Ah yes, freewill, what a delectable topic! Ever since the conception of human language, the discourse around this very subject is nearly infinite, as the greatest minds Homo Sapiens have to offer have spent interminable time questioning and answering the nature of human spirt to see if it is, in fact, free. Despite this time spent, it’s no surprise that humans have not come to a definite answer to something so rich and complex as freewill. Yet we must trudge on! As humans, we desire understanding, and to not understand our own freedom amounts to not understanding what it means to be human.

Now you’re probably wondering what a mere college student can add to this discourse, and to be honest, I can’t add shit to the conversation surrounding freewill. However, I choose to write on it nonetheless because it’s something I’ve given much thought, and at the very least I hope I can make others appreciate the question of freewill.

Just for starters, I find it harder and harder every day to believe that humans can decide their own fate. As much as I would like to believe, there just isn’t sufficient enough evidence to show that our individual thoughts and actions control our lives. While on the other hand, there is a plethora of things that limit our freewill.

Thus, my first point against the existence of freewill is the nature of our birth. No one chose to be born and thus cannot choose the conditions of their birth. If no one chooses to live, then everything after birth would, at the very best, be relative freedom.

Now there are many ways to interpret what I mean by conditions of birth, but in this instance, I’m referring to genetics. The argument of nature vs. nurture will never be completely decided, but I think we can agree that both nature and nurture have some role in shaping the individual; it’s just impossible to say to what extent. Regardless, genetics falls into the nature side and no one has any control over their genetics. So even if you believe genetics has very little to do with how we turn out, I don’t think you can say it doesn’t play a role and must admit that genetics is something that shapes our lives and is out of our control. To give an example, just look at schizophrenia, a highly influential disease that is more common in people who have first relatives with it.

My second point and most obvious point in the golden age of social justice warriors is various social constructs. I won’t spend much time on this, but if you’re anything besides a straight cis white male and participate in society, your life will inevitably be challenged or affected in one way or another.

These are two fairly straightforward points, but from now on I will attempt (futilely at that!) to play the philosopher, so I apologize if I fail to make my point as clear as it needs to be.

Freewill implies that we are free to think what we want when we want. The problem with this is the only way we can communicate and create thoughts is through language. This is problematic because no one can possess language, it is something shared among individuals and has always been passed down. No one has witnessed the creation of a language. Thus, our thoughts can only exist because of something that we have no control over.

This may seem not important to some, but to think language isn’t limiting is, at least to me, very ignorant, for language sometimes fails to communicate our experiences and how we feel on the inside. Not only this, but language can also be manipulated through lying, and if language can be manipulated our thoughts can also be manipulated.

An obvious example of this would be something like propaganda, that often uses various phrases and rhetoric to instill thoughts in the minds of people. I understand some people believe that you can choose to believe in certain propaganda, but I’m not so sure that is the case. The only reason people believe in lies and propaganda is because they don’t see it as lies or propaganda; or in other words, they aren’t choosing to believe, they are just seeing this propaganda as fact and aren’t making a choice at all. Just look at Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, for if you truly think millions of Germans just “chose” to be Nazis during this time and weren’t at all influenced by the language of their government, you should probably reconsider and see how ridiculous that idea is.

Another part to this language-thought codependency that limits are freewill is how we become aware of ourselves as individuals, i.e. consciousness. To think of ourselves as separate from the outside world we need words such as “I," “myself," “me," etc. And if we need language to identify ourselves that means no one can come to consciousness without the help of others. If this is the case, then we don’t produce consciousness but rather consciousness comes to us from outside sources. And if the individual can only be identified with the help of something out of our control, it’s not thinking that makes you exist, but rather, being thought of (sorry Descartes!). Therefore, if our awareness of our selfhood depends on others, it would follow that everything that makes us an individual, such as our choices, depends on others.

If you’re still reading, I sincerely thank you for making it through my second-rate philosophical writing. My last point is a simple one and it’s the fact that shit happens. To give a rudimentary example, just look at fatal car accidents or civilian casualties during war. Lots of people aren’t at fault for being hit by, let’s say, a drunk driver, just as civilians don’t choose to go to war. Nonetheless, they are greeted by death and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. Needless to say, these people don’t exactly have much freewill left in their lives when their lives were taken from them without their say.

Between these biological, societal, lingual, and arbitrary factors, I find myself struggling to believe in freewill. Yet I must preserve faith! For no freewill means no one is held responsible for their actions and the difference between moral people and immoral people would cease to be. However, our lives move in a line across time and each instant only one thing happens. We say things could have been different, but really, how can we possibly know? The only evidence is the one thing did happen at a particular instant, and saying something else could have happened at that same instant is purely hypothetical and thus impossible to prove.