How much control do we really have over how we think and act?
It is a central tenet of western culture that free will exists, that humans are capable of rational, logical thought, able to weigh up decisions and make the best choice. We will accept some deviations — whom a person falls in love with for example is often inexplicable and addiction obviously distorts free will — but these are considered deviations from the norms of adult, responsible behaviour. It is an attractive concept but does it hold up to scrutiny?
If humans have free will then we have a peculiar way of showing it. We spend our adult lives working at jobs we often find extremely distasteful and which make us miserable. We waste our hard earned money on objects that we don’t need or on transient experiences and this over-consumption now threatens the environment that sustains our very existence. Half of the planet is obese whilst the other half starves. Viewed dispassionately, the way humans behave is utterly bizarre. Does it not seem probable, if we truly had free will, that a greater proportion of us would choose to do something else with our lives?
