Burning Questions About No Free Will

[rrodriguez11]

Hey,

I had been wondering what the ramifications of no free will are and I stumbled upon a couple of questions:

- Does no free will imply that we already have a designed path in life for us.  Like a destiny? Is life already planned for us?  

- If we don't have control over how our life is going to turn out, why do you tell us to make the effort to do personal development and to change?  What is the point in trying to become a better person if these choices are already made for us?

- How did violence and society form if we don't have free will.  Seems weird to me that the direction that nature has for us is of self destruction and greed.

Thanks!

Edited March 10, 2016 by rrodriguez11

[Electron]

6 hours ago, rrodriguez11 said:

If we don't have control over how our life is going to turn out, why do you tell us to make the effort to do personal development and to change?  What is the point in trying to become a better person if these choices are already made for us?

 There is no point in becoming better or controlling your life because you were never really controlling it. You ask these questions from a presumption of a possible control that somehow still feels real to you. Try digesting this thing that whatever you do with full control, is not controlled by 'you', its just spontaneous, its just the destiny revealing itself. No matter what you do or whatever happens to you, it was always meant to happen that way even before you were born. The problem is not the control but the controller. Without the controller the control can't exist. If therefore the controller dissolves , the control vanishes with it. 

Edited March 10, 2016 by Electron

[rrodriguez11]

@Electron I feel like you're saying that there is no option for improving yourself; that you may be condemned to a unproductive life.  I don't think this is true.  Doing some further thinking, I believe its the ego that doesn't have control.  Once the ego lets go of control, the higher self takes charge and naturally turns the person in a productive direction.

Edited March 10, 2016 by rrodriguez11

[Electron]

@rrodriguez11 Lets take a ball, and let's assume that it has consciousness just like us. Now from a height, we drop it. We can predict exactly how its going to move with time using physics. But from the ball's perspective it will always look like it was the one controlling the motion and deciding where to go next at each and every step. Now imagine that the ball gets enlightened, and its ego dissolves. If we drop it now, the ball now no more attributes its actions, to itself ( the ego ) but it still moves along the same path.  

In some sense, it almost looks like if people realize that there is no control, they would ruin their lives just by sitting around and letting it go and indeed they would. Because the controller now thinks it can't control things but because its a controller it has to control something, so now it will try to control not controlling and consequently his actions will reflect that kind of thought processes. So you see, its more an illusion of controller rather than an illusion of control.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Electron

[FindingPeace]

12 hours ago, rrodriguez11 said:

Does no free will imply that we already have a designed path in life for us.  Like a destiny? Is life already planned for us?

Yes and no. No it isn't 'planned' for us. Yes it is designated. This can be proven by looking at your history. It is what it is and was always going to be that way. There is no going back and changing it, it played out the way it has played out and got you to where you are right now reading this. And this will be the same for the future. It will be what it will be. There will be no way to 'change' it because anything you do to do so, you were always going to do anyway. So yes, your life will play out in a linear way from start to end. When you reach the end you can look back and see how it played out, in the knowledge that there was no alternative because you make all the choices you did, took the actions you took, and here you are.

12 hours ago, rrodriguez11 said:

- If we don't have control over how our life is going to turn out, why do you tell us to make the effort to do personal development and to change?  What is the point in trying to become a better person if these choices are already made for us?

'Choice' is an illusion. We are all working on a cause-and-effect principal. Even choices are not really choices, they are determined by many many variable that influence an outcome. There is only ever one outcome from a choice - the outcome that happens. The outcome that was only ever going to happen, because it did. But in any case, whether you choose to do something or not, it still stands that you were always going to choose (or not choose) a course of action. So if you decide to do nothing, then, well, you were always going to make that 'choice'. What is the point in being a better person? To improve the quality of your experience of reality whilst you are here experiencing it. But you don't have to do that. But since your experience of life is an illusion anyway you may aswell buy into that illusion with illusory choices!

12 hours ago, rrodriguez11 said:

How did violence and society form if we don't have free will.  Seems weird to me that the direction that nature has for us is of self destruction and greed.

Nature didn't have a predetermined 'direction' for us. Everything in reality is just a chain-reaction of cause-and-effect. One thing leading to another. Self-destruction and greed are just the consequences of the events that led up to them. They are also human concepts. Stars are created then destroyed but we don't judge it as some faulty consequence of nature. Earthquakes happen and rearrange the surface of this planet and destroy life in the process. It is just an event occuring. There is no significance to it. Only we apply significance to events in nature and life.

Everything just 'is' and we just 'are'. In fact even that isn't true. Because we are a part of everything so therefore it all just 'is'. And everything that occurs, the way reality plays out, including our lives that are a part of reality anyway, all of it just 'is' and 'does'.