As the title suggests. Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
Does free will exist?
If so, what does that make us exactly?
Whether or not free will exists has no bearing on anything, really. You can live your life believing (or disbelieving) in it and it doesn't make any difference other than the placebo effect.
I disagree. You could say that the belief has no bearing but the truth is that we conduct our lives according to our beliefs and we take actions and make decisions that are a reflection of those beliefs.
So if you believe that there is no free will, you will be more inclined to let artificial constructs and external systems control your life and propagate fear into you and you will be subjected to the morals and the standards that society has put in place. In that case it is very easy to fall into the mentality that we are helpless victims of the universe and that we just have to deal with how things are.
If you believe that free will exists then you will be more inclined to overcome your circumstances and realize that you have more influence on reality than you think you do. It allows you to think outside the box and examine other peoples perspectives and have more understanding towards people because you are not limited by the constraints of what you think is possible or what you were socially trained to think is possible.
Belief is a powerful thing.
I tend to think we all believe what we should believe at any given moment and we are all part of an incomprehensibly (for humans, anyway) complex system. People struggle for meaning in life because we know we are here but we don't know why. I don't think we ever will, but this isn't a bad thing IMO.
To say “I don’t think we ever will” is a reflection of this deterministic mentality. That is not true. You can figure out your place in the universe by inquiry of your inner self and the unconscious and the suppressed knowledge that’s already inside of you that knows this stuff.
Most stories are the best early on because anything can happen. Think about TV shows. The first couple of seasons (or whatever) are great. Then, inevitably, it goes into decline. This happens because we know too much. It's not exciting any more.
This happens because people become too self aware in a negative way and they give into the pressure of having to follow that initial moment of creating something amazing or something that gives people joy and they abandon their true selves and focus on what other people are thinking instead. It is just another form of determinism and addiction and behavior patterns in modern humans in todays society. Their unconscious mind dominates them and they become engulfed in this environment of commercialism and as a result they lose that initial feeling of authenticity and novelty.
I wonder what the point is, looking for meaning that is beyond us?
I understand the issue that people have with mortality. Life wouldn't be life without death. We wouldn't be born. We wouldn't die. We would just be.
What then, if we knew everything and were also immortal?
Wouldn't we all go insane?
Death and ignorance are keeping us level.
Just take a peek over at the COVID thread on CEPS. They're all looking behind the red curtain too much and they're going mad.
...
Why would you assume that we would go insane?? I would say the opposite. I would say that we are already insane and that immortality is actually the cure to a lot of our struggles. Just because people are looking over the curtain and reacting in an extreme way doesn’t mean that it is inherently bad to know these spiritual truths. It could just be that some people are prematurely and impatiently trying to find answers to things that are just supposed to come natural to them by embracing their physical life and having a more mature understanding of things and resolving our deep traumas. That is spiritual escapism and that can have spiritual and psychological consequences for sure but a lot of people will try to make it seem like it’s something bad or evil and they will use other peoples suffering to justify that assertion.
I used to want to know everything.
I don't want that any more and I don't miss it.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if people are NPCs. I wonder because I am frustrated and I am distancing myself because - if they are - I am too. If there is no free will, they cannot move in certain directions and neither can I...
It is not one or the other. We of course live in a society where we have inauthentic motives and outlooks that are put onto us by socialized living. But we can overcome this by realizing that there is a suppressed self that is buried underneath all of those socialized ideas and that self is more aware of reality and has a broader scope of how things work.
If there is no free will, I should stop stressing and just let life wash over me.
I know this. I've known it for some time.
So, why don't I do it?
We are led to believe that we have no free will because you are thrust into a life which inherently resisting its free will and choosing a deterministic path instead. Our ancestors had free will and they were in touch with the Devine. but in this day and age, we are bombarded with school systems that only value certain behaviors and standards and home life’s that require expectations of us that are at times not reasonable. We live in a system that has a one track mind and so the people who don’t fall into that category are ultimately labeled schizophrenic or autistic.
Science and clinical psychology itself has become a centralized entity that convinces you that you are just a victim to your mind and that you can’t do anything about your mental illness except take a pill that messes you up even more. It’s all a matter of awakening your self to your inner power that you have only forgotten. We are taught to be powerless. We are taught to perceive everything as separate from us. It is all a form of resistance that has been perpetuated throughout many generations up until this present day. We have to train society to go in the direction of authenticity and what authentically makes us feel good to do and we have to train ourselves to go in the direction of nature.
Nature has its own momentum that is constantly trying to guide us towards healing but we resist it because we are born in a society of school and jobs and obligations and control mechanisms that have been around for centuries. That is why it’s so hard to see our free will. Nature goes in the direction of free will because we are part of nature. It can be seen as like a plant that is trying to grow but there are so many things in our society that are put in place to try and prevent that growth.
Trauma is another big thing that prevents you from realizing your free will. It’s probably one of the biggest things and happens to sadly be a common thing in this society. When you are traumatized as a child you are automatically put in auto pilot and auto pilot is resistance and determinism which is the opposite of free will.
It frustrates me that there are so many people who believe that free will is simply not a thing. They attach themselves to these 3 dimensional secular concepts and convince themselves that that’s all there is to life. It is such bullshit and one of the things that genuinely bothers me about todays world. It’s all just a matter of being out of touch with our inner selves and our emotional guidance systems. We have been damaged by trauma and we carry out these deterministic behaviors throughout our whole lives. We are just naturally supposed to grow and progress and do things that make us feel good and become awakened but like I said there are so many things in the world today that are the opposite of that and prevents us from reaching that potential so as a result we suffer and we let our will get controlled by external systems and artificial ideas.
