01/03/2024
My hubby sent me a video to watch and asked me for my comments on it. It was a video of Robert Sapolsky talking about his book, “Detemined: A science of life without free will.”
Free will or destiny; is a topic that we have both discussed from the point of view of science and spirituality on a regular basis so I was really intrigued by the book and a behavioural neuroscientist’s conclusion that there is in fact no free will.
It basically refuted three of the core beliefs of humans that we are free or morally responsible or even an active agent of our actions.
Sapolsky sums up his position as:
“You cannot decide all the sensory stimuli in your environment, your hormone levels this morning, whether something traumatic happened to you in the past, the socioeconomic status of your parents, your fetal environment, your genes, whether your ancestors were farmers or herders. … we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment.”
After a thorough analysis of all the scientific claims in the book, I told my hubby, it makes sense but free will is more complicated than that.
Do we have someone separate from our biology telling us what to do. A neuroscientist may have a hard time conceiving that but the answer lies in that part of us not just in our neurobiology. What is that part, my hubby asked. The awareness of our consciousness. The part of us that can see a situation without identifying with it. The more neutral you can be, more space there is to exercise free will.
We want to expand and grow. That is not free will. That is biology. We expand and grow based on our genes, environment and our previous experiences but that combination can have unlimited permutations and experiences. We may be forced to choose one but in choosing that is the free will. It is not absolute. It is quite restricted but it is there.
However what determines that I will be able to be in control of a situation rather than the situation controlling me. Practice when it is easy. Yoga calls it svadhyaya, study of the self. Know your own patterns. Who are you? What are your triggers and glimmers?
A tomato seed will give rise to a tomato tree in your garden and it will respond to water and soil and sunlight to help it grow, no free will in that or is there. The plant will continue to thrive or an animal will eat it or a storm may destroy it. Is there free will when you want to plant a tomato seed or not. What brought you to the decision of choosing to plant a tomato plant, is that free will or fate. Science can have conclusions, philosophy can’t.
One thing that book did for me. It told me we are all equals, no one is that praiseworthy or no one is to blame if we dig deeper. Yoga calls it let go of all labels, the good and the bad. Perhaps that is the only free will there is or is it a gift of fate. The ruminations continue!
