Destined to be Free

I was asked my thoughts on destiny the other day, which goes hand in hand with free will. This is a great question, and it's been one of the biggest philosophical questions of our times. Is there such thing as free will? Or are we just big gears fueled by our chemical and biological processes? There has been a vast array of different views on this... If you look at Sir Isaac Newton, he loved something called determinism, the idea of a physically determined universe. This is sometimes referred to as the Billiard Ball view of nature, for example, if we had billiard balls on a pool table, they will only move if acted upon. If we could measure the exact velocity and angle of the first billiard ball hitting the second, we could predict the movement of the second ball! This continues to - if we knew the exact chemical makeup of a human being, the historical and social factors he has grown up with, in effect, everything about someone, we could then predict his future actions... in that they are simply all previous experiences leading up to an acceptance or ignorance of causal factors. A good argument to look at on the other hand, is a man named Jean Sartre, his view was something called 'Existence precedes Essence" ... He was an atheist, and with this he believed there are no essences bestowed upon us, meaning pre-defined human nature, rather we have a self-conscious that allows us to define ourselves by making self-directed choices. He yearned for humans to "act authentically" in that we do not follow social norms and standards, but we take responsibility for creating our own future.

Now, I myself haven't really planted my roots into either one of these views just yet. As I am still learning! But, I am reading a book right now called "The Field". To sum it up, everything is in/part of this giant background field of energy, on the smallest level of anything, at electrons and quarks, this energy field is constantly exchanging information back and forth with them. This connects everything in the world, and universe. A view which I am quite fond of. This book attributes our cells abilities to group together and generate a leg as a leg, or our liver as our liver, to a "mold" set by this energy field. As we do not really know how the processes that this happens by while we are developing as a fetus. For example, the scientists looked at energy currents surrounding a salamander egg, they were able to measure a field surrounding the egg which took form of the adult salamander that the egg would one day grow in to!!! As if it was already fixed. So, as you can see, this poses a very interesting question. Is everything fixed? Is an act that you think is out of the normal and against your normal actions already accounted for?

It is amazing to think about all the decisions and things that have happened to make you be sitting where you are this very instant. I can think about hundreds of small choices that eventually led to a huge life change in retrospect. It is insane. So many things and decisions are constantly being made, I view the world as a giant web of decisions, we weave our way through one day to the next, in the end - I think you we sitting here because it is exactly where we were suppose to be sitting. So, I guess to answer the grand question, I do have a little hunch in me that the universe is unfolding as it should...