Does our inner programming determine our life?

[Pilgrim]

I have been pondering on this.. do you think your life is predetermined in some way? How does this go along with free will? I know those are ancient philosophical questions and nothing new.. 

but my theory on this is that our lives are predetermined in some way, not through some higher power dictating the events of our lives.. but through our inner programming, we will find ourselves in similar situations over and over again. It's sort of an illusion to think that you current life situation could have been any different if you would have made other choices.. because your inner programming leads you to behave the way you do. This arises the question how many of our choices are truly made out of free will? I guess the more conscious you are of your inner program the more free will you have. But for someone who is unconscious of his patterns.. I believe no matter the choice, the result would ultimately be the same (just different  ).. do you get what I mean? We subconsciously chose a certain kind of partner.. if I decided for job A instead of job B in country A instead of country B and I met person A instead of person B.. my life with choice A is obviously different than my life with choice B would have been.. but ultimately it's also the same.. because of who I am and what I am attracted to and how I am behaving.. I would most likely have similar problems with choice B than with choice A.. because my inner programming attracts certain situations and I deal with them with my learned behaviour.. 

how do you think about this? 

 

 

 

[Your place at Heart]

Pilgrim, its nice to think but you fell into the trap of the mind which is overthinking and monkey mode and you deplete all your neurochemicals very fast and left feeling irritated and this can send you back into unconsciousness. The deepest knowledge is insights and realizations. The way you live your life programs the body and the more patterns you repeat the more the body and mind registers and you form new chemical and signal pathways as response. You know clearly that we humans have no absolute free will in life. You have absolute free choices. Your body has no control to outside  atmosphere chemicals, pheromones and other people's emotions and not to mention energy vibrations of certain places technologies and viruses and bacterias,  TV commercials and billboards which all can trick your mind and body shape how feel and think and yet you have no idea in everyday life. 

Do you think its good for you to ask more questions about external stuff like free will and choice and other philosophy when your trying to take control of your self, body, mind?

Practice more meditation and self-inquiry to cut conditioned Bullshit and discover your true self or intuition and will help you connect with your body and mind and with time your body will communicate with you exactly you should eat, which person you should go for or stay away from, what exactly you should do in life and not to say the insights and realizations and experiences.

To get what you want in life, put your mind into rest mode. Your mind is not the only way to think and feel, animals have brains but no minds yet they live successfully and can feel the surrounding nature and intuit when the rain is going to fall or a far distance danger better than any human.

[Forestluv]

@Pilgrim Once you get through the free-will / choice mud, things get *really* interesting.

Try this out: drop the whole idea of free will / choice. Drop entire life story of who you are. Now consider all the input that has shaped you. Then think of all the input that shaped that input. Then all the input that shaped the input that shaped the input that shaped you. Before long, you will arrive at infinity. You are infinity. You are the universe. You existed before you were born.

[RichardY]

Leibniz Monadology would seem to be a metaphysic that allows for a degree of free will. There's an Audio version of it on Audible, recently released.

In contrast Spinoza's "The Ethics", which later influenced Leibniz, has a hard determinism, as Spinoza says as "we can not be sure from where our actions come" and that we can conceive of an absolute infinity, as mans highest faculty. He also says that devotion to humanity and a group is important, and that there should be a welfare state that is maintained by terror.

If we could be sure from where are actions come whether directly from individual infinities or conscious monads, or from an unconscious mind, perhaps basically the same. Then freewill in some capacity would be possible, but arguing for freewill, diminishes freewill, in multiple ways. No ONE EVER starts a thread saying "YAY we have freewill! aren't you glad, aren't you lucky...…."

Talk of programming brings to mind the NPC meme... "if you think you can, or think you can't you're right." Anyway, broadly contemporary Aristotelians have the A is A, The law of non-contradiction (Usually objective extroverted thinkers). Nietzsche Metaphysics, A>B. (Usually Subjective Introverted thinkers) Where as Leibniz, "The Identity of Indiscernibles", A is not not A. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/leibniz/

Curious what more potent metaphysics might be out there something to ground on, or be deluded by, don't care, whatever's the most potent or convincing, to me. Need more powerful crack. I remember Leo mentioning that Jainism has a good or pure metaphysic something like that. 

[Victor Mgazi]

Our life? What do you mean by this? 

I don’t believe in free will but neither do I believe in determinism. With freewill it's pretty simple why I don't, it's because even if it did exist, there wouldn't be anyone to use it or take possession of it which then defeats the purpose of its supposed existence. And with determinism...well it implies a cause (causation), which then entertains the idea of a past and inevitably, a future. I don't believe in anything out of consciousness, and since the past has never been observed along with the future, I don't consider them to be more than just figments of our imagination. 

However, I do believe that the way people react (like the choices that they make) is, in a sense, "programmed" because there has to be some sort of mechanism guiding the decision making process by all entities, regardless of whether biological or technological, otherwise we would all be like stones and not react when we... I don't know, find ourselves at the bottom of a lake with no access of air. There has to be some system conducting all of life, maybe EVOLUTION could be it. 

Ultimately anything is possible, these are just my thoughts. 

[RichardY]

@Victor Mgazi Sounds like Nietzsche, he says that those who have freewill dare to promise. Also says that man is disqualified from making a judgement about life.

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Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

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"The 'free' man, the possessor of a long unbreakable will, has in this possession also his measure of worth: looking at others from his own standpoint, he honors or he despises; and just as necessarily as he honors those like him, men strong and dependable (who dare promise) …

Instead of the idea of Freewill or Determinism, more the idea of a flux. A build up a of "Will to Power" or reservoir of unconscious energy. Similar to Heraclitus that the notion of left contains, within in it the notion of right. Kind of like spray and pray.

 

 

[Nahm]

@Pilgrim What’s a life? Some occurrence on “earth”, some “physical place” where “you” “live & die”?                     Meh. 

Still think all this physicality will be “here” when you “die”?

 

[Pilgrim]

Thanks for your answers guys! I must admit, I did not understand all of them fully. I guess this whole thread counts for mental masturbation, but I am just interested in it and I'd like to understand. 

I just read about a documentary about identical triplings that were separated after adoption and they still developed the same way. Even though they were put in different socio-economic backgrounds, they still had very similar behaviour, interests and problems. I just wonder what truly determines who we are here on earth as human bodies? This seems to emphasise that biology and genes are playing a much bigger role than suspected. And environment is actually playing a smaller role than thought (obviously it still makes a difference). But we seem to be driven by an internal programming. So what is it? Is it our subconscious?