Do We Have Free Will? (and does it even matter?)

A practical heuristic for a timeless debate

Here's what I've put together so far...

If you are reading this, you are awake.

And as a free thinker, the painful edge of that sword is bearing the weight of the more existential questions of our world.

Why am I here? What is my Gift to give? What is my Mission in the world? How do I find the woman who will raise my children? How would I build a new nation? How do I de-couple the legacy financial institutions from policy and regulation? How do I remind the world that God can't be killed (despite Nietzsche's best efforts)? ...

AND DO I EVEN HAVE THE FREE WILL TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?

These thought-loops only produce overwhelm. It's too much all at once.

The shadow of the thinker is the over-thinker.

God gave you this gift of deep, critical thought to create massive change in the world. All the great men wrestled with these questions. But in the beginning of any journey your lack of context makes these issues impossible to comprehend. Because of this, we lose our strongest soldiers everyday to nihilistic defeatism.

The modern paradigm reinforces this thinking.

Living through the mid 2010's meant bearing witness to the rise of The new-athiest Church of Graphs. We abandoned the mystical and magical for quantification and control studies.

Their basic premise being that if only we could measure more, science would be able to script humanity's fate like a sitcom waiting to air. Free will dies when you are a genetic machine running on DNA hard code.

And if there was any way to kill God, it would look something like conducting a randomized clinical study on why people cry listening to Handel.

They want you to believe that you are alone and powerless.

And to play 'devil's' advocate on behalf of the church; holy pre-destination leaves you equally impotent. A material puppet dancing on divine strings.

The world presents false binaries; This or That. Free Will or Fate? This is an issue of limited perspective.

One man sees an eagle, the other George Washington. Who sees the coin correctly? The debate will rage on until one of the men joins Plato outside the cave. A realization of Truth born from a change in perspective.

So what should you believe about free will?

You should believe what most empowers you. It's what God and Darwin would have wanted. And the empowering perspective is this:

Both sides are true, just on different timelines. Let me explain:

We are totally powerless in the macro, and infinitely powerful in the micro.

Across our entire life, we are helpless to the tides of fate. We have no way to control the future. Our only access point to the future is today. With every passing minute we architect what the next will look like.

Today you are the author. Across your life, the main character.

And you already know this to be true.

It's very likely that 3 years or even 6 months ago you would not be able to predict exactly where you are today.

Conversely, as you read this, you know where you will be in 2 hours, and what your plans for this evening are.

This truth is powerful. When you recognize this, all anxieties about tomorrow fall away, allowing you to fully embody the here and now.

Take total control and responsibility of how you live today. Allow life to surprise you with all the unexplainable blessings of tomorrow. Stack each day like a well placed brick, and you will eventually wake up in the castle of your dreams.

'Let go and let God' as it were.

Thanks for reading, share if you feel called. Otherwise talk soon.

Be The Renaissance.