Free Will Revisited

The very essence of what it means to be human is predicated upon the existence of free will. It’s impossible to even imagine any story, book or movie where at least part of the drama or interest isn't derived from the observer's identification with a character's moment of decision; that moment when we as observers wonder what he, she or they are going ... to do next. What else are our lives but grand, unique stories that we ourselves assist in writing the pages each and every day? A human life without choice is the very definition of an ‘absurd’ existence. One’s life can never be, in any real sense, ‘absurd’ for those that have the courage, intelligence, imagination and faith to posit their own values to the world at large as 'good'. How can any chosen human action be deemed to be 'for the greater good' or to have any value whatsoever if we share no commonality of what 'the good' actually is? *To believe that all values are individual and equal is not tolerance but nihilism. If irreconcilable value systems are at the root of all war, so be it. Live free or die. Those who swim in the miasma of value relativity cannot but ultimately drown in their own shifting and ephemeral re'solutions de jour. And paradoxically, isn't the position that we should all be nonjudgmental a judgment in itself? Can't one be more intolerant of the intolerants than the intolerants themselves? Perhaps sadly, perhaps divinely, to live is to choose; and for all but the world's would be Raskolnikovs, at some point perhaps the best any of us can do is to relish this one in a gadzillion opportunity to choose our own way, day by day, and pray for guidance.

And just where does our common idea of the good come from? Now that's about the biggest question imaginable! No progress since Plato.

M.D.T.