Belief in free will is not what causes us to love, or stops us from stealing TVs. It is actually precisely the opposite: Natural will presumes the reason for our love and curiosity and passion and order is because of the people we are and the situations we grew up in.
When you compare free will and automatic will side by side, it turns out free will is the real oppressor.
My point today is to help us realize some things which are theoretically possible but which we have not yet internalized as Going to Happen.
Here is a list of some which are very likely to eventually come to pass but which are hard to accept: artificial intelligence, planetary colonization, artificial life, nanotechnology, creations of wormholes, direct linking of minds, and an understanding of exotic physics, such as dark matter and energy and a Grand Unified Theory.
What is automatic will, precisely? It is choices that are made based on external influences. It is the counterpart to free will, the idea that we can make choices outside of external influences.
Are you freed by free will? No, you enslave yourself when you buy into it. You allow the possibility of fault, of wrongness, even though you operate as a physical process just as a molecule does.
Does the belief in free will promote societally useful behavior? It might. It probably does. However, there’s a term for belief without evidence. Faith.
The problem is not with faith, exactly, but with faith that increases social cohesion at the cost of individual happiness.
If free will is patently false, then how can suffering be caused explicitly by attachment to desires? Suffering from attachment comes about after free will is accepted.
If you realize that you’re not responsible for how you feel then you can let go and experience life fluidly rather than being trapped in your head.
transcend (v.) mid-14c., from Latin transcendere “climb over or beyond, surmount,” from trans- “beyond” (see trans-) + scandere “to climb” (see scan (v.)). Summary: Every idea can be risen above, even this one. That sums up what this blog is about.
Both determinism and indeterminism are linked, each able to build the other.
We need not concern ourselves with whether determinism makes us robots or indeterminism makes us dice, and instead we can enjoy the fluidity that knowing our will is automatic gives us.
How do we reveal the true cost of a product so that a customer can make a wise decision?
I offer three ways: 1) more accurate and different types of testing, 2) the knowledge that in this chaotic world some bad things end up being good in the end, and 3) nonprofits that rate good companies.
If will is the faculty of choice, and automaticity is patterns proceeding without influence, then what is automatic will? It is choices that are made based on the universe, not a separate ego.
Belief in automatic will is the understanding that the feeling of free will is detrimental.
Rather than setting us free, the idea of free will imprisons us in suffering.
When one falsely believes they are in control of their actions, then when they fail to carry through with their plans they will berate themselves.
Cutting away the cruft of free will and especially the ideas of identity and control, we are free to more fully experience the world, as it is Now.