How Much Freedom Do We Have?
Overview
I believe in what most religions and philosophies say – that we all have freewill.
I believe in what most religions and philosophies say – that we all have free will. Who we are today is the outcome of the choices we had made in the past – including a previous life as well if one believes in it.
But so far, I have not been able to figure out which thought of mine was a product of my free will and which one was an automatic product (effect) of some previous cause inside or outside of myself. The creator of thought should be able to differentiate between these two categories – otherwise, how can you say that one has exercised his free will here and should be held responsible for or get credit for it?
We all have freewill.
I believe in what most religions and philosophies say – that we all have free will. Who we are today is the outcome of the choices we had made in the past – including a previous life as well if one believes in it.
But so far, I have not been able to figure out which thought of mine was a product of my free will and which one was an automatic product (effect) of some previous cause inside or outside of myself. The creator of thought should be able to differentiate between these two categories – otherwise, how can you say that one has exercised his free will here and should be held responsible for or get credit for it?
I often get a feeling that I cannot create any thoughts, they happen to me – I simply dismiss an existing thought and it is replaced by several other new thoughts, and I say yes to one of them. Or I tune in my mental radio to a different feeling state so that relevant thoughts start flowing through it. Various thoughts are knocking on the doorsteps of my mind, and I say yes or no to them – that is my free will.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud talked about psychic determinism – that every mental event is determined by certain events that pre-existed in the mind. This cause-and-effect logic does not allow any room for free will. As anything that we experience is the effect of some cause and that cause was in turn an effect of some other cause.
But there is room for inserting free will at the level of the causes – that we can create new causes out of our free will. However, one can argue against this as well – that there must be certain factors, materials, or building blocks inside of us in the freewill department that make that intention happen or create the freewill, and it doesn’t come out of the blue from nothingness – and is the person conscious of all this process to be able to take the credit for it or be held accountable for it.
Existentialism
Existentialism says – Our Existence precedes our Essence; this view is the opposite of what religions say. The essence here means a blueprint/grand design/purpose/the calling. Existentialism explains it this way – imagine when the first chair in this world was made – the maker of the chair had a blueprint of the chair in his mind before the chair came into existence, which means essence precedes existence. According to existentialism, the same does not apply to human beings. According to the humans exist first and then they figure out and create a plan for themselves. They have the freedom to think and choose what they want (essence). And that is existence precedes essence.
The religious example would be like this – a father gives his son a certain amount of money and a plane ticket and says “you go to Heathrow airport take the flight to Sydney and you will meet Mr. X there, he will take you to a farm there that I have bought for you, and you look after it, and there is a girl there, you meet up with her and see if you want to marry her.
Existentialism will say there is no father and no girl for you – you ring your bank manager and find out how much money you have in your account, withdraw the amount you want, decide where you want to go and what vocation you want to pursue. According to existentialism, you are the result of your choices and fully responsible. Because you have free will – of course within your thrown / limit conditions dictated by your genetics, etc.
In my view it is possible to integrate these two points of view (freewill v determinism) with the following example:
A cattle is tied to a pole with a rope of a certain length – the length of the rope will determine how much freedom the animal has to roam around and graze, and beyond that circumference, it is not free. We are also free within the parameters of our thrown conditions or limit conditions i.e., genetics, family, body, and brains we have got, etc.
But this rope is magical – If we make the right choices and use our freewill appropriately – the rope gets longer and longer and a day will come when we are completely free, even transcending our genetics and going beyond our biology would be possible— but this will depend upon our efforts in exercising our freewill in a proper way.
Rollo May has described this free will in terms of a game of chess. To begin with, both players have equal freedom to make the moves, but if one player is playing badly his choices keep getting limited until he reaches a point where his king is under threat, and he cannot save it.
Let us take the example of the freedom accorded to an average citizen in any given society – if he abuses it, his freedom will get gradually curtailed to a point where he might find himself in prison or a drug rehab center or even face gallows. If he exercises the freedom responsibly his freedom will increase by way of having more money, greater social influence, greater ability, and spiritual powers.
Sometimes what appears to be resigning to our destiny or surrendering our Will to the Will of God as being fatalistic/deterministic may in fact be an exercise of free will. It makes us free. Here is an example from the audiobook (available on YouTube) – The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna.
A weaver sold clothes in a market when any customer came to his shop he would say – by the will of Rama (Lord) the thread cost one rupee, by the will of Rama labor costs four Annas, by the will of Rama profit is two annas, – so by the Will of Rama, the final price is one rupee six annas. People will immediately pay the price because of his trustworthiness.
One night he was sitting outside on the veranda – a few robbers were passing by, and they wanted a carrier – so they abducted him and piled their stolen goods onto him, soon after a security guard came, and the robbers fled away leaving him with the stolen goods. He got arrested – and was produced before the judge – Villagers came to his rescue and spoke to the judge.
The judge asked the weaver to describe what had occurred. Said the weaver, “Sir by the will of Rama I was sitting on the veranda, by the Will of Rama it was very late in the night, by the Will of Rama I was meditating, by the Will of Rama a band of robbers passed that way, by the Will of Rama they dragged me away with them, by the Will of Rama they broke into a house, by the Will of Rama they piled the load on my head, by the Will of Rama the watchman came up and by the Will of Rama, I was caught, then by the Will of Rama I was kept in prison, and this morning the Will of Rama has brought me before thee.
The judge seeing his innocence and honesty released him. Coming out of the court the weaver said to his friend – the Will of Rama has released me.
A psychological analysis here could be that – as soon as you accept something as the Will of God, the unhappiness in your mind turns into equanimity. This equanimous part of the mind can properly exercise one’s free will as it is free of the constraints of one’s emotions. You are not constrained in any way, and you should feel free to do whatever you feel appropriate and say to yourself about your follow-on actions, after accepting a certain act as the Will of God, I was able to do it because it was the will of God. One can find his free will even in this total surrender.
Secondly, this equanimous part of the mind starts neutralizing the other emotions in the mind and starts getting bigger and bigger. This links in with the above example of how the rope gets bigger and bigger.
A modern-day self-help guru Stephen Covey explains this in his book seven habits of highly effective people as – the circle of influence and the circle of concern.
The model is based on two circles. The first is our circle of concern. This includes an entire range of things – attitudes in society, the work culture in the organization you work for, the things your colleagues do, etc. The actual list will depend on the individual, but the important thing to understand is that there may be little you can do about many of these things since they are outside of your influence. Devoting energy to them may be a waste of time – the equivalent of shouting at the television if you do not like a program – and time and energy once spent have gone waste.
Our circle of influence will be much smaller. It includes the things we can do something about. The extent of this will obviously be related to your power.
The key is to focus your energy on those things that you can influence – this will enable you to make effective changes. If you do this, you will find your circle of influence starts to increase – others will see you as an effective person and this will increase your power. Conversely, if all your energy goes into those things you cannot change your circle of influence will shrink.
I believe in what most religions and philosophies say – that we all have free will. Who we are today is the outcome of the choices we had made in the past – including a previous life as well if one believes in it.
But so far, I have not been able to figure out which thought of mine was a product of my free will and which one was an automatic product (effect) of some previous cause inside or outside of myself. The creator of thought should be able to differentiate between these two categories – otherwise, how can you say that one has exercised his free will here and should be held responsible for or get credit for it?
I often get a feeling that I cannot create any thoughts, they happen to me – I simply dismiss an existing thought and it is replaced by several other new thoughts, and I say yes to one of them. Or I tune in my mental radio to a different feeling state so that relevant thoughts start flowing through it. Various thoughts are knocking on the doorsteps of my mind, and I say yes or no to them – that is my free will.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud talked about psychic determinism – that every mental event is determined by certain events that pre-existed in the mind. This cause-and-effect logic does not allow any room for free will. As anything that we experience is the effect of some cause and that cause was in turn an effect of some other cause.
But there is room for inserting free will at the level of the causes – that we can create new causes out of our free will. However, one can argue against this as well – that there must be certain factors, materials, or building blocks inside of us in the freewill department that make that intention happen or create the freewill, and it doesn’t come out of the blue from nothingness – and is the person conscious of all this process to be able to take the credit for it or be held accountable for it.
Existentialism
Existentialism says – Our Existence precedes our Essence; this view is the opposite of what religions say. The essence here means a blueprint/grand design/purpose/the calling. Existentialism explains it this way – imagine when the first chair in this world was made – the maker of the chair had a blueprint of the chair in his mind before the chair came into existence, which means essence precedes existence. According to existentialism, the same does not apply to human beings. According to the humans exist first and then they figure out and create a plan for themselves. They have the freedom to think and choose what they want (essence). And that is existence precedes essence.
The religious example would be like this – a father gives his son a certain amount of money and a plane ticket and says “you go to Heathrow airport take the flight to Sydney and you will meet Mr. X there, he will take you to a farm there that I have bought for you, and you look after it, and there is a girl there, you meet up with her and see if you want to marry her.
Existentialism will say there is no father and no girl for you – you ring your bank manager and find out how much money you have in your account, withdraw the amount you want, decide where you want to go and what vocation you want to pursue. According to existentialism, you are the result of your choices and fully responsible. Because you have free will – of course within your thrown / limit conditions dictated by your genetics, etc.
In my view it is possible to integrate these two points of view (freewill v determinism) with the following example:
A cattle is tied to a pole with a rope of a certain length – the length of the rope will determine how much freedom the animal has to roam around and graze, and beyond that circumference, it is not free. We are also free within the parameters of our thrown conditions or limit conditions i.e., genetics, family, body, and brains we have got, etc.
But this rope is magical – If we make the right choices and use our freewill appropriately – the rope gets longer and longer and a day will come when we are completely free, even transcending our genetics and going beyond our biology would be possible— but this will depend upon our efforts in exercising our freewill in a proper way.
Rollo May has described this free will in terms of a game of chess. To begin with, both players have equal freedom to make the moves, but if one player is playing badly his choices keep getting limited until he reaches a point where his king is under threat, and he cannot save it.
Let us take the example of the freedom accorded to an average citizen in any given society – if he abuses it, his freedom will get gradually curtailed to a point where he might find himself in prison or a drug rehab center or even face gallows. If he exercises the freedom responsibly his freedom will increase by way of having more money, greater social influence, greater ability, and spiritual powers.
Sometimes what appears to be resigning to our destiny or surrendering our Will to the Will of God as being fatalistic/deterministic may in fact be an exercise of free will. It makes us free. Here is an example from the audiobook (available on YouTube) – The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna.
A weaver sold clothes in a market when any customer came to his shop he would say – by the will of Rama (Lord) the thread cost one rupee, by the will of Rama labor costs four Annas, by the will of Rama profit is two annas, – so by the Will of Rama, the final price is one rupee six annas. People will immediately pay the price because of his trustworthiness.
One night he was sitting outside on the veranda – a few robbers were passing by, and they wanted a carrier – so they abducted him and piled their stolen goods onto him, soon after a security guard came, and the robbers fled away leaving him with the stolen goods. He got arrested – and was produced before the judge – Villagers came to his rescue and spoke to the judge.
The judge asked the weaver to describe what had occurred. Said the weaver, “Sir by the will of Rama I was sitting on the veranda, by the Will of Rama it was very late in the night, by the Will of Rama I was meditating, by the Will of Rama a band of robbers passed that way, by the Will of Rama they dragged me away with them, by the Will of Rama they broke into a house, by the Will of Rama they piled the load on my head, by the Will of Rama the watchman came up and by the Will of Rama, I was caught, then by the Will of Rama I was kept in prison, and this morning the Will of Rama has brought me before thee.
The judge seeing his innocence and honesty released him. Coming out of the court the weaver said to his friend – the Will of Rama has released me.
A psychological analysis here could be that – as soon as you accept something as the Will of God, the unhappiness in your mind turns into equanimity. This equanimous part of the mind can properly exercise one’s free will as it is free of the constraints of one’s emotions. You are not constrained in any way, and you should feel free to do whatever you feel appropriate and say to yourself about your follow-on actions, after accepting a certain act as the Will of God, I was able to do it because it was the will of God. One can find his free will even in this total surrender.
Secondly, this equanimous part of the mind starts neutralizing the other emotions in the mind and starts getting bigger and bigger. This links in with the above example of how the rope gets bigger and bigger.
A modern-day self-help guru Stephen Covey explains this in his book seven habits of highly effective people as – the circle of influence and the circle of concern.
The model is based on two circles. The first is our circle of concern. This includes an entire range of things – attitudes in society, the work culture in the organization you work for, the things your colleagues do, etc. The actual list will depend on the individual, but the important thing to understand is that there may be little you can do about many of these things since they are outside of your influence. Devoting energy to them may be a waste of time – the equivalent of shouting at the television if you do not like a program – and time and energy once spent have gone waste.
Our circle of influence will be much smaller. It includes the things we can do something about. The extent of this will obviously be related to your power.
The key is to focus your energy on those things that you can influence – this will enable you to make effective changes. If you do this, you will find your circle of influence starts to increase – others will see you as an effective person and this will increase your power. Conversely, if all your energy goes into those things you cannot change your circle of influence will shrink.
