More about free will and stuff.

This post is just clarification of the previous one, after reading mouse's comment.  I have to admit now that I used the word "God" partly intentionally to provoke and partly because it is short to type. For me, "God" does not mean some superior separate  being, arbitrarily visiting humanity with rewards and punishments; the standard "Christian" version of a loving, all-powerful, omniscient Being who sometimes apparently "answers" petitions and most of the time apparently does not, makes no sense to me. I could better use the word "Consciousness" or "Totality." The Tao.

Now by "accept" I do not mean lie back and do nothing. If you see something that needs to be done, of course then do it if you can. Before reading mouse's comment, I had never heard of Clara Barton, but from what I have read today I think she is an excellent example of what I mean: she saw what needed to be done and did it. If a clever person wants to invent a new gadget or system, he should go ahead and use his talents. Design a railway, an aircraft, an internet, a blogging service so you and I can exchange thoughts and be grateful for the work. By that word, accept, I mean don't waste time and energy wishing things were different now, but make plans and take action to make future moments more in line with how you want them. If you have toothache, arrange a dental appointment and don't regret your neglect, just accept it. You have neglected your teeth, accept that and start taking care of them. The present moment is already happening before we can do anything about it, just act as appropriate for your situation and avoid regret over the past and worry over the future.

I say all this, but do we really have any choice over what we do? Many say NO, there is no free will, and I am inclined to agree with that, because, after all, there is no way you can show that anything you have done you could have done differently at that time you did it. You can assert that, and you probably will, but you cannot demonstrate it, so it is likely you had no choice in the matter.  Neither can you show that you have any choice over what you are about to do in the next few minutes.  

I have to admit I think this way partly because my natural inclination is to regard with suspicion anything that is accepted by the great majority.  Almost everyone thinks he has the power to choose one course of action over another, but there is no evidence for that assumption and I doubt it.  Pretty well the whole of our society is based on commending or blaming people for the "choices" they have made, but I don't believe people do make choices. Behaviour is entirely automatic.  So if you are a worrier, you are going to worry!

Some time ago, I published a post querying whether life mattered.  I meant, should we agonise over what choices we, or other people, have made or are about to make?  Is it important?  If there is no free will, the whole question is irrelevant.  One follower of my blog, well known and loved in this particular blogging community, became so indignant at this post that she promptly unfollowed me!

Are we the authors of our thoughts?

Rene Descartes wrote: “I am, I exist, that is certain.  But how often?  Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise cease altogether to exist.  I do not now admit anything which is not necessarily true:  to speak accurately I am not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose significance was formerly unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing and really exist; but what thing? I have answered:  a thing which thinks.”  Descartes: Meditations on First  Philosophy  (1641)  Trans. Eliz. Haldane

Descartes evidently had not had the experience of cessation of thought, for if he had, he would have found, with many others, that he would have been more sure of his existence than ever before – that is what seems to happen, by all accounts.

Thoughts arise, and I perceive them; but it cannot be said with certainty that I am doing the thinking.  That was an unfortunate observation on Descartes’ part, as it has affected us all since.  He was so close, yet missed the mark.  I certainly have many thoughts which I cannot claim any authorship of.  All I can be certain of is that I am aware of at least some of these thoughts.  Even in the absence of thoughts, which does occasionally occur, I am still aware and certain of my existence.

There may be thoughts arising which we are not aware of, or barely aware of: this happens to me quite often.  I suddenly begin to hear a thought which has apparently been going on in my mind for some time – particularly musical phrases.  I can wake in the morning with the same piece of music in my mind which was playing there before I went to sleep. For all I know it may have been there in my mind all night but I wasn’t aware of it while asleep.  Sometimes this persistence of musical thought seems like a nuisance.  From time to time verbalizations will make themselves internally heard, usually meaningless and irrelevant to the task in hand.  I am not the author of these thoughts, merely the perceiver.

It stands to reason that if a thought can be noticed, that thought is not the noticer.

That’s enough for the time being.  I want to continue later with discussion of thoughts driven by an intention – is that intention really mine?

Does life matter?

The big question for me nowadays is: Does it matter what happens in life?

Almost all of us think that it matters a lot, that this is an absurd question.  I must say that I feel more comfortable when I try on the idea that it really doesn't matter.

How significant is life, really?  If you have read my blog regularly, and not just read the posts with interesting titles, you will know that I have been wondering whether we really have a choice in what we do - whether there really is such a thing as free will.  If we have no choice, then whether what happens is important, whether it "matters" or not, is a question without any meaning.  And I seem to feel more comfortable with the present moment when I am not considering how important life is.

To recap a moment, it is difficult or even impossible to show you have free will.   Many clever philosophers have tried in vain, apparently.  There is no way you can show you might have done something differently from the way you actually did it.  You can assert your freedom of choice, but that is not enough of course.  And if you are one of those people who think the brain runs the whole show, then of course there definitely can be no free will for you, because who would do the choosing?  Same applies to those non-duality-ers who have discovered there is no actual person anywhere, only a body and a mind.

I could single out some of the blogs I read - Vesta, for example, and Elisa, to mention only two of many, for whom a great part of their blog is devoted to questions about the significance or importance of what they are doing or thinking.  If they weren't like that I probably would not find them so interesting. Mine is like that, too, very often, in fact it seems to be like that right now!  Our whole world would be different if people no longer concerned themselves with what they think important, as far as choices go..  At least this whole spanking blogging community would collapse, to say nothing of the rest of the world's doings.

But would it be a better world?  I think we can still make judgments, even if we have no choices, can't we?  It's interesting to speculate on what our world would be like if we all realised we had no choice over what we do.  Could a science fiction story be written on this basis?

I'll have to try and work out just how things would be if we all assumed we had no choices.  But for the moment I am just going to sit back for a while and enjoy not thinking about the importance or significance of my life, then go and see if the washing is dry and ready to take off the line.  It's a good drying day, sunny and some wind. No moral judgment needed there, for sure.

Edit  I have been careless over the use of the word "significant."  Obviously what happens, whether we have chosen it or whether it simply happens without anyone's choice, may be significant, in that it can point to something, show or clarify something for our information;  be interesting in a cerebral way.  If however you start reading "A Course in Miracles: Workbook for Students" you will soon come across the exercise prompting you to look around you and consider that what you are looking at "has no meaning."  In other words, it has no significance apart from its existence and connection with other objects.  I'll say more about this book soon.

Behave or be punished: choose, please

Mankind is under many illusions: you have only to consider the state of society throughout the world to see that. If we all saw truly, would the world not seem a better place? That is why I think it is good for us to consider what actually are we doing and thinking wrong. 

Mouse, for whom I have great respect, devoted half of a blog post to her careful response to my question/comment about free will. She clings to the idea that we have free will, as do the vast majority of humans I believe. I made that comment on her blog post because she, along with many other submissive women, is having the experience of forgoing her “right to choose” to a considerable extent, and that practice seems to me to be a kind of preparation for a much more radical abandonment of the power of choice. Actually no one is abandoning anything, since it is not something anyone has in the first place. 

 It’s certainly true that the vast majority can be wrong, and I think that is the case here. The problem of free will has been debated by philosophers for a very long time. I cannot see any way to prove that we have any power of choice over what we do. We can assert that we could have done otherwise than what we actually did, but assertion does not amount to proof. If you go out for dinner, there is no way you can show convincingly that you could have chosen not to go out for dinner at the time you thought you were making the choice. Free will, I believe, is simply an erroneous habit of thought. 

Not only do Zen Buddhists say “Events happen; deeds are done; but there is no doer thereof”; now neuroscientists are coming up with evidence to support this. Here is a link to some interesting and relevant research.  Our brains apparently show indications of what we are about to "choose" some measurable time before we are aware of choosing.

In addition, many who have had the experience of realising that what they had thought was their personality is simply an illusion say that life “just happens”, the “person” does nothing, because, in fact, the “person” does not exist. There is no person there to be a doer. There’s just a body-mind organism. If we do not even do stuff, much less can we decide what to do! 

However:  

     It does seem that thoughts have some effect.  Kant thought that reason could not be completely trusted, and I feel that he was right.  I think it is worth considering the scenario sketched out by Vadim Zeland in "Reality Transurfing".  He postulates a region where everything is possible and suggests that we are running on a track in that region determined by our thoughts, and by our thoughts we can change that track gradually towards a future we think we would prefer. 

The situation now becomes murky.  If there is no person, then who is thinking?  Where do these thoughts belong?  How do they appear?  And in the phrase "we would prefer", who is this "we"?  Do thoughts, like the rest of life, "simply happen?"  The universe is very mysterious.  

Time is running short for writing this post and I am going to stop there.