Some Reflections on Free Will

I find the concept of free will to be an interesting one, and like any interesting topic, there are arguments both for and against its validity.

In the scope of human history “free will” is a relatively new concept. It seems to have propagated alongside capitalism and Protestantism. Its opponents may argue that it’s nothing more than a marketing scheme for an ideology. That scheme goes something like this: “you have complete control of your own destiny, so long as you work really, really hard.” This more or less keeps the wheels of private enterprise turning and the masses obedient.

It seems opposite to the Shakespearean plays that rose in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, in which the protagonist was often pushed by the turbulent and all-powerful current of the universe, with a fate predetermined and unavoidable. The act of “paving one’s own path” was seen as an obscenity and typically punished with a violent death. Macbeth is given his fate at the beginning of the play, and we only have to wait to find out how he meets it.

Even if one has some element of free will on a societal level, possessing the ability to switch economic classes or elevate from poverty, I find it questionable that one could have complete individualistic free will. Everyone is on their phones all day, after all, behaving just as technology companies program us to. We buy insurance at the consensus that it will protect us from harm, only for insurance companies to profit (and avoiding insurance is nearly unavoidable, and seen as sacrilegious). We are therefore, to an extent, slaves to our own compulsions and thought patterns. Said compulsions can be programmed by almost anyone with a mastery of the human mind. We can therefore be exploited for profit or other gains, and all of us are to some extent.

We tell ourselves we “choose” to look at our phones, unaware that we do so under the manipulation of technology. And maybe this how it is with all things. Free will, then, would be a consumerist ploy.

The question then is whether choice actually exists, and what evidence there is for its existence. If you believe that we are all pawns in a very large scheme, then our minds are simply reacting as expected at each move of exterior forces. We are “dust in the wind.” That does seem likely. Yet some people are unpredictable, and this is where I find the fun. I personally enjoy people capable of surprising me and defying expectations. They seem the most likely types to possess the ability to truly “choose.” If they are in the throes of a current they can’t control, it’s at least a unique one that doesn’t move straight.

Nicolas Cage, for example, is the only actor I can’t pigeonhole. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to his film choices or even his acting style. He seems hell-bent on swimming against the current that pushes everyone else in their expected direction. He follows a big-budget action film with a flop, and a cartoonish performance with a subdued one. The other actors who regularly attend events such as the Academy Awards seem manufactured by their own industry to “aim for awards.” I don’t find them interesting in the least. Cue ceremony to “see who won best actor” this year. Who cares? It’s the same self-indulgent faces every year.

Nicolas Cage’s unpredictability suggests he can’t be controlled, and an uncontrollable human being is most likely to have true “free will.”

I can only conclude that although our behaviors do seem controllable to an extent, we also maintain the ability to surprise, to break routine, to “create art,” and to argue against consensus. Free will seems closest to a real thing when we defy expectations and break routine, when we take risk and laugh in the face of herd mentality. We may have some individualism if we find the courage to express it, even in spite of a powerful current that we are all more or less drifting in.

How will we surprise ourselves today?