Imagine that you are in your favourite room at home. My personal favourite room in the house is my bedroom. I love my bedroom because; simply by being in there, I reduce the statistical probability of running into my three-year old and accidentally ripping out his Adam’s apple by a factor of three.
I’m a very clumsy man, you see. Especially when my Troy DVD is scratched at the point of the fight scene between Achilles and Hector — after “someone” has been jumping up and down on it, singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. And since I don’t fancy waking up at C-max in a post-coitus embrace with a man called Bulldog, sometimes I spend four hours in my bedroom sulking.
So, imagine that your favourite room is your own bedroom too. I have been known to get up at 9am on a Sunday and only leave my bedroom at 1pm. My bedroom is a very self-sufficient space. I have a bed if I want to lie down, a chair and a table if I need to surf the net and a bathroom if I want to make wee-wee. I’ve even been known to keep some biltong to munch on and beer to guzzle.
Imagine that you find your own bedroom as comfortable as I find mine. Are you feeling all peaceful inside just thinking about spending four hours in this, your own private sanctuary? Now, imagine that someone comes and locks the door from the outside at 9am, unbeknown to you. For the four hours between 9am and 1pm you’ll likely sit peacefully in there sleeping, farting, flossing or whatever else you do in your own bedroom.
Okay, now imagine that you try to get out at 1pm, only to discover that you’re locked inside. That changes things a tad, doesn’t it?
Now, try to imagine the feeling you’ll have for the next ten minutes until someone (say one’s three-year-old) decides to open the door at 1.10pm. All of a sudden a peaceful experience snugly tucked away in your own bedroom turns into an ugly experience by being cooped up in the room. It becomes a little prison. If you are claustrophobic you might even yell, wail and carry on like a caged orang-utan — behaviour that might prove to be exceptional entertainment for a three-year old whose true biological father may or may not be Lucifer himself.
A few years ago I read a book entitled God’s Debris, written by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. (Out of interest, the book is freely available on the web). In the book, Adams dedicates an entire chapter to debunking the myth he calls “the illusion of free will”. That’s correct, Adams does not believe that human beings are capable of exercising free will.
He asserts that human beings only believe that they have free will because they have an innate need to believe that they make choices in their lives. In fact, says Adams, we’re just victims of the brain’s stimulus-response physical rules. Obviously I’m completely oversimplifying what Scott Adams has to say on the subject matter in the interest of time and not boring you to death. Adams’s ideas may sound like the well-worn, beaten causality laws but they aren’t exactly that. For the full explanation click on the link.
My point here is not to regurgitate what the Dilbert guy believes, but to ask the question: Do you believe that you have free will? Or do you believe what the cartoonist believes? Just to mess around with you I feel the need to point out that Scott Adams is a proud and admitted atheist. It does not take too much of an imagination to see which direction this is probably headed — that’s right, the whole God’s omnipotence versus man’s free will to choose his destiny conundrum.
Using my bedroom example, does Scott Adams not have a teensy little point? Does my example not prove that we possess an intrinsic need to believe that we have the free will to make choices? That as long as we believe that we can choose, we are happy? That it is the natural state of human existence to want to believe that we choose our respective destinies? That this state is encoded in our DNA?
And just in case anyone hallucinates because I’m saying that my example supports Scott Adams’s assertion that human beings do not have free will, let me state categorically that this is not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that I think my example supports Adams’s qualification for his viewpoint i.e. human beings have an irresistible urge to feel that they have free will. It’s an important distinction.
Clear as mud? Let’s move on then. Does my bedroom example not prove that, as a human race, we’re just tweaked to need to believe that we have free will then? I think it does. As long as one believes that they can leave the bedroom at any time they want to, they are happy. As soon as they realise that they can’t, panic sets in. We intrinsically need to know that we have options. It is in our nucleotide sequence.
Now, here’s the critical bit. If we have a natural, gene-encoded need to have free will, does it not then follow that we have to believe that we have free will, even if we don’t? That this might mean that we have to create the illusion of free will to satisfy our need for it? I mean, if our DNA says free will is essential for our existence, then not having free will is not an option, is it?
But isn’t this the root of all delusion? Surely if we had free will none of us would have double chins, covet our brother’s wives or live uninspiring lives? I mean, my dream is to live in a R30-million house, own a Lamborghini and have twelve, nubile young cheerleaders precede me everywhere I go chanting “Go Ndum! Go Ndum!”
And I know that the only thing standing in my way is the lack of willpower to make it happen. But do I even have the willpower? Instead of heading for the pub every opportunity I get, I could spend that time coming up with a strategy to make that first million. Or could I?
Speaking of the pub, do any of the poor sods who frequent my pub have any chance of one day not wanting a beer? What is the percentage of alcoholics who are able to resist their urge to have a beer? And isn’t that statistic proof that, as a rule (versus the exception), human beings do not have free will?
And lastly, leading to my next philo-hallucinatory question: Isn’t believing in free will the surest way to lifelong misery and unhappiness? Aren’t we tweaked in such a way as to ensure that we are an unhappy species? Think about it — if the cartoonist is right, we’re designed to believe that we have free will when we don’t, just so that we are perpetually unhappy.
Imagine it. Alcoholics accepting that they just can’t put that bottle of vodka down. Smokers embracing the fact their tongues will always smell like a strip-club carpet at 4am. Fatties having guilt-free triple-decker burgers in the knowledge that they couldn’t put them down even if a burning bush in the desert instructed them to. Imagine that.
Let me recap all the things I’m not saying:
1. Human beings have no free will.
2. God is a figment of overactive imaginations.
3. Serial killers, alcoholics, smokers, druggies, fatties and hookers are cool people.
(For the record, I don’t believe that this four-point clarification will make a difference anyway — lack of free will and all that. I therefore look forward to hearing how I’m making excuses for evil and mediocrity.)
Let me clarify what it is that I am saying. All I’m asking is that you consider the possibility that all may not necessarily be what it seems. Can you imagine life without free will?
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Update:
Seventeen comments into the comments, the cartoonist is proven right. Most comments are from people debating whether human beings have free will or not despite me explicitly stating that this is not what I was arguing. All I was saying is that my bedroom example supports the qualification for the Dilbert guy's stance. But my readers saw the 'free will delusion' red flag and natural cause-and-effect laws elicited a typically Pavlovian response. This is why the cartoonist calls human beings moist robots without any control over their responses.
I think he just might have a point.]
silwanekanjila@gmail.com
You didn’t need to write this blog, just go and watch the matrix again!
What about the victims of the recent cyclone, did they have free will?
Beggars on the street, are they poor because the chose to?
I don’t know, sometime I think the Creator (debatable, I know) has a sick sense of humour.So much for free will…
Couldn’t agree with you more
Eish! Maybe we have free will but either we don’t really know how to use it properly or the social pressures around us are much stronger forces than the free will is. Bottom line: you have the free will but it is hard to impose it upon the planet because of the other 6 billion free will owners imposing away out there. Your free will is only one small side of a very big story.
All I know is that if you want those cheerleaders, that Lambo and the trimmings, it ain’t your lack of free will holding you back, its that other guy who got it first…
Of course theres Free Will! it just comes with a motherload of conditions, but since we are the supreme beings we are we’d like to forget them sometimes. We like to convince ourselves that we’re in full control of our free will.
For instance i’m allergic to milk. My free will dictates that i CAN drink milk, yet the consequence is that i might UNdrink it again. So our free will isn’t as free as we’d like it to be. its subject to various laws of this universe.
So how free is it then???
Ndum, my opinion on the question you pose is this:
We have free will to choose our actions / reactions(sometimes the same thing, sometimes total opposites), WITHIN a set of circumstances.
The set of circumstances may or may not be present as a result of previous choices we’ve made, i.e. cyclones, but we can choose how we are going to react to it, whether we’re going to sit down and die, or DO something. Again, we may make bad decisions, and have to take the consequences that come with it, and hopefully LEARN from it…
@ Musa
Poverty may not be a choice (I come from the poorest of poor, child of an alcoholic single mother and abusive father), but we can choose how we’ll react within those circumstances. Do we blame mistakes on poverty, or do we look at the set of circumstances and CHOOSE to do something to change it, WITHIN the reality we are faced with?
I chose to not be beaten by it, and blame it for my faults. But then again, that was me – everyone has choices, and have to take ownership of their choices.
Free will doesn’t equate perfection on each choice. Believing in God (or whatever you call your Higher Power) doesn’t mean we understand Him. I don’t think we’re meant to, and to assume we can, is arrogant.
But that’s just my choice, and my opinion.
Whether individuals have free will or not is a cultural/religious question, not a scientific one. It is very old and has taken many forms.
Individuals in a culture/religion that does not preach free will, will more likely think they do not have it.
In another culture, they are more likely to think they do. And then they will have it. Nothing can take away the freedom of someone who really thinks (s)he’s free. It is in the mind.
I know you’re kidding, but whether your regular one day refuses a beer at the pub, or an alcoholic gives up alcohol, is not connected with free will.
The first needs to break a habit, the second to get treatment.
I agree with “amused reader” and I think you need to get another six pack and biltong. Is this the best you can come up with after the long weekend? Eish, you ain’t got it, Joe!
amused reader
today you made me laugh even more than Ndum.
Ndum – I agree with all the things you are not saying – definately!
I dunno about free will, but I do know about free willy. Just speak to your buddy Bulldog at C-Max.
Sorry. That was uncalled for. I had no control of my actions as I wrote that.
What were we talking about?
-K.
Have you descended into the sort of abstract philosophy associated with drunk and stoned Goths at the end of the party their girlfriend left them at?
Or are you actually trying to make sense?
The Dilbert guy is right. I won’t bore you with the technicalities though. It’s very complicated and if i do try to explain, you might end up falling off your fence (almost like that nightmare you keep on having)
God’s Debris is an awesome book – and by his own admission, some stuff he put in there is deliberate BS just to see if we have the mental fortitude to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Free will? Absolutely. We all have free will, and we all are the masters (and mistresses)of our own destiny. This is not absolute, as the cyclone proves and the beggar doesn’t.
But to sum it up (thanks Laurence Olivier): the only thing you have complete control over is your attitude. Shit happens. We know that. But we still have 100% free will in how we react to the shit that happens.
However, having said that – we are still (mostly) the sum total of our choices – from Bill gates down to the hobo. There’s no happenstance, circumstance or coincidence in any outcome – it’s all a matter of choice. You can’t choose where you came from, but you can choose where you are going to. Its too easy, a cop out, in fact, to say “I don’t have a choice”, or that fave from the AA: “I am powerless”. Really? Are you that weak-willed? Or just lazy?
My big bugbear of humanity today is that we are so freaking loathe to accept responsibility for our actions – its too easy to blame genetics, an abusive parent, a non-loving partner. Its bull we all have the choice. And when things get really down and dirty, we at the very least have the choice over our attitude.
Monna, this whole thing was over my head. You lost me at “My personal favourite room in the house is my bedroom” — I had you pegged for a bathroom man, I don’t know why.
Aaaaah the age old “free will” topic raises its aesthetically challenged head again, shall we discuss this over a spot of tea then my good man. (I am on sabbatical from alcoholic bev’s for a couple of months you see)
I have a question for you Ndum, what do you consider the choices you make on a daily? And in exercising these choices, what “name” other than a choice made, would you give that action/inaction?
The point you make, re: your three year old, locking said door, thus rendering you unable to exercise your free will to open the door, is flawed in that you did not give due consideration to the fact that you cannot exercise control over others free will/choices, it is arrogant of you, given how the whole free will concept came about at one board meeting in the heavens. If you dont know let me break it down for ya.
As you well know, I am not a “deep” Christian fella in that I have no desire to subscribe to the sheep-herd mentality that is espoused in these institutions of purported religious practise, however, I am led to believe by the scribes of the good book, the whole dealio between JC and one Dark Lord was this, the DL challenged JC to a proverbial dual.(this shortly after he defected and established his own order) DL promised that if people like you and I were made to choose between good and evil, (read MDC and Zanu-PF) we would surely choose the latter. JC like Uncle Bob, refuted this as ludicrous and in a moment of blind faith in his people, he relinquished his power over the decisions we make, and in hindsight it would seem……at his peril, all things considered.
Free will exists my good man, have some pasta and lean back.
At ease
.5
Eish Sili its true I have no free will. I once had a free willy but alas that was years ago. Now it too is captive. Now if I can just find that bastard who is a rib short!
Offer: Free Will- Terms & conditions apply.
I suppose we have it in relation to the things that affect us. free will to choose how we will responde to those experiences. Not forgetting there is cause and effect.
Free will not quite.
You are free to choose.
As long as you choose what society, religion and government deems is the right choice!
I am a racist because I choose to and I read your blog regularly because I choose to.
Your three year old sounds like a hoot.
The need to believe in ‘free will’ is hard wired into our brains.
We need that belief as much as we need oxygen!
We cling so tightly to the belief because NOT to believe would negate everything human society has been built upon!
I for one like this belief; it greatly serves my Dark Designs.
As you were.
Free will is linked to the availability of choice. You would not react if you were in your c-max bedroom, where you do not have the choice to leave at will. Only when you realize that your choice to leave the bedroom was removed did you start bleating….hypothetically.
The first person to then restore your ability to choose automatically becomes your saviour, kind of like the present govt. Pretty soon the saviour will be jumping on your toys again, singing simple rhymes. Today the Troy cd, tommorrow the Lambo.
There is some confusion between free will and free spirit. I stay in the bedroom by free will, but hunt terrorists in Counterstrike whilst farting from the beer and biltong because of my free spirit.
What was the question Ndumiso? In any case, can I have a yellow one?
Reading through these comments, I’m more and more convinced that the cartoonist is right.
I think I understand what Pavlov must have felt like standing on that snow with his bell. In my next offering I will use the words ‘Zuma’ and ‘corruption’ in the same sentence. I’m offering a R200 wager that someone will accuse me of saying Zuma is corrupt within the first three comments. Heck, I could write a piece with only one sentence, ‘ZUMA IS NOT CORRUPT’ and Pavlov’s hounds will still descend upon me like schoolboys on a copy of FHM. Free will? I don’t think so. We’re all a bunch of Pavlovian hounds.
Drool hound drool.
Great article. I love the cheerleaders going “Go Ndum, Go Ndum”. Classic!
“Have you descended into the sort of abstract philosophy associated with drunk and stoned Goths at the end of the party their girlfriend left them at?” – Alisdair, I just fell off my chair because I was laughing so hard. Perhaps because I’ve seen this sort of conversation unfold more times than I care to remember (although Goth is SO last century – it’s the emo kids debating why the world hates them, the idea of G-d sucks and, like, we’re all going to die anyway because, you know, we’re just lab rats, man, lab rats stuck in a giant cosmic cage without any free will. And besides, I never liked my girlfriend anyway. Let’s write a song about how awful women are. Like, yeah.)
Ndumiso, great post. Please don’t murder your three-year-old, as I suspect even a special relationship with Bulldog won’t get you a decent internet connection in prison.
I think the time has come for those nice people in white coats to take you away to a nice and cozy little abode. You will be safe and the walls will be soft…… The doors will be locked though so your theory will be amply tested. This must have been one of the strangest pieces I have ever read.
Are you implying my man JZ is corrupt!? Huh, huh!!?
Ndum
What you just said reminds me of the day I left my girlfriend’s friend inside my car with the keys on the ingnition so she can listen to my radio 10min later when I returned she was not inside my car and furthermore she locked my car keys inside the car. It was about 23:00 at night and I got help from someone who claimed to know how to steal cars and a few more simpathizers to finally open my car.
I suspect that I must have subconciously thought that she would be patient for 10min since it was at night and I did not mind to drive her to her place…wrong. I awarded myself free will to leave my car keys inside the car without acknowledging to her that “please take care”.
I think the free will idea is purported by the democracies and it is a weapon that politicians have used successfully to win peoples votes (and hearts).
If I am confused you are no different.
Ndum I’m gonna try again
I see Ricahrd dP thinks you’re at least as crazy as you think I am. The world would be a terrible place if everyone was sane. What I wanted to say was if it’s true and there is no real free will then it would be extremely unfair to hold anybody in any position accountable for anything.
Go Ndum! Go Ndum…
I would like to exercise my free will, dress like a cheerleader and chant “Go Ndum! Go Ndum”
Free will …? Nah! never since the first same- looking blobs oozed out of the sea and realised that if they ganged up together on the other not-the-same-looking blobs has there been such a thing. Since then, you can do what you like, only provided you don’t step over someone else’s arbitrarily drawn boundary and get clobbered is about as good as it gets. Wailing and gnashing your teeth about that being sooooo unfair and god-didn’t-mean-it-to-be-like-that is up to you. Your breath, your time, you waste it the way you want to…
Look at it this way. If I have a Lambo and some oke has locked it in the garage and thrown the key away then as far as impressing the chicks at the mall goes I don’t have a Lambo. My only freedom is choosing whether to cry my eyes out about it or not.
A lighter take on Adams is Eric Frank Russell’s ” And then there were none” (http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.htm)or just Google the title. Sort of on the level of the “Hitch Hikers guide…” but if laughing makes you feel better then go there..
Dude i dig you…I love my bedroom!
the power of a 3yr old…