The Problem With Free Will.

It was late afternoon on a crisp Michigan day just before the time was to fall back. The light was lingering in the western sky, this pinkish orange haze saturated the horizon. I was driving around the curve of a street I’d driven a thousand times before. Windows cracked to feel the chill on my face, moody music spilled from the stereo, I knew every twist and turn and crack in that road.

The weight of the disappointments in my life at that time was crushing. My teenage angst found comfort in solitude, in the chill of the air, in the emptiness of the open road. I hated school, I hated my parent’s failing marriage, I hated the boy who broke my heart, I hated that I still wanted to love him, I hated that no one knew how heavy this was.

This list of anger and pain was on a loop in my mind like a record I didn’t realize was on repeat. Suddenly, the record skipped. Then stopped.

“It can’t possibly be everything else in the world…” my mind trailed off.

It was the first time I saw myself as the common denominator of all that I’d labeled as awful and painful. I made a decision to understand myself in some new way. Not to avoid the pain I felt, but to know it from another perspective. As the sun set on that day, I felt the darkness lift.

The problem with free will is that it is based on a false premise.

A premise that assumes we are all separate individuals acting on our own behalf to effect some kind of change in our external world that exists independently of us. A closer look should reveal how interconnected everything is.

One definition from Merriam Webster online (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free%20will) for free will is “freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.” Any attempt to discuss divine intervention would go beyond the scope of this post, but to assume that anything we do is not determined by prior causes is faulty at best.

The underlying assumption here is that we are separate individuals acting completely and totally on our own behalf, of our own volition. To use a more mundane example than my awakening on that chilly Michigan road: I wake up and decide I want coffee. I proceed with thoughts and behaviors that produce coffee. Usually within 30 minutes of waking up, I am drinking some delicious coffee. Free will, right? I wanted something, I did some things to make it happen, it happened. Let’s look at it more closely.

Never mind how I came to the decision I wanted coffee on that particular morning (at what point does a habit or addiction replace an authentic thought?). Let’s look at all that had to happen in order for me to enjoy my cup of coffee. To observe the routine, it’s fairly straight-forward: put fresh, cold water into the coffee maker, clean out the reusable filter, grind the coffee beans, measure the proper amount and press “Brew.” Then I get my coffee cup, pour some almond milk creamer and I’m off to sweet, sweet coffee bliss. I could do it with my eyes closed at this point.

In addition to being privileged enough to enjoy electricity and running water (which has much more to do with where I happened to be born rather than free will), every single object mentioned came from somewhere else. The coffee, the coffee maker, the cup, the creamer all came from a store. In addition to everyone involved in the successful operation of each of the stores I bought these items from, each of these items began as someone’s idea. Someone had to create each and every one of those things. All the people who supported, fed, sheltered, clothed those people so they were able to conceive of coffee and pots and filters and cups are all necessary in this equation.

I probably had to drive to these stores to buy these items. That requires me to have clothing, shoes, a vehicle, a job to make money to pay for the items, as well as the gas that brought me to the stores. Along with all the people needed to successfully operate the clothing and shoe stores, car dealership and gas stations, I am also dependent on every single person involved in where I buy my food, as my energy source, to keep me well and healthy enough to pursue these items I want to buy.

You can see where this is going.

Let’s revisit my awakening on that chilly Michigan road.

Everything in my life had led me to that precise moment. And everything that happened to everyone else involved had to happen to them, so that my a-ha moment could occur.

My first memory of school was being scolded in kindergarten for being able to read ahead about the directions to color a house red. That might have been the beginning of my distaste for school. Yet, my kindergarten teacher had a life I’ll never know and she intersected with me in the only way she could have, given her history and mine.

Everything that happened in my parents’ lives (and their parents’ lives) up until the moment they met had to happen in just such a way so that they could meet… and marry… and have kids… and then eventually separate.

The boy who broke my heart had a whole life before me. He carried his own pain in a way I couldn’t see, because I was so wrapped up in mine. He had to break my heart and I had to feel the pangs of a desire that didn’t make sense, so that I could come to the point I did.

In that moment, on that chilly Michigan road, I did have a choice. I could have ignored the record skipping and clung to my misery. Instead I chose to move toward another understanding. Life is full of these moments. But to say I did so of “my own free will” is not accurate. In fact, it’s impossible to say I would have even had that choice to make if it were not for everything that led to that moment.

We are exponentially connected with so much more than we are usually aware. Every single person involved has to be involved in just such a way to allow me to enjoy my coffee every morning. Or to have moments of awakening, though now I’m in a much warmer climate.

The other side of the free will argument typically appears as the defeatist attitude that says if free will doesn’t exist, then all is predetermined and nothing matters so why bother with anything?

We are not individual entities with separate, internal (mental) worlds that direct us to act upon an external world that exists independently of us. This life is a dance; an intricately woven design where all of us must show up to do the things we need to do so that others can do things they are meant to do. We are all unique. We are all connected. Always.

Free will is not the same as responsibility. You are responsible for your awareness of these properties of life. So why bother with anything? Because everything else depends upon it.

Maggie Votteler, Elephant Academy Apprentice

Comments