Honestly, I don’t know, in fact, nobody knows, which of our actions
are free. I eat because I’m hungry, something is compelling me to eat, which is
hunger and this analogy is visible in every aspect of life.
Well, when your love-life sucks, philosophy provides solace and this time it opened my eyes to the illusion of freedom because we’re blind by the force and the law that manages us and we fool ourselves every day, thinking we’re the boss. This gap in our perception is what we call Free Will.
Sounds disappointing, right?
Nevertheless, to discover where our freedom lies, we need to look at life below ours, to catch the factors at work. And broadly speaking, there are four factors:
1 First Matter:
Let’s take the example of a seed, a seed sown, decomposes and disappears, while
all its genetic information gets transferred to the plant, which becomes the primary
cause of everything that follows. Likewise, a drop of SEMEN contains the collective
data of our ancestors, including physical and mental qualities we feel as our own.
They’re installed in us at birth and we can’t choose or change them in any form.
Cause and
effect from itself: Now say the seed we’ve sown is peach, but a peach never
becomes an apple nor a squash, it remains a Peach. However, the only change
that can happen is in the quality or in quantity. Geneticists tell us that “there’s
a gene in us for everything, even what we consider our deepest personal wishes.
The inner system we think of as our ‘I’ is a fixed set of qualities controlled
by a program that switches them either to the positive or the negative, with us
having no direct influence”.
Inner Cause and effect: The third aspect
work directly on the essence and the programming of the seed for better or for
worse – e.g. sunlight, rain, minerals etc. Lack of any of it won’t sustain the
plant. Similarly, our inherited programs, thoughts and desires will either
develop positively or negatively depending on our family, which we don’t choose
and the way they bring us up and how we’re educated. Well, obviously we are
helpless as children and all of what we’re is done by them— the constant interaction
with their characters, ideas and values. So, whatever we’ll be is the result of
either agreeing with or reacting against them and we cannot change the laws
that transform our essence or how they do that.
Cause and Effect through Alien Forces: Taking
the example of the peach plant again, this factor is a little different than
the rest and, unlike rain and minerals they don’t have any direct connection
with the peach. These forces come as hail, storm or passing animals and they
influence all other three factors as a whole.
Now, the plant cannot get up and move, but
for us, regardless of the fact that we don’t determine any of the first three
factors in our development – we can
influence all of them only by choosing our surroundings and is our single point
of freedom in the physical world and it’s from this point we can harness these
laws to catapult us in the path of our goal. Under right environment, all of these laws come into play, which
then shapes all of our future conditions. So, it is advised to always choose
the right books, right friends and the right teacher.
