Freedom is not a choice

Freedom is the biggest lie, the greatest illusion of all.  Whatever you might think, no matter how sure you are about your own perception - I can assure you, you are probably wrong about it. And it doesn’t matter at all.

Science, theory, logic, reason
Wait, who is this crazy guy on the internet telling me, that the decision, to click on this post to read and think about it, was all but my own? When you are thinking “Hey, I know, it was my idea to read this and I absolutely could have decided otherwise”, I’d recommend, to reconsider this position.


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There is, of course, a lot of science behind this (and there’s so much more). Hundreds of studies carried out by an army of psychologists and neurologists. When I started studying psychology a few years ago, I was already quite familiar with a lot of philosophical theories about free will and freedom of choice. But until then I lacked the science-backed knowledge to connect philosophy and science in a logical and therefore useful way. Until today there is, of course, not an absolute consensus in the scientific community, whether free will exists or not – but most researchers who are working on this topic, seem to be quite sure, that it is indeed becoming a lot harder to ride into battle with a waving flag signalling “I have free will”.
Edit: To be really clear about this - this does not mean, there is no need for further discussion and research, quite the contrary. Science thrives through proving and disproving hypotheses and there is still plenty of opportunity in doing so.
If you are easily getting bored by reading a lot (though I hope not, otherwise my own writing would be quite pointless for you as well), you can just skip the scientific explanations and follow me into a small thought experiment.
Imagine for a second, how free will needs to work to be actually “free”. Free therefore is equivalent to “acausal” – something which happens without any trace of a prior cause. It just happens to be. Your own physiology, your experiences, your surroundings – that’s all irrelevant to a decision-making “free will”, because it can choose to be affected by those things – or not. When I started to think about this, I stumbled quite fast around the point, where it just felt unconvincing. It didn’t feel right. My own experience was, that my mind, my feelings, everything I did changed everyday a little bit – affected by the books I read, the people I met, situations I got involved. I couldn’t fit a metaphysically concept of “free will” into the logic of my daily live anymore. If there really was something “free” inside my, I could neither grasp nor control it. I could try to convince myself, If I’m drinking this whole bottle of whisky there, I won’t be drunk at all, because my free will “chose” so. The reasoning behind this was far from convincing. Maybe I got the concept of free choice wrong, I don’t know. Feel free to enlighten me there.
Anyway, for me, I’m not only interested in the science of my brain, but how those findings may affect society. Personally, I think neurologists are about to create another “insult to humanity”, which might be the biggest one of all so far: There is no choice, no free will, no so-called soul.   

Don’t be insulted, be excited
But this should neither scare nor insult you. Your brain possesses incredible powers. One of the most fascinating ones is the ability to trick itself into believing almost anything, which ensures the security of its own self-perception. In short: Your brain has a desperate need to preserve your so-called self, your ego. Everything which dares to threaten the image of your awesome personality, must be framed in a certain, self-reassuring way. Your brain despises threats to your ego and will do anything it deems necessary to give you the amazing feeling of power and control. No matter what I’m writing here, what scientist will tell you in the future – your brain, your mind just doesn’t care. It’s completely irrelevant for your daily live. Even if you try to remind yourself constantly about “not having a real choice”, your brain will ignore it eventually. For years I’ve been convinced, that the choices I make are “only” the result of my own physiology combined with the socio-economic system of influences I grew up and live in. But against popular believes I’ve not suddenly become a violent criminal who doesn’t care about societies rules and laws anymore. Quite the contrary. If anything, it enabled me to see human interaction in a different, I’d say a kinder way. I became way less judgemental about other ones. Of course, I am still sometimes prone to my own emotions and might react out of mere impulse in ways, I’m regretting later deeply. But almost every time I start reflecting about those moments in my mind, I can see what I could have done differently and next time I might be able to do so.  
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The awareness about the inability of conscient choice can be incredibly helpful. It enables you to look behind the mere action of one person, look past the fast judgment you were about to make and instead trying to understand the causes of the action. Maybe he was a jerk, because someone just stole his car and he was angry and frustrated about it. This kind of awareness can give you the ability to break the circle, to “choose” (you get the irony) not to get offended by jerks, but to smile instead. They don’t necessarily treat you like shit because they want to, but they have no other choice in doing so.    

Freedom, guilt and responsibility  
I’m aware, the other guy had no other choice than to act in the way he did. As well as I had no other choice than to punch him in the face for doing so. Some might argue, that without free will there will be no way to hold people accountable for their actions at all.
You are wrong again.  
There’s a huge difference between the ideas of guilt and responsibility. Guilt means, we’re thinking, the acting person really had a choice to act otherwise. Responsibility, on the other hand, is about the reaction as a society regarding those actions. If you are starting a killing spree, because you’ve suffered severe brain damage by accident or disease, the society does not need to endure your behaviour until it’s finally over. Not at all. Our wish for well-being and survival is something worth defending. Although we may now know, that you had no other choice than to start murdering people – we, therefore, have no other choice than to protect ourselves against you. If we choose to imprison you, we might find a way to cure your behaviour and integrate you into the society again. If not, we will need to separate you, to prevent any further harm. That’s the difference between guilt and responsibility. Neither of us has a choice – but we can still hold people accountable for their actions.
This is also the reason, why abolishing the concept of free will, will not lead to the end of society and law as we know it. As I’ve already pointed out, our daily lives are not really affected by those kinds of theories and research. Humans are a lot of things but being able to use logical reasoning all the time, is not one of them. Otherwise we would quit smoking and drinking immediately.    

Some last words
But that’s alright. There is no need to change your life dramatically over every bit of new piece of information you acquire. Sometimes it can be quite fun just to think about fascinating theories, ideas and problems.
I always like the possibility, to write about my own thoughts and the knowledge I get by reading all kinds of different stuff. This is my first post on steemit so far and I guess, there will be a lot to follow. Mostly I’m going to write about philosophy, politics, science and whatever I deem to be interesting. As you may already have deducted: My native language is not English, so don’t be too harsh about any kinds of mistakes – I’m trying not to put too many into my articles 😊
Feel always free to discuss my ideas and share your own thoughts about the things I’m writing about. Nobody is omniscient and if we all walk away a little bit smarter than before, we’ll have achieved a lot.   

Thanks for reading!
Ego