Free Will, Funny Hats

  Some of you may have read my story about disproving free will the other night. Some of you might have been disappointed by the ending, some of you may have not been. Unfortunately the survey size is under 100 so none of your opinions matter (that's Stats 101). Now, interestingly enough, we've moved into Free Will and Determinism in my philosophy class. I thought I might expand on my view on free will so that it doesn't seem like I just don't believe in free will.

  Imagine we have free will. Easy, right? You made the conscious decision to waste your time reading this blog when you have plenty of more interesting things to do with all that will.

Watch porn in a suit, for instance. Like the rest of us.

 Now imagine that you don't have free will. Easy too, right? All of a sudden you realize that there's a higher power out there pushing the incentive into your mind to read this blog. That doesn't really have any consequences except for missing out on all that sweet partying going on right now at 12:45 am on a Sunday.

 Where it starts to get a bit more confusing, though less important, is the ability to fight destiny, or against controlled will, what have you. I consider the two the same, will and fate. Let's say you're about to kill someone. If you know it's your destiny, but you cast the gun aside, you fought it. Well the way I see it is, what if that is your destiny? It's not that you fought your destiny, but your destiny was to challenge your belief in fate and so you didn't shoot the person. So you say to yourself, "Fine, I will fight my destiny by thinking about it and then shoot the guy! Ah ha!" But then again, what if that is your destiny? What if the whole thing is a back and forth of, "I know you know I know that you know that I know" over and over again until your brain explodes out desire for you to shut the fuck up?

What if your brain were made by ACME?

Of course then that would be your destiny too.

  As I tried to get across in the short story, even if we prove that no one has free will, it would just mean that all the bad choices in the past were meant to happen, whether to teach us a lesson, or get us to the point we're at today. It would also mean all of the "just" decisions were supposd to happen as well. If people had a problem with the death penalty, we could just prove that whoever is in control wanted them dead. There are some theories out there that say a higher up made the world and sat back, which if I'm not mistaken is Intelligent Design.

Does that look like someone who is ever wrong?

  That's not necessarily what I'm considering, but I thought it was important to cover a few of the major ideas. I feel that history would be a lot different if we didn't have free will. If things were supposed to get done, they would have gotten done. Things that didn't, weren't supposed to. I had a choice of two photos for that last one. I went back and forth thinking about which I liked better, but did I have a choice? For all any of you know, I changed the picture already and you never saw the first one. In fact, I did. Was that fate? Maybe. Maybe I was supposed to go with the first and then fought off my destiny by choosing this one. If it wasn't fate, then maybe I just liked this picture better. The point is, no one knows, and does it matter? Even I don't have the free will to choose what picture I wanted, I can't change it, so why should I worry about it? I'm going to go on doing what I do, either because it's my fate, or because that's what I want to do. Is there really any difference? If I throw a plate at the wall to prove I can, great. Now I have one less plate (existential discussion about if I really lost that plate, or now just have pieces of a plate aside please...). What does that get me? A mess to clean up, and someone probably mad at me for a broken plate. And I suppose that it does get into the blame issue, as to who do we blame for breaking the plate? Would it really matter? Do you really thing that who ever decides what you do is going to replace your plate? It might, in some strange way like a present, but if you did it of your own volition, you'd be getting that new plate anyway. I guess it gets more complicated with the death penalty and stuff like that, but shouldn't you then just leave it up to your decision maker up there and say that whatever you decide is what it wants, and that's good enough for the rest of us? If we disprove free will, that technically would a perfectly just way to deal with issues.

Yes, I am advocating this as the judge, jury, but not really the executioner. Unless you swallow it. In which case you kinda deserve it. No, I won't get into the discussion of children and free will. Don't swallow stupid things. And watch your damn kid.

   I think that just about covers it. Feel free to comment, I always feel like I'm on a soapbox when people don't respond.
Also, have a comic, totally Safe for Work.