Freewill: the Wrong Question

Does Freewill Exist?

There’s a long running debate on whether humans are the authors of our actions or whether we are the product of unseen forces of physics or otherwise and don’t actually make decisions ourselves. Many (though not all) atheists and secular humanists would say “No!” we have no freewill. We are merely the product of physics and the forces and materials that makeup our minds and bodies. Faith traditions such as Judaism and Christianity, would say “Yes!” we have freewill. We consciously choose many, if not all, of our actions. When the two sides debate the matter, as they often do, the secularist might point out situations such as when a part of the brain is disturbed or damaged, people tend to make bizarre or immoral choices, the would not otherwise make. The religious person might point out many people that have upbringings or genetics that would cause most people to stumble morally, others still make the right decisions and lead good lives. You can find countless arguments on Youtube or the annals of philosophy.

What does the “Eastern Gospel” say? I have suspected for some time that the Free Will debate is actually a categorical error. If we take eastern thought at face value and assume that it’s message is basically true, this debate melts away. How?

If we are all indeed one, then we are also ONE with the very physics, forces and materials that an atheist or secularist might say controls our actions. We are not separate from those forces and particles. We ARE those forces and particles. They effect us but we also effect them.

Moving from nature, to nurture, what about the society we live in? Are our actions just the product of the environment we live in? Again, the Eastern Gospel would point out the error in the very question here. WE ARE that society. A society is made up of individuals which influence it. But the individual is also made up, in part, of the forces of the society influencing her. Alan Watts often liked to use the wave and ocean metaphor: Is the ocean made up of the waves, or are the waves made up of the ocean? Well, its obviously both. The ocean is the waves and the waves are the ocean. We humans just categorize them as separate things. Similarly, the individual and society are both parts of each other, influencing each other. Society drives the “individual person” and that individual drives society. They are just humans categorizations of one reality, one “field of behavior” that we are trying to understand.

So I would say that we both take free actions as individuals and at the same time we are subject to the physical and societal laws which govern our actions. They may seem contradictory but the Eastern Gospel would say they are two sides of the same coin.