What is God?

Where free will and determinism collide

Tolkien writes: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” At first, this may be perceived as a testament to free will. But how free are we to will the processes by which we will? How free are we when all the freedom we have is to freely move about in our tiny prison cell; a cell without windows, without even a hint of possibilities beyond it?

Unfree will

I’ve been accused of being a pessimist, nihilist, even hedonist for my position on free will; that there can be no pure freedom of will. Intellectually lazy people jump to conclude - in non sequitur manner - that I deny free will to make excuses for people’s misdeeds. This is schizophrenic-level deluded.

I don’t make excuses; I simply offer explanations. We are still responsible for what we do, even though we can trace back our mental drivers to unfree deterministic factors. What we conclude with the information allowed to us (our sensory input), and how we decide to act based on our information processing, can only be the consequence of mental mechanisms that are already defined in us. Yet, we still bear the burden of our actions because we still have agency; it was still in our power to act differently. And if you evoke determinism to excuse your ill behavior, then others can do the same to excuse their urge to reciprocate against you. For example, if you harm someone, then yes: deterministic factors led you there. But so do deterministic factors compel that someone to hold you responsible. I offer explanations, not excuses.

The ego does not allow us the humility to accept that we cannot be free by ‘definition,’ in that we are ‘defined’ by our mental processes - ‘defined,’ thus framed and predetermined. Even this character trait - ego - is a testament to the unfree will of those who stubbornly insist they possess free will, the irony of which escapes them. They need unfreedom to frame and define them, yet they imagine they will freely.

The opposite applies too: whatever your flaws, you didn’t “earn” them, because they were given to you by random chance. Your physical limitations, your psychological trauma, everything. Yes, you are not to blame for your afflictions, BUT you are still responsible for them. Just like you can enjoy the privileges of random advantage you randomly got from life - say, your good looks - so too must you pay for your crimes driven by your criminal nature; even though you never freely chose to be criminally inclined. Giving your the benefit of determinism for your evil nature is not an excuse for your evils; it is merely an explanation, so we can better understand you, and to perhaps avoid what triggers you, and what made you this way in the first place.

No, you’re not free. You’re not even aware of your own unfree biases or your susceptibility to the propaganda that convinced you you were free. It takes courage and humility to accept this.

Why I insist that free will does not exist? Because to assume that you have free will is pompous narcissism and dangerous lack of grounded humility. The fantasy of free will denies the fact that everything you have in this life - everything you are - is the result of randomness. You didn’t earn what you have, and so you don’t deserve credit for it. Sure, you are entitled to reap the benefits of what you have (for example, the special treatment you receive for the luck of being born attractive), but make no mistake: you didn’t earn it. And when you accept hat you didn’t earn what you have, then you are more appreciative, more grateful, and more humble; in a constructive self-aware way.

A world full of narcissists who insist they willed all they have is a surreal circus of deluded prideful psychopaths with little grounding on reality.

I reject the existence of free will, not because I prefer the non-responsibility of deterministic fatalism, but because I am humble and rational enough to recognize that there is nothing to be prideful about in this world: whatever we posses, whatever we have achieved, whatever we have become, we owe to random favorable circumstances and external events that just happened to have shaped us into us.

The nature of divinity

Determinism is humility to accept that you cannot break free from your nature; and perhaps acknowledging this reality is the only measure of freedom we can achieve.

And maybe that little freedom is enough; more freedom than that would fade and dilute our individual essence, that which defines us as individuals. If our minds were unburdened by the causality that dictates our unwavering mental architectures, then we’d be everything and nothing at the same time - we’d be a fragmented, confused set of chaotic thoughts without order or self-defining consciousness; much like a semi-conscious dream.

Perhaps this unconscious consciousness is what “God” is, and why we emerged from this divinity. Perhaps this entity’s unconscious free will needs this simulation to derive information from it, and perhaps thus define itself in different experiences via time-bound realities. Perhaps “God” creates realities to free itself from the limitations of its infinite freedom.

Here is a hypothesis: In the context of the simulation theory, free will and unfree will both have advantages and disadvantages.

Our unfreedom - our defining nature and its determinants - grants us unique awareness and thus individual experience of self. We exist in limited form, time, and mental possibilities, thus we become intensely conscious of who we are, and aware of our reality. We process information in unique patterns that act as our individual signature; we are who we are because of our unique mental processes, our defining and limiting neural roadmap.

In contrast, freedom of will means being everything and nothing all at once, forever unchanging in an ocean of infiniteness, or timelessness. Whatever may have created us may be free in its chaotic limitless existence, but this lack of boundaries means lack of definition, and an inability to be as a distinct conscious entity: Infinite dreams, surreal chaotic possibilities packed on top of each other, without a sense of self, without conscious awareness of reality, nor of purposeful will or agency… Our reality may be one of infinite realities within an unconscious psyche, where all possibilities exist simultaneously, forever unchanged, forever denied growth or resolution. This feels like a tragedy for us - us being the dreams of this infinite unconscious entity. But perhaps it is also a tragedy for this divine entity… we may be its only way to actually experience something, anything.

Perhaps divinity resides in that infinitesimal point between unconscious freedom and conscious servitude, between dream and awareness. That lucid dream, being free and bound at the same time, could be where truth lies, where God lives.

Who knows…

Condemned to ask the question of freedom

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

- Zenon of Citium (father of stoicism)

…and who can master himself?..

Who knows… We are likely so deficient intellectually that it should be impossible for us to even conceive truth, like a pet lizard gazing at mathematic equations. The truth might even be staring us in the face, but we are likely too inadequate mentally to even recognize it as such. We are as “free” of our natural limitations as a lizard, or a monkey, or a microbe.

Unless perhaps our conscious awareness of self hides some potential for some measure of free will we can’t yet conceive? Or is this just our innate need for self-aggrandizing speaking? Is human consciousness yet another limitation rather than empowerment?

The bottom line

To accept that you have free will is liberating in itself - it is a burden lifted. Acceptance of the fact that you cannot escape your nature is in fact a measure of freedom from delusion.

Perhaps just being aware of your unfree will is the only measure of freedom you can have. And maybe that’s enough.

What is God?

God could be vastness of chaotic free will, an infinite unconscious bereft of conscious self, lacking defining unfreedom, everything and nothing at the same time. God could be a dream where everything happens in an instant, but it is a surreal non-experience by a non-self. We could be its only way to wake up from this dream, to experience unfreedom, to become self-aware.

But this is just me writing on keyboard. There is absolutely no evidence for the ideas I am proposing; just a hypothesis. These concepts are as real as the dream you had last night. Yet unconscious dreams could well be as real as conscious reality.

A final personal note…

When I began watching the ‘True Detective’ series, I noticed that many of the monologues therein pertaining to pessimistic realism were eerily similar to ideas I already had, conclusions I had made on my own; thoughts that had me questioning my own sanity - yes, I am that analytical and skeptical. At first, it was reassuring to see that others - more accomplished even - could think the way I did. I feel sense of relief when I read from other writers expressing what I had already thought of too. It’s like an honour, a verification, a validation. However, the inevitable realization soon dawns on me - that the ad populum credibility to my pessimistic views isn’t a thing to be joyful about, nor the glimmer of hope it appears to be at first.

Telling people that free will does not exist angers them because they deep down understand the implications of such a thing. We tend to prefer comforting lies to harsh truths… Drilling down deep into the analytical philosophy of existentialism may grant you insight and wisdom, but it will make you a sadder person, someone as unlikable as Rust Cohle from ‘True Detective.’

Nothing is as feared and hated as the pursuit of truth.

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Related reading on free will and existentialism: