There is No Free Will
I’ve convinced myself that free will doesn’t exist.
Shocking to admit, because I have goals and plans and values and principles. But maybe “I” don’t have them after all.
Imagine a powerful computer and neural network that recreates an exact replica of your brain and nervous system, pre-loaded with all your existing state. Would that neural network not make the same decision as you in the next instant? Exposed to exactly the same environmental stimuli going forward, would it not continue making exactly the same decisions? To believe otherwise means believing something exists independent of your brain and nervous system that’s calling the shots.
You may be certain you decided to click on this essay and read it. But where did the impulse arise? It’s the result of a causal chain: sensory stimulation, hormones in your body, genetics, your ancestors’ environment and culture, a butterfly on the other side of the world, the big bang.
“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” - Arthur Schopenhauer
You can examine this experientially through various types of meditation like Mahamudra or Dzogchen, where one searches for a “self” that is independently arising only to discover that no such self exists.
So if there’s no free will, now what? Buddhists distinguish between conventional truth (pragmatism) and ultimate truth. It’s pragmatically useful to believe a self exists and has free will. It works in our society. It’s not ultimately true.
The choice I believe you have: your identification as consciousness, and your relationship to the phenomena that occur in consciousness. You don’t control the events of life, but you can control how much suffering you experience as a result. The vehicle through which you’re experiencing life can choose to be open and loving, or closed and suffering. That is the only ultimate choice.
Mastery is holding this ultimate truth while continuing to play the game. The movie Tenet offers good advice: “It’s an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world, it’s not an excuse for doing nothing.” Keep pursuing your goals and your purpose. Know they aren’t really “yours.”