A Different Approach: The Great Void Donut
Though we live in an age beyond (certain) ultimates and absolutes, there remain yet a few things which may remain absolute despite modern anti-absolutism. There exists, for example, the world as it really is, regardless of our subjective experiences, norms, descriptions, or even various abilities to sense it.
Now, what if I were to tell you that it is my intuition that the universe is even more than what it seems, yet is still made up entirely of people... and, of course, the countless experiences we live through. (If you're rolling your eyes as this point considering this all highly speculative, I bid you simply consider it at least as a possibility.) Every one of us is (at minimum) a perspective that obtains in some universe (at least presumably, insofar as we can intuit). Additionally, we as human beings play, by at least the very act of identifying difference in the world, some part in its creation. In other words, as we are affected by the world around us, we substantiate it, cause it to obtain, as literally as possible, in our very responding to it - our defining it as some component of our cognitive perception.
So, perhaps we are the products of a truly fully determined world, as some would suggest, but in some very important ways we are also unmistakably actualizers of it. And as we see the potentials which lay before us, we literally see the limits of our ability to control its actualization, regardless of what ontology explains it (in other words, free or not). The grandeur of that limit (which is, by definition, infinite in both the determination of definition and action) should suffice for considering it, if not "legitimately free," at minimum very nearly infinitely redefinable. For me, this is enough: the challenge posed by the near limitlessness of definition seems sufficient for considering it at least practically free regardless of some "ultimate" determination (pun intended). For action, consider the following: there is nothing which ultimately forces anyone to do anything (drugs, perhaps, excepted in some cases) - "force" can always be conceived of as some set of counterfactuals (do it, orelse). You can always choose the else. Additionally, you can enact your will in a legitimate infinitude of ways: you can type slowly or quickly, the speed of which corresponding to some legitimately different action (or not at all, or do something completely different, or something in conjunction with, each of these legitimizing a difference in action of their own). In addition to this, you are capable of conceiving of some way of constituting legitimate differences in action that have hitherto never been conceived of before (throwing a blue spoon with your full name written on it while typing, for example). All of these things should help to convey the limitlessness of the variety of action we are capable of.
I know what you're thinking though: "but aren't these only mere subtleties that can be engaged in within a broader deterministic universe?" Two refutations: 1) no because the infinitesimal is a legitimate infinity rivaling all others and 2) no because each of these constitutes some different legitimate change in physicality (which, from the determinist's view, must each constitute legitimately different deterministic universes). On top of that your ability to act upon the subtleties of your will at minimum seems to be instantiable spontaneously and without cause. "But isn't that just pushing the problem back one step, serving only to further obscure it?" Maybe, but I'm not so sure. Regardless, even if so, at this point it should be pushed back to the point of relative irrelevance if not absolute. Yes, we may not really have free will, but the degree to which we seem to be free remains astonishingly profound.
Which brings me to the "the great void donut" theory, which is basically the ontology of this perspective.
Imagine you could see a great vortex extended before you, like say in "outer space," containing all the possibilities of the future. In front of you the possibilities of the future expand the further in time you look, behind you lies the past. But you're here in the now beholding this continuum while experiences and time filter in through the keyhole of your perspective... In front, you see the unactualized potentials of the real which create this ever-stretching vortex of possibility that eventually fades into an infinite darkness on far that seems to surround and even contains you on all sides as it spirals outward with the shape of that vortex, you at its center the very keyhole of actualization... Inside the vortex is not only everything in the physical universe as it condenses into the singularity of the actualization of your existence within it, but all possible future universes as well as they extend before you as they multiply exponentially. Then, looking behind, you see the singularity of the existence you have actualized, having pulled all these possibilities together through the keyhole of your being, eventually becoming a single chain of actuality, extending back into the void from whence you came.... In every direction, then, the void of nonactualization surrounds the singularity of your existence, creating one very large, but singular void donut.
But as you continue to consider it, you realize that you also continue to move through it, and that what you really considered in front of you - this huge realm of bounded possibility - seems better described as being below: the void - the limit of all possible universes that you could actualize being finite as compared to the limit of the possibilities of the universe that you are a part of - indeed your very own end, now looks like little more than the ground you're helpless but to fall into - the inevitability of your own eventual nonexistence and inability to actualize anything; you at its center continually pulling it into being even as you read this.
And you can look around and see it all happening... You, at the center of the great void donut that is your universe, your perspective literally shaping the world beyond the keyhole... This is your experience - the real as your consciousness defines it by its very nature.
And you realize that it almost seems like you're the one putting the world together in front of you, like some crazy typewriter frantically stamping actuality into existence - the otherwise unactualized story of your being - dialing the world into place, perhaps just some machine of math and madness; living this ludicrous dream that you never realized was a dream: you perhaps just this fantasy, just this fiction, just this... beautiful lie... A ribbon you'd tied long ago into this universe to create it. Its own kind of sweetness all your own... And as you peer back into that singularity, you can almost see yourself tied there on that infinite tree of actualized possibility. And it contains everything. And it is previous. And yet it continues out in front of you as you dial it into being: you can see it stopping there in front of you - your own life and demise just a mimicry of the universe's as it all falls towards its own inevitable end of all existence... Until peering back into the world in front of you within the vortex to see... the actual as it's happening: the words back on this page. As authored by another out in this world across from you who sees the same thing - the same perspective, the same inevitabilities, the same great void donut, yet just another ribbon on that same trunk of actuality... Eventually, even perhaps the same as you, undifferentiated, long long ago... And the same for the next man. And the next. And the next...
It's as if each of us were black holes in space devouring all experiences and potentialities in physicality with our very existence, dialing the actual into being through our being alone as we define it. Yet all sharing the same beginning, and indeed the same end - all falling out of the sky.
So that when we look at one another and the great void donut which envelops us all we often simply say: savor it. Just savor every last thing. Because every second in every minute of every universe which ever actualizes only exists one time. And if not, this is your last ride on this roller coaster until your universe comes all the way back within it. However, that could well be an infinite amount of time... by definition, even!
It is, then, as I fall into the actuality of existence with you that I make this universal suggestion: don't simply enjoy the ride, but consider that this is the universal predicament of actualization. And in light of that fact, I bid you not just fall or enjoy the falling, but consider the universe into which you fall - the very same one you affect/create/actualize as we all do - and, instead of falling for your own enjoyment, fall beautifully, so as to actualize the world containing the best possibilities we can as experiencers of actualization, universes unto ourselves, all of whom play a role in the creation in the great void donut of this world...
