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.
The lack of free will is definitely a bitter pill to swallow, but it is a necessary one and it seems to me that people have to do mental gymnastics to assert there’s any semblance of it out there. But importantly, it’s not the same as personal agency, which is still real and worth cultivating.
Someone had a good phrase about this, along the lines of “you’re free to do what you want, but you’re not free to choose what you want” which I think encapsulates the difference; the first part of the phrase confirms we have personal agency, and the second part of the phrase confirms our lack of free will.
That quote is from Schopenhauer, and his philosophy was pessimism
“A man is free to want what he Wills, but he is not free to Will what he Wills”
It’s compatibilism, there are many constraints upon us based on environment and context however it doesn’t mean in each moment we cannot actively make a decision with intention. It merely illustrates that we do not have complete freedom (which would be absurd, a divine ability!).
Perfectly said