The Illusion of Free Will
The AI overview of Free Will tells us that it's "the capacity or ability to make choices and act independently, without being determined by prior events or external forces".
Self-determination, if you like.
And it certainly feels like it from day to day, moment to moment: I can decide not to work today. I can choose to put an egg on my cornflakes. I can start learning Japanese. The sky is the limit - so many choices!
Yet, in practice, the decisions we make, under the guise of free will, are limited by how they make us feel. There is not a soul on the planet who will act deliberately to make themselves feel worse than before. All intentional action has a positive payback, however minimal, limited or perverse. People act charitably or altruistically because it makes them feel good at some level. Others will murder for the fleeting satisfaction of revenge or justice. If their dominant feeling is so awful as to be intolerable, they will act to end all feeling, terminally.
But it doesn't stop there...
Many of us (possibly approaching all of us) would agree that certain belief-systems are important to us. These are popularly called values, ethics, morals - even political ideologies, philosophies, modi operandi etc.
These are all complexes of ideas that form our personality, our character and thus impact the way we react to stimuli. They are solidifications of thought in mind - mindsets, if you like, held in memory and formed in the past. They are also invested with the person's identity, and defended by their intellect.
They are not easily changed, particularly as some are so engrained as to be subconscious and beyond the individual's cognition - below the radar.
The result of these mindsets - or set minds - is that the response to a stimulus becomes entirely predictable and the antithesis of free will. The individual, wedded to their beloved opinion, sticks to it through thick and thin, fondly imagining that this is a display of integrity. They will defend it as if their lives depend on it. Meanwhile they are stripped of any vestige of free will, which can only operate in the present and never be subject to attachments formed in the past.
Free Will is not the ability to choose between left and right, hot and cold, big and small.
The direction you go in will be pre-determined by your history and the ideas you have invested your identity in. What you do now becomes a function of your beliefs and is pre-determined.
Real Free Will is the choice between Outer and Inner.
The Outer, being the world of effects, the dense, sclerotic beliefs we invest in it and the thrall that it holds us in.
The Inner, being the causal realm of existence, of flow and emergence - of synchronicity, harmony and a lightness of being.
The inner world, rather than giving us the illusion of choice, renders everything choiceless, yet always fresh, original and unique - alive.
This, then, is the only choice we ever have to make: between the illusion of the 10,000 things of the outer world; and the inner choicelessness of the present moment without judgement, attachment or limitation.
I'm an executive coach specialising in leadership development.
I've been an engineer, a manager and a leader. I've written books on leadership and entrepreneurship and I create and deliver programs for senior executives.
Always happy to have a no-strings chat - just drop me a line to arrange.
Engineer and Consultant at THALES
2 天前Takes a degree of wont power not to do something :)
SAS Global Solution Provider Partner of the Year 2025!
4 天前Hi Chris Pearse - thought-provoking as usual! You may be interested to read Determined by Robert Sapolsky if you haven't already, where he makes a pretty convincing research-based argument that free will is completely illusory, as our behaviours are totally determined by our genetics and our experience to that point in time. What flows from this idea is pretty revolutionary, and helpful in dealing with challenging people and situations!