How Confident Are You That You’re in Control?
This may lead you to think you are not.
The following is a quote I like from the movie “The Matrix Revolutions”.
Agent Smith: “Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why, why? Why do you do it? Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception! Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now! You can’t win! It’s pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson?! Why?! WHY DO YOU PERSIST?!”
Neo: “Because I choose to.”
[Some context to the above dialogue: Neo knows what is fated to happen. That he will lose the fight to Agent Smith.]
Of course, we need to believe we have a choice. For the sake of the law. For the sake of peace. For the sake of sanity. So people at least try to be good. What if people started raping and murdering, and said “I didn’t have a choice”?
But how much choice do we have really?
- Would you have the choice to be free if you were in a concentration camp controlled by Hitler?
- Do you really have a choice to be true if you are being tortured? Or if your only chance to survive is to lie at least sometimes? I know very unprivileged people in my neighborhood who borrow money and promise they’ll return it on a particular date even though they are sure they won’t be able to unless they win a lottery. I can’t blame them. Can a person really starve instead of lying? We might think we have principles we live by. We adore our heroes. But have you endured hunger? For how long?
- Can you just decide to be peaceful and achieve that goal if you are a four-year-old with abusive parents?
- Many never find love despite trying hard. Others say they are lucky to have found love.
I cannot achieve any goal (just by choosing to) without luck favoring me at least a bit.
Our environment affects us more than we think
We can influence the world with our actions, but how much free will do we have if we are mostly (if not entirely) influenced by the world?
- Maybe your parents sent you to a great school (sacrificing their comforts) that molded you into who you are today. What if your parents chose a different path for you?
- Maybe your whole life changed when you saw that motivational video you came across. What if the person had never made the video?
- If you are a Yoga Guru or a person who has been meditating regularly for long, you may think you are in control of your thoughts, and hence your words and actions. But what if you had never met a person who knows meditation, never read a book on it, or if you were born before meditation was discovered? Your action i.e. meditation, and hence the control over yourself, was due to the influence of someone else, wasn’t it?
Are our thoughts truly ours or are they completely influenced by the world? Are our characters self-made or taught?
Here’s an interesting (probably thought) experiment on monkeys that could also suggest how much we could also be influenced/controlled by society.
We are smarter than monkeys. Sure, there is creativity and innovation in people. But without all the events and ideas that already exist, would that be possible? Some build on existing things, while others destroy what’s there and build something new. But where did the inspiration come from?
Even if we do have choices, they are affected by the choices of the billions of others in the world. It seems to me like a person’s control over their future, even if we have it, is but one variable among infinite others. And one when divided by infinity is zero. That’s how much control we have over our fates when you consider the big picture.
You are reading what I wrote. Chances are you stumbled upon this among the millions of articles published on the internet. And I would probably never have discovered Medium or considered writing online if I had never met Danny Forest. I wouldn’t have met him if it wasn’t for his friend, Adam, who happened to hire me for a gig years ago and was kind enough to recommend my services to Danny. And so on.
Look at us now. We may even become thick friends. By chance.
You may think you have a choice, free will, and control over your future. But isn’t it true that the decisions we make at any moment are influenced by past events, experiences with people, and/or ideas you read about? Which were all chanced upon? Do you think you’ll have the same personality you have if you were born in a different country with a different culture and interacted with people with very different belief systems?
Imagine you knew the present state of the world. I mean the locations, characters, thoughts, and present states of mind of all beings on earth. Imagine a new baby is born. If you were intelligent beyond measure, can’t you predict the future of the baby just by knowing the people nearby, their attitudes toward life, the genetic makeup of the baby, and so on? There are many, maybe infinite, things to consider, but if you knew them all, wouldn’t you be able to predict the fate of that baby?
If you know a person well, couldn’t you imagine (maybe not with 100% accuracy) what the person would do in a situation? If a being knew everything about the world as it is now, can’t they see the future as well?
What believers believe:
(In no specific order)
- Christians: God certainly knows the future according to Bible according to this article.
- Hindus: God knows everything that has happened in the past, all that is happening in the present, and all things that are yet to come — according to Bhagwat Gita according to this article.
- Muslims: Allah knows everything that will happen according to this article.
Yisroel Cotlar explains there is no conflict between the idea of an omniscient God and humans with free will: Imagine the possibility of a time machine. Suppose you could travel into the future and see exactly what your friend was going to eat for lunch tomorrow afternoon. Would that impact his free choice? Would he now be forced to eat a certain food?
But it seems to me that if any of our “infinite choices” could pan out, there cannot be a fixed future. We would only be able to time travel to the future only if fate exists. If free will exists, what the friend eats for lunch tomorrow would depend on his own free will and that of others and infinite other variables. We could only time travel to one possibility among infinite. Fate and free will are opposites, don’t you think?
If the believers are to be believed, and God knows the future, we do not have much free will.
Most of us live with the idea that we can control our future, don’t we? When the contrary seems equally possible.
What are your thoughts?
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