Free Will vs. Determinism

Is life, the universe and everything scripted, pre-determined and fate-bound?

Or does each individual actually have free will within their own lives?

Simply put, free will means you have the power to choose, determinism means you don’t.

When analyzed, either extreme is maddening.

Pure free will would imply that every second of a person’s life is entirely in their own hands. Obviously a person’s choices are sculpted by media, society, upbringing, environment, genetics, and many other factors — so this pure form of free will would be very hard to come by. It is perhaps what we mean when we speak about freedom. We see freedom as a lack of oppression in a literal sense, but the factors listed above can be seen as forms of mental oppression which force an individual to conform to a more acceptable version of free will. What would the ability to choose, completely unhindered by external factors, look and feel like? Either ecstatic or totally overwhelming, most likely.

On the other hand, pure determinism would mean that every choice, action, event, and thought in a person’s life is not their own — but an extension of some natural force unbound by time and space. This would mean that from the moment of the big bang, everything that happened, is currently happening, and is yet to happen is “scripted”. In a way, this can lend one a sense of comfort in knowing that whatever happens in life is not of their own doing, but is a result of a much larger and inconceivably complex clockwork. However, this can also lead to apathy if one indulges too deeply in this way of thinking — what’s the point of trying if everything is pre-meditated?

In reality, no one has solved this puzzle. Different systems of thought can be seen to employ…

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