Mindful
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #1
Are we truly free?
If one thing’s for sure, it’s that I decided what breakfast cereal to eat this morning. I opened the cupboard, Iperused the options, and when I ultimately chose the Honey Bunches of Oats over the Kashi Good Friends, it came from a place of considered judgment, free from external constraints and predetermined laws.
Or did it? This question—about how much people are in charge of their own actions—is among the most central to the human condition. Do we have free will? Are we in control of our destiny? Do we choose the proverbial Honey Bunches of Oats? Or does the cereal—or some other mysterious force in the vast and unknowable universe—choose us?
The Greek playwright Sophocles seemed convinced that people have no real control over their fortunes. The character Oedipus, for example, tries desperately to buck the prophesy that he will kill his father and marry his mother, only to end up doing just that. Shakespeare’s characters, on the other hand, attempt to seize control of their futures.
Cassius encourages Brutus to assassinate Caesar by appealing to his sense of self-responsibility: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are the underlings.”
The Philosophical Implications of the Urge to Urinate - Scientific American