Has anybody else picked this up yet? It’s really done a number on me. Prior to reading it I would consider myself a Stoic. One of my central philosophies being that “The choices I make define who I am”.
So obviously being told that my choices were never even mine to begin with was kind of a slap in the face.
It rings true though. The choices we make at any given time are a result of our genetics, or environment, the media we’ve consumed, how tired we are…
I’m not a stranger to the concept of Ego death but it had been a hot minute since I thought about it.
Can anyone explain to me how the concept of having no free will applies to people who are chronically homeless? I do not mean people in a temporary crunch, but long termers who are addicts or just can’t get it together. I struggle with extreme guilt over beggars, if it is in a way predestined I would like to know.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think this is quite what people are saying. I think the idea is we are all “choosing” the course of our lives, though at times not consciously. The choices we make are based on a million little experiences coupled with inherent personality traits, etc. so in a truer sense our choices are inevitable. This is deep shit so again I may be misinterpreting. TLDR: no, homeless people are not predestined to be homeless.
Thank you for answering me. I am trying to learn something new and I really appreciate you taking your time.
No problem!
Not sure why the question is downvoted. I’d honestly just recommend the book being discussed here, as well as the Sapolsky Stanford lecture series on youtube. “Predestined” isn’t exactly analagous to determinism, more so “Laplace’s Demon”. Chaos and randomness aren’t in contradiction with determinism.
In terms of relating this to homelessness, I’ll paraphrase an analogy from Deternined, where Sapolsky details what he means by determinism.
“Imagine a university graduation ceremony. Among the graduates celebrating with their families, you notice a person way in the back cleaning up the garbage. Randomly pick any of those graduates, do some magic so that this garbage collector started life with the graduate’s genes. Likewise, getting the same womb in which 9 months were spent and the lifelong epigenetic consequences of that. Get the graduates’ childhood as well - one filled with piano lessons and family game nights instead of threats of, say, going to bed hungry, or becoming homeless. And vice versa, so the graduate got all of the garbage collectors past. Trade every factor over which they had no control, and you will switch who would be in the graduation robe and who would be cleaning the garbage”