Our ancestors fought for centuries, to ensure that we live the best we can and there have been people and communities who seek to take that life away from us. And we fought them off. Most countries now are independent, have a serving government without oppression from foreign powers.
People are free to do what and who they want; people are free to pick out their preference for food and get the lifestyle they imagined.
But does that constitute freedom?
We are hemmed into strict schedules; we show up for work at a definite hour, go through the same tired routine and follow the same path as yesterday. We are bound by laws and watched by the elite who note every move we make. We are fed processed products and forced to take in what they give us. Is this what it means to live; to be free?
Are we free?
Starting from the aisle placement at the convenience store to the billion-dollar oil trade between some conglomerate and the government, everything we do is influenced by what surrounds us. There are people who understand this influence and act as puppeteers to the elite of society. From the innocent-looking bag of crisps to the espionage mission against China, all action we take is targeted to others, to influence them; to bend them to our will.
Even in the sincerest of actions, there rests an ulterior motive to what we are doing. These motives are instinctual, and we may fail to comprehend their reality, but they dictate our lives. They govern how we regard the world and how we act on it.
Even down to one of our most personal aspects of existence: Our free will. That is up for debate.
Does free will exist? Or is it a game our brain plays with us, forcing pre-made decisions on us to make us think it was our “own”
For centuries, philosophers and theologians have almost unanimously held that civilization as we know it depends on a widespread belief in free will. Our codes of ethics assume that we can freely choose between right and wrong. The influential enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant reaffirmed this link between freedom and goodness. If we are not free to choose, he argued, then it would make no sense to say we ought to choose the path of righteousness. Today, the assumption of free will runs through every aspect of the society, permeates popular culture, and underpins the existence of this civilization.
What if that were to erode?
After Darwin published his book on evolution, his cousin, Sir Galton, pondered over the implications of the discovery. If we had evolved, our mental faculties like intelligence must be transformed through genetics. But we use those faculties, some of us better than others, to decide. That would imply our ability to choose fate is not free, but hereditary.
This argument launched a debate that kindled an interest in diving into the very core of our being; to the center of our existence.
In recent decades, there have been studies and experiments that have shown the buildup of electrical activity in our brains before we are conscious of deciding. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post-hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.
This century-long debate stands even to this day, and I fear the day we find our answer is the day we will have known too much. Our governments, our resources, the commonwealth, everything will be in jeopardy; for the very foundation of what we believe to be us will be shattered.
I fear that will be the day; we unravel the world as we know it.
So, I leave you with a question:
Is it really you?
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