I wrote this essay at 3am, after taking 40mg of Adderall.
They say we have free will – we don’t. We live under the eye of the government and live under their control.
People have morals and live by those morals. People think they live a right-minded life, but tie themselves down with rules they’ve created for themselves. We work to live, and live to work. People who follow a religion have moral liberty and don’t act on desire and appetite – they do good things because they believe they are watched, not because its the right thing to do.
Free will is an illusion, but its something. We make decisions based on cause and effect; on what other people have done and what we have gone through ourselves. If we have evolved, then things like intelligence are hereditary wouldn’t matter. But, we use those faculties to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate is not free but depends on our biological inheritance.
For example, when you move your hand or stand up, your brain has made that decision before you even do it, same with a thought or an action. All human actions follow from prior events. The brain is a physical system like any other and we no more will it to operate in a particular way than we will our heart to beat. The human behavior is just neurons firing, causing our thoughts and actions, in an unbroken chain that stretches beyond our imagination.
People who are convinced to believe less in free will are more likely to behave immorally. When people don’t believe they have free will, they stop seeing themselves to blame for their actions. They act less responsibly and give in to their baser instincts. (In case you didn’t know what baser instincts are: it is having or showing a lack of decency, being selfish, lack of morality, contemptible. So the ‘baser instincts’ are just lust, greed, and jealousy.)
People who believe in free will are more responsible and will do the right thing because they live by morals, as I’ve said. Its shown that people who believe that free will is an illusion will be more likely to conform, won’t learn from their mistakes and become less grateful.
Also, believing we have no free will is not the best. For example, you are murdered. Well it’s ok, they don’t have free will. It is an unfolding of the ‘given’. Even though knowing free will is an illusion is an unnerving thought. An illusion is better than complacency. We are shaped by influences beyond our control.
Sure, you can think for yourself and speak for yourself, but do you have free will?
Theabyss420 