I've found the reason for the evilness in this world!
So it might be more like “one of the many reasons” (although I think it is an important one) and it might not play into all kinds of evilness (I'd leave out flip-flops and Martha Steward
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Which leads us straight to question of "what is intelligence"? Honestly, I've seen highly intelligent people doing exactly the thing I criticize here, so... I don't know.
The other thing it does to me is make me so glad there is such a thing as free will, and wish more people admitted that, instead of saying, "I do bad things because..."
Actually, I don't believe in concept of free will. To explain this I'd probably have to wite a book, because it's complicated. And kind of a question of definition. First of all, I find it extremely difficult to grasp the... nature of this "free will". I mean, is it something non-physical, like spirit or soul?
I just think that when it comes down to it, all our feelings, thoughts, actions and so on are the result of myriads of subatomic particles. So, theoretically, everything that will happen is already determined. Practically this isn't of any use to us, because a) too many variables and b) the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
However, somewhere in the process of evolution we developed this great idea named self-awareness. We think we have a free will. And that we think it exists, makes it (kind of) real. And if we come to the conclusion that free will doesn't exist, it actually wouldn't change much of our everyday living:
Society still has to protect itself from criminals, we'd simply say bye-bye to the concept of expaition. And therapies and re-habilitation would still be necessary, but we would do it in the hope that it somehow "changes the flow of particles in his brain".
So, we saw in the past that one can influence the behaviour of people, only our explanation why it can be influenced would be changed.
This is something that I find incredibly hard to explain, but I think whether it exists or not is not even that big of a problem (though an interesting one) because we feel and live as if we had one - and that's reality, so we have to treat it as if it were there. I think you put it quite well (although you came to a different conclusion): Absolutely everything that happens is bought about by a chain of events that could have gone either way, depending on the way the thing before it happened.
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So, in effect, we are living out a pattern that has been designed for us in advance? Like a computer program? Or is it a random thing that we have no control over?
Either way, it kind of negates all the questions of "Why?". The answer would then be, "Because it is."
To me, free will is a thought thing. We think about things, come to conclusions and choose to act, or not act. Thoughts can't actually be traced to a physical beginning, so maybe it is a spirit thing.
My own personal belief is that we are given choices and there are consequences for our actions which guide us toward a goal. We can make decisions that will impact us in different ways.
Come to think of it, maybe we need to believe in free will, or else what is the point?
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"designed" sounds too much like there's a purpose behind it. No, for me it's more like the latter thing. We have no control over it, but because this whole action/reaction is so big and complicated and fucking huge, no one will be able to compute the pattern. So, practically it's as if the pattern didn't even exist.
Thing is, I think that thoughts can be traced to a physical beginning. I have no idea how this should work, but the concequences of going the other way (that thoughts are some kind of non-physical... things) sound a lot freakier to me. And if thoughts do have a physical beginning, then they have to obey the laws of physics.
I think that's the crux of the matter. If we say that free will (like thoughts) is a spirit-thing, then I'd agree with everything you said. I just try to avoid going there as long as I can explain it to myself in a different way.
And, yes, the point is to believe in it. If you tell someone that he doesn't act on his own volition, then this will influence his behaviour (and most probably not in a good way). But as long as he doesn't know, it doesn't matter whether he has a free will or not. because for him it's real.
It's like with Oedipus: had the oracle not prophecied Laios that his son would kill him and marry his own mother, then Laios would never have exposed Oedipus, Oedipus would have known about his father and mother and the whole tragedy would never have happened.
Am I making sense? Sort of, at least?
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