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Can freewill ever be free?


Now how often have you heard, "Stop controlling me, let me be free!" "I just want to be me. Me with my own desires." It is actually nothing new. This kind of mantra seems to have been around since the turn of the 20th century for the generation next. Everybody wants to be left alone to do things at their own freewill.

Just like an indoor pet who rushes through the front door whenever it is ajar, human beings (whether they like it or not, they are still animals) always crave for something that they do not have. Without savouring what they already possess, they yearn for the unattainable or the utopia that only exists in their imagination.

Can people really be free? Is freewill really free? Can people ever be free to be and do anything as and when they feel free? Are our thoughts really free?

What dictates our will? Is it not a sum of all the indoctrination given to us via our parents through their upbringing, the teachings that they learnt from their elders who eventually learnt it as the word of the Divine. Our actions, intentions and willpower is determined by the composite of these conditionings. So, from the word go, there is no freewill. What we think is already moulded our years of learning via example. When we make a decision especially in a public domain in view of others to be judged, we would always decide to take the path of the majority or least the path that we know would be supported by a sizeable others.

Even when we are alone, when the decision is not viewed by other to judge, the fear of God and morality dictates what we do. If we were left really free with no responsibilities or no remorse on our actions but only to satisfy our animalistic instincts, our course of actions would only be geared to gratify our real primordial needs, that is cardinal, food and gluttony, sleep and satiety. That is the end point. This human trait, unfortunately manifests under extreme duress or during a mob.

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