to add to the picture. Thank you for the followup 🙂
They both belong to the inner aspect definitely, but the inner aspect is divided in two or more parts depending on the context of application of the free will.. It makes it easier to understand the logic of it works 😉
I think free will is at every aspect, because if you notice, for everything we do, we have to make a choice whether to do it or not? Be it sitting on the sofa watching TV or eating the chicken or just to not do anything.. Every thing requires a choice and we make those choices to proceed with what we are doing.. Be it thinking or acting.. Now it just got more intense.. sorry 🙂
Nice discussion. Thanks for putting it forward.
1. Creation
2. Earthian
3. Built & natural enviornmet (patcoconsulting) introduction
Have a great week!
I don’t think we have truly -free- will. There are obvious (and just plain silly) examples like that I cannot choose to fly or to wake up tomorrow anything other than a day older.
But physical restrictions aside, we’re still not ‘free’. The reason I could not leap across my laptop and kill the person sat opposite me is explicable: personal guilt, empathy, compassion and a sense of morality. Not to mention that I love the person sat opposite me.
I could not kill her. -Couldn’t-. It’s not that I choose not to, it’s that my psychology is actively preventing me from making that decision. Nothing other than a drastic change in either my environment or my psychological make-up could change my mind on this. For now, I am a complete prisoner to these factors.
Here’s an experiment for you from Sam Harris, think of a city, any city.
Don’t read on until you’ve picked one.
Think for a bit.
Got one?
Okay.
Why did you pick that one? Were you -free- to have picked the city of St Alban’s? I bet you’ve heard of Cairo, but it didn’t even occur to you to pick that…
Further reading:
http://allalltor.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/am-i-free-to-believe/
http://allalltor.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/freewill/
Interesting thought Allallt..
opened some new horizons for me to think on.. Thanks! 🙂
But if given a choice to kill her guilt free, would u take it? 😉
Depends when I’m offered that chance… I’m sure there are times when I’d really think about it 😛
But still, no. Guilt aside, I still think the factors prohibiting that “choice” vastly outweigh the factors encouraging it.
And I’m not sure what it would mean to make a decision regardless of these influences.
If I decide I will eat cake, even though I’ve been thinking all day “I’m trying to lose weight, there are healthier options, I’ll only feel disappointed in myself” the sensible thing to say is not that I “chose” to eat cake in spite of those factors, it’s that other factors–temptation, instantaneous gratification etc–outweighed them.
All decisions are made in the light of the factors affecting them. It’s not entirely free (whether you get all the way to determinism from this is up to you. I do).
I agree.. It’s these factors that each and every human being is a slave to. And these factors lead every one into complications and the dominoes start to trip..
Complex factors’ slavery = complicated things lived through.. NIce one! I really like your perspective 🙂
I just love the discussion 🙂
If you accept that complex factors’ slavery is a major component of our “freewill” (I call it the neurological weather system in my blog) the big question is, as you say in your post, what is “I”? Who are you?
What if you are the experiencer, not the sum of your actions but the memory that you did, meant to do or regret doing things. You are on the journey, you are not the path.
We ‘are’ on a journey and the path appears as we make our choices. The nature of our choices determine the direction and the results are the checkpoints to know what kind of a path you are walking..
I could not possible agree with this post more! Beautifully said. If only the rest of the world would think like this.
Do you choose think your thoughts? Or, do your thoughts think you? If I were to ask you to say the first person who popped into your head when I say “celebrity” did you choose who you thought of? No. Our brains are machines, they think for us like our heart beats for us. We have the ability to guide our thoughts, but only along routes that our brains have already established, based on previous environmental feedback and genetics, essentially your brain is guiding you guiding yourself. You have free will about who you are, and what you think in this world just as much as you have free will about breathing.
Good point.. You made me think there for a while. 🙂
When you want balance and control in life, you will have to control your and thoughts and choose what to think and what not to think. It helps you to steer yourself in the direction you wish to go and not in the direction of your thoughts.. These days there are a lot of factors that incept the wrong kind of thoughts in your mind. How do you work around that? One of the ways is to control and choose your thoughts.. Thoughts can turn into actions sometimes and those actions define your outer personality.. 🙂
How do “feelings” figure in to determining what we think and/or how we act? I feel that “gut instinct” plays a huge part in all our outcomes. However, I strongly believe in “divine guidance” — especially when my gut, or body, isn’t telling me anything — then I think I have to “LOOK” — but then there’s the question of perception. It’s just endless.
It’s a deep chain of events that affect the outward action and the outcome.. This topic fascinates the hell out of me.. I try to analyze everything and yet I haven’t found the exact layout, but the chase is fun.. It’s fun to try and find impossible answers because the closer you get to knowing them, you realize you are way off! lol..
Wow. Really like your blog, your ideas, ROAS. 😃
Thanks Dizzy! 😀
Recent neuro-scientific research makes it unclear, at best, that free will is an profoundly real illusion. Yet, we have to take responsibility for our ACTIONS!! Thoughts vs Actions. Read Gazzanniga’s new book… … …or the criticisms on the internet.
TD
I am not much of a book reader, but yeah, Freewill is a really nice debatable topic.. To some it exists and to some it doesn’t. I personally feel it exists, let the scientists do their thing.. You apply the same for freewill’s existence as you apply for hope, karma, destiny, cosmic energy etc. They all exist but yet they don’t. He who believes will experience its true nature, he who doesn’t, passes it as as accident or a mere co-incidence.. It’s funny right? 🙂
Can The Divine–in personified form–blame any being for anything, and be other than not divine? Mustn’t Omnitience and Omnipotence fofgive all if it set in motion the making of all and knows all?
Questions on top of more questions. Nice one, Carl! 😀
The Divine doesn’t blame and the Omnipotent forgives. Otherwise there would be no difference between Us and Them. They have put a fail safe called ‘Karma’ in place to keep us in check.. I mean, that’s what I would like to think would be the answers to your questions..