Free-Will

Fraser, Andrew wrote:

On a Darwinian reading of the Book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, mankind experienced for the first time a state of self-consciousness. Richard Fausette argues that human brains developed in tandem with an expanding behavioral repertoire. At some point, “man found himself choosing from among a growing number of behavioral alternatives and his unique sense of self emerged, a consequence of having to juggle many behavioral alternatives in his struggle for survival.” Behavior was no longer instinctive; individuals had to choose among possible futures. Their choices made a difference not just to their individual prospects for survival but to the relative fitness of their kith and kin. Unlike the wrinkly spreader or the honey bee, humans regularly chose between in-group altruism and selfishness. But men could not be sure whether they were making the right choice. Error was an inescapable consequence of freedom. Religion arose from “the natural desire of an evolved self-conscious mind to return to a time (the beginning) and a place (paradise) before men made tools and plotted the murder of other men.”
In this fallen world, man pines for an earlier state of consciousness in which instinctive behavior preserved his primal union with God.

The WASP Question

This "choosing other behavioural alternatives" is man's free-will.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This is why free-will is so incomprehensible to the average modern.
This and the lag time between interaction and awareness. Tthe individual's automatic reactions make its lucid self - ego - think the decision is compelled by an external force.

Without advocating for or against absolute free-will, but only a degree of it, one must notice the methodology of those who do advocate for and agaisnt.
Those who deny free-will, prefer to 'expose" the psychological motives of those who believe in freewill to find someone to accuse, for the woes they suffer, so as to evade exposing their own motives in denying free-will, so as to present themselves as "innocent" of all responsibility in their living circumstances.
But free-will does not apply to others, as some do, by claiming innocence while denying it to all others, to pretend they are victims and still not responsible, so that their 'intelligence is never in doubt.
If free-will only applied to others then the accusation would be justified, but this is not the case.
Belief in free-will - or some degree of it - implies self-responsibility in one's own circumstances....because even if the other is to blame for attempting to deceive or to exploit or to manipulate, it is the individual who holds himself accountable for for what happens to him, even if it is due to the machinations of others.
The individuals choices are blamed...his own judgements...even in regards to another's deception.

There is nobody to blame, first and foremost, other than the self, because unlike hypocrite and cowards - Desperate Degenerates - it is not a ruse to claim innocence or to apply the standard selectively, finding fault in others while preserving purity of self.
Free-Will means that all are responsible for their own actions, even in misjudging or making mistakes.The other may be a cause, but the self who fell victim to other is the responsible one.
But, as always, hypocrites and cowards use themselves as an example and form this they extrapolate another's motives - their empathy is overwhelmed by their sympathy, projecting self into other.
In this way they expose the truth of their own beliefs, whether they affirm or deny free-will.
It is because they've mistakenly assumed that the absence of free-will cleanses them of all accountability, freeing them to find fault in others- accusing others for their life circumstances for years, and only when exposed to their self-deceit that they begrudgingly correct the mistake that exposes them.
They wish to hide their mistake by accusing others of doing the same...so in their haste to hide they accuse others of a psychological motive, in their belief in free-will, as if it insinuates a selective accusation of other while retaining innocence for self.
Their judgement of other exposes them to others.

Unable to think they fall in errors, requiring external sources of wisdom to preserve the image of intelligence.
This is how they are unable to perceive the error in their evaluation's of motives. They fail to perceive how free-will does not protect the self from fault, placing it on others, but does the reverse.
Free-Will means one is accountable even for being duped or hurt by others.
How did their hero George W put it?



And yet Fools are continuously being fooled and blaming charlatans for it....why?
Because they are never to blame....their judgements cannot be questioned...they are programmed, part of destiny, inevitable. Their ego cannot be accused of being inferior.....
When they go bankrupt...it's the commercial economy; when they are caught in a crime, it's the judicial system; when they are robbed its the robber's fault.
That's the benefit of no-free-will. It's all part of some grand plan....and we are all "innocent bystanders".

So, another has the freedom to take advantage of you, but you, also, have the freedom to stop him...and if he succeeds, in a battle of wills, then its not entirely his fault, but it is primarily yours.

Two things to consider in this case and every other.
First is absolutism. The either/or mentality of simpletons.
Either man is absolutely free or he is absolutely un-free.

The other is integrity, in an age of coming darkness and decadence.
The old double standard. One for others and one, a completely contrary one, for self.

I have come across Desperate Degenerates who believe the will is un-free but then do not apply it to others, so they can claim "innocence" while blaming others for their predicaments.
Some of these cowards usually fall back to the "everyone is innocent" position only after their duplicity is exposed. They must preserve their "innocence" even if they resentfully must also admit the innocence of others; describing existence as a trap with themselves as bystanders or helpless participants in a cosmic joke.
Of course the same double-standard can be used by Desperate Degenerates who do believe in free-will, so as to accuse while applying a different standard, so as to remain "innocent".
Such liars and cowards accurately presume that their own desperate and degenerate methods are the rule, because desperate degeneration, across history and cultures, is always a majority - usually kept in check by force.
Minds with integrity are rare.
The noble spirit that applies the same standard on self as he does on others, have always been a small minority.
So, a Desperate Degenerate assuming others are using the double-standard are most often right.
This confuses many....because they do not really understand concepts, having only copied them from others and then on a very superficial level. So, they assume that free-will, as a rule, - whether free or un-free- means that others are accused while the self remains innocent.
But this is not the case for noble spirits who use the same standard to hold self accountable as they do others.

In the context of free-will this means that others are accountable for their own choices, but so is the self.
The other is accountable for his choice to exploit and manipulate you, and you are accountable for being unable to prevent them from exploiting and manipulating you; a liar must face the consequence of his lies, but the naive gullible mind that buys into the lies is also accountable for having been duped.
There is no comforting fall-back position for the believer in free-will, like there is for the one using the belief in the will's un-freedom to evade personal accountability.
If he cannot be the only "victim" of circumstances, or of another's faults and failings, then all must be become equal victims....because what matters is the preservation of "innocence" and the status of "victim".
Desperate Degenerates are attracted to nihilism and philosophies that are founded on it, like Abrahamism and Marxism....and post-modernism.
If not others, and not god, then some vague universal absolute order must be responsible....but never them. They are always victims, that made choices that were predetermined or forced by some external will, or entity. The consequences of their choices cannot be placed on their shoulders.

The one who believes in some degree of free-will, if he has integrity, cannot claim any victim status, because even the actions of others he must accept as his responsibility to be aware of and to be prepared for.  
Naivete and idiocy is no excuse.
Hypocrites lie...and it is the responsibility of the individual to be able to discern and to judge correctly, truth from lie.

Size: in metaphysical contexts size refers to an encompassing of possibilities, moving towards an idealized establishment of probability (singularity = absolute certainty), within this emerging encompassing.
An organism establishes a "boundary" - shell, skin, exoskeleton - staking a claim over a piece of space/time, within which it attempts to become an absolute authority.
But, even within an organism not all space/time is controlled, nor ordered - only a perimeter is projected outward, laying claim over space/time, i.e., possibilities within it - establishing an I/other.
The size of the claim - size of the organism - is a product of its potential to establish and defend its claim. All life is agon - war.
"I am that which is not other" (negative) and "Other is denied the status of I" (positive).
Attraction/Repulsion.
A tentative and incomplete becoming - not Being.  

What is claimed is the possibility to be organized in a particular way - ordered - into desirable probabilities - sequence of probable interactions.
Energy = sequence of possible/probable interactions: chaos, random unpredictable sequence; order, repeating, predictable sequence.
Organism claims a piece of space/time so as to organize, order it into a desired sequence of probabilities.
This encompassing claim is perceived as size.  
A quantitative perception of qualitative potentials.
Quantity - degree of possibility.
Quality - degree of probability.
An organism encompasses a shifting portion of space/time, including both order/chaos  (probability/possibility), attempting to organize both into desirable probabilities.  
Since space/time is expanding - shifting - this is impossible, in the absolute sense, but only more or less probable, within a specific period of space/time, determined by the organism's power.
Power = aggregate order and control - sequence of probable interactions participating in the emergence of a tenuous unity, attempting to become complete. i.e. certain, absolute.

In relation to will and its freedom is where the Desperate Degenerates shows his/her true colours and the linguistic methods it employs to hide its true intentions.

It is here that Determinism - hard determinism as it is called, exposes its secularized version of Abrahamism, having used semiotics to mask its origins and its common motives.
We see here how they interpret advocates of free-will - or soft-free-will, i.e., non-absolute freedom of will, corresponding to non-determinism but, in my view more noble.
I will explain why later.

For now let us take a fictitious event to demonstrate the different attitudes.
Let's assume a swimmer goes to a beach for a swim, and is then attacked by a shark, causing the loss of his foot.
The hard0-detemrinist will either say God willed it as a way of punishing or testing the swimmer faith, or, the secular version will replace the one-god with the uni-verse - one-logos - singularity; another way to say oneness of will, or absolute order.
He may use terms like "chance" or "luck" or "fate", but what he means is that the simmer has no choice but to lose a leg, because he is part of an order which he cannot escape, contradict, alter, in any way.
Now Christians believe the exact same thing but they mask it behind the narrative of Adam & eve as a warning to those who would dare exercise any form of freedom of will. The narrative also deals with a conundrum, stemming from the idea of a one-god, omnipotent, omniscient, creator of all.
How could a god punish humans for what he has made them to be?
There is no salvation from what is predestined by God. It's part of a sick joke....god is a sadist.
But then they pull free-will out of their proverbial arse, so as to hold man accountable for evil - all that can be blamed on god is now blamed on man.
Free-will is a ploy to test man's faith but absolve to absolve god of man's plight. It is Adama's fault that he took god's gift as genuine and not as a ploy to test his submissiveness to his order - his totalitarian authority.
Modern secular hard-determinists use a similar ploy to preserve their own theoretical "innocence" - an inversion of the Christian ploy.

What do moderns denying themselves free-will do?
A schooling in self-deceit.
They accuse those who believe in free-will of suing a double standard, because they do so - a liar accuses others of lying as a way of misdirection.
They understand free-will as a ploy to become a victim of otherness - which is exactly how they employ it, until their duplicity is exposed and they begrudgingly accept the idea of universal innocence.
in order to maintain their own innocence they must accuse some other - if not others, then some vague concept like absolute order.
It is luck, chance, meaning it is fated. When they were born the8ir fate was predetermined...and they have no way of changing it.
Slavery is preferable to the uncertainties of existence.
It's just how the universe works...no big deal. Accept it, stoically endure it. Anything to evade their responsibility in their own circumstances.
If the others as agencies of our fate is not possible, then the other is converted into an abstraction - a faceless absolute order.
God is not gone, he is renamed - reborn, linguistically - via logos.
Anything to preserve salvation - innocence.

This linguistic adjustment is what they call "progress"; evidence of their "enlightenment" - their superiority.
They've adopted new language to describe the exact same ideas.
They feel mature, advanced....their life suddenly has a purpose - to advance in rhetoric, without losing the prize.
A hypocrites talent is a measure of this.

So what does the desperate degenerate swimmer do when he chooses to enter the water where the shark lies?
Does he accuse the shark for being what it is, where it is? Some do.
does he accuse god?
Definitely, only he does not do so directly.
Let's see how absolute order is defined and how god, the Abrahamic kind, is usually defined?
The desperate degenerate swimmer, facing the negative consequences of his choices, must find another to blame....if not god then?
Luck, chance....fate....the universe and its totalitarian absolute order.
When the swimmer was born this event was predestined - he could not have not entered the water.
His ignorance, concerning sharks and these waters is evidence of his "innocence".

What does a soft "free-willist", if you will, do in the same circumstance?
The world is full of non-wilful agencies, simply following the path-of-least-resistance, simply being patterned and non-patterned energies.
The world is contains wilful agencies, such as sharks and humans, with varying degrees of freedom to circumvent their genetically determined impulses.
Does a noble mind unload his culpability upon others, using their double-standards, like Desperate degenerates do?
No.
He accepts the culpability of other free-agencies but accept his own as paramount.
He begins with accusing self.
The swimmer knows or does not know there re sharks in the water; and knows and understands the nature of sharks.
He is responsible for his ignorance and misunderstanding.
If his friend - a more wilful free agency - harms him, like a shark can, then it is his gullibility, his vanity, his ignorance, his idealism, that prevented him from seeing his friend's true nature.
His friend, like the shark, is responsible for his choices, but the primary responsibility is in the swimmer who is either ignorant or accepts the risks by entering the water.  
There are no innocent agencies.
Each agency determines his fate, in the course of his lifetime, having inherited the choices of his ancestors.
we consider children more innocent than adults because their lifetime is shorter, and so their choices fewer.; they've inherited their ancestor's choices and the consequences, but have contributed fewer choices in the determination of their future.
We cannot say the same for adults. The longer they live the more they've contributed to their destiny; the more they participated in determining their own circumstances, in congruence with every other living agency and non-living energies.
This is where they panic and seek refuge in absolutist ideologies, like those offered by Abrahamism and modern secular hard-determinism.
it is they, not I, who judge their life as negative, or a product of negativity, the seeking ways to absolve themselves of any hint of culpability. It is not before god but before themselves that they cower, sacrificing liberty for the comforts of enslavement.
The movement form Abrahamism towards Marxism is logical. It's part of the same psychosis.

Now, why do I consider soft-free-wilism, more noble than non-determinism?
The source is in the approach.
causality is a given. The present is the consequence of the past.
The soft-determinist begins with other and moves towards self; whereas  i begin from self and move towards the responsibilities of other.
I participate in the present, in the determination of my future, along with every other living agency and non-living patterned and non-patterned energies. My participation may seem insignificant, when compared to the rest, but it is the only participation which I am in control of - my will can intervene.
I cannot predict nor control the causal chains that made sharks as they are, and placed a shark in the vicinity of where I went for a swim, but it is I who chose to go not the water, knowing there might be sharks - knowing the odds, astronomically small as they may be - and it is I who accepted the risks and costs of my choices, whether they were founded on knowing and understanding, or on my ignorance.

Shark is not innocent, my ignorance is no claim to innocence, the causal chains that placed the shark in my vicinity is not a claim to innocence.
We are, as living agencies, not innocent of anything - nor are we guilty. We are accountable for our choices and the consequences these produce.

I failed to read the environment, because all is apparent - subtle as they may be - and it is I who accepted the risk of any unforeseeable consequence for my choice to enter the uncertainty of the liquid environment. An environment. I am not evolved to be efficient within.  
No double-standards, no word-games, no victimhood. Every choice I make have consequences - both foreseeable and unforeseeable, in a non-absolutely ordered cosmos; in a cosmos of chaos and order.

Why do you think the Greeks described their deities as fallible, and as allies, or enemies, and not as absolute entities? titans were our common enemies - representing the mysterious primordial forces of chaos and order.
Kazantzakis describes god as an entity a general, struggling, fighting along with us. Not an omniscient, omnipotent totalitarian despot, but struggling, vulnerable, malleable.

Chaos is where freedom seeps through the cracks, making us possible, but also condemning us to a lifetime of uncertainty.
Consciousness evolved to deal with this uncertainty.
Nihilism is a sophisticated method of coping.

The issue is "choice". For absolutist Desperate Degenerates it is the "problem".
How to explain it, justify it, incorporate it into an absolutely certain universe - how does the god of the Abrahamics, deal with choice?
He makes it into the source of sinfulness; of lost paradise; uses it as an excuse.
The Moderns incorporate it into their absolutism, by calling it illusory, itself predetermined - a hoax, a lie sold by the devil; hypocrites unload their own hypocrisy upon some vague entity, some absolute otherness.
Choices are themselves determined, so they aren't really choices, only indications of how the universe works - our will is the absolute one-will's manifesting. Not ours at all. We are innocent of all our choices and their consequences.

Choices are the "problem".
How to explain them, how to sublimate and surrender them to another, how to rid ourselves from their repercussions?
Each choice determining all subsequence choices.
The quality of our choices exposing the quality of our power; the quantity of our choices exposing the degree of our freedom.
Choice is where responsibility begins and ends. It is the expression of will, limiting freedom, or un-freedom, if you prefer.
Is not strength a measure of weakness, for the pessimist, and a measure of strength, for the optimist?
What is an optimist?
.
The cultivation of unsubstantiated hope.

The optimists begins with an absolute positive, i.e., omnipotence, omniscience - Top<>Down emoting; begins with the absolute ideal/idea, with the word/symbol.
It's all or nothing.
The pessimist begins from the nil, Bottom<>Up reasoning; building degrees of knowledge and conviction - building probability in the expanding field of space/time possibilities.

Nietzsche wrote:

With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception... they are overcome by belief in themselves. It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them.  

The only way someone can be held accountable for his choices, and actions and behaviour is if his choices and those of his ancestors are considered participants in the final outcome.
The only way one can hold someone accountable - responsible - starting with oneself, is if his choices are participants in the causes of what is being determined.
Only if will is free to choose, and the choices it makes has not been entirely determined, can anyone feel proud or ashamed of the consequences.
Getting rid of pride, does not miraculously preserve pride.
You cannot have it both ways....you cannot apply double-standards, absolving self from responsibility, when things turn our badly and you make errors in judgements, but then accepting full responsibility when things turn our well, or better than expected.
You cannot feel pride in what you are, and what you've done, while evading the possibility of shame, with the application of double-think, or compartmentalization, of double-standards.
You can't be simultaneous and absolutely free and un-free.

I'm going to take one last crack at it, because, to be honest, the subject is becoming boring, and the quality of responses declarative and lacking all substance.
This will be a long text, because I will be using it to refer to any detractors and opposing views, as I hopefully will cover as much ground as possible - so the text will deal with the subject of "free-will" in general ways, because responding to each detail in detail, would take an entire book.

Here we go.

Causality is not denied.
Causality implies past - or refers to the past, just as nature refers to the sum of all nurturing - pertaining to living organisms - and God refers to past - as the theoretical point of Creation; beginning implying a telos - Interactivity, in Satyr lingo, is what causality refers to.
The past is immutable, and determining of presence - ergo the Abrahamic God. In other words past manifests as present, as presence, interpreted as appearance....but that's another topic.
Past does not exist, in the strictest use of the concept, if we properly define "existence" as the state of mutable, dynamic, fluidity; only as memory is past preserved.
Ironically, past is returned to mutability through memory, because memories are vague, can be altered, corrupted, mutated. We recall the past in whatever way suits us, sometimes altering it to agree with our choices in the present - or to justify and validate them; mostly we deny or forget it, pretending it no longer applies, when, in fact, past is forever manifesting as presence, and presence is continuously becoming past.
This selective memorizing, can happen with experienced memories, or memories stored in the brain....but not with physical memories, such as DNA. The body is more honest, because it simply has to organs to pretend - that's what the brain is; an organ that has the ability to pretend, to deceive, to self-deceive, to lie, to forget....to repress and suppress.
But I digress, and this is already tool long of an explanation.

So, there's no disagreement on the determining causality of past. All past interactions determine, cause, the present - or past manifests as presence - as a falling away, past continuously becoming presence.
Have I covered all possible angles? Don't think so.
But let's go on.

The "issue" is the present, or presence, or existence. This is where disagreement arises, with different linguistic sequences attempting to add their own variance, according to a desired outcome - often implying, insinuating, what cannot be substantiated. The brain lies.....because it is an organ that has evolved to engage and promote survival, and not to achieve clarity. If deception promotes survival, then the brain deceives others and itself, if need be.
So, although past is immutable, though man does mutate it in his memories (selective, self-serving, based on double-standards etc.) the present is mutable, mutating - presence is dynamic and interactive.
Man's attempt to alter the mostly unknown past, fails. It only guarantees his existence in denial or in delusion, with whatever repercussions this entails. Repercussions that can be denied, or unloaded, blamed, on other.....and so the blame game begins.
Escaping responsibility is an attempt to escape the psychological impact of one's won wrong judgements and failed reasoning.
Present is dynamic, as I said....it is existent, existing.....not being but becoming.
We can say here that the present is constantly determining the future.
An individual, if he is old enough, is a participant in all this. He, or she, is part of the causality, of the immutable past, but also the causing, mutating, morphing present; participating as a wilful agency in his own future. To put it another way, the wilful agency participates in determining the future, just as it participated in the causes that manifested as presence.
We must differentiate the non-living from the living - the will-less from the wilful - because it simply follows paths-of-least-resistance, in accordance to its essence, i.e., pattern or non-patterned energy. Again, a topic for another day.
Here we must distinguish life from non-life, as wilful agency, and non-wilful agency.
There are degrees of wilfulness.
A plant, for example, follows impulses evolved in past. It is entirely impulsive, compelled by stored genetic memories (DNA). It surrenders and is a honest manifestation of its past.
It mutates using trial and error - natural selection, i.e., successful actions, over time, survive or enhance survival, and reproduction; failed actions die.
A plant's impulsiveness mutates over time, through trial and error, through natural selection, reflecting its relationship with environment - i.e., with emerging dynamic circumstances of determined by causality - a slow process.
Given that the present is dynamic, the plant's cumbersome adjustments over time, are constantly revised.
We're talking cosmic time, not civilization length, or organic lifespan, time-periods.
This means that its wilful agency is altered, slowly, gradually, from generation to generation, in accordance to mutating environmental conditions and existential circumstances.
A plant dies, and only what is born of it will be adjusted - its impulsiveness gradually changing over generations of life/death cycles.
This method is also true for lower life-forms....but the gradual evolution of what are vainly called 'higher life forms' gradually make the process more efficient and effective. This is due to the evolution of the nervous system, including brain, which is a dynamic organ of interactivity, when compared to the body's plant-like cumbersome processes of adaptation.
Now, choice contributes to the adjustment of the organism to its mutating, dynamic environment - in real time.
The organism can control its physical, evolved, compulsiveness, its genetically determined impulses. It can redirect, sublimate or deny them. It's will is more informed,aware, more dominant, as compared to lower life-forms; if it cultivates it the will becomes stronger, more dominant.
This is where asceticism, in the Hellenic sense - enters the picture.

Now, what do some claim - call them Hard Determinists, call them Christians, call them, Desperate Degenerates, call them whatever?
Not only that past is immutable, but so is the present.
That there is no free-will, at all (absolutism), since the choices we make in the present, on the go, are also determined by the past. That no matter what choice is made, what course of action is taken, that it was inevitable, i.e., determined - that no other could ever have been made. No matter what choice is made, what course of action is taken, they will claim it was pre-determined and inevitable.
They do this after-the-fact -taking advantage (exploiting and manipulating) the lag time between interactivity and awareness - caused by the processing time required for awareness to emerge - which is, also, a topic already covered. They do so to claim "innocence".
Most are also idiots and hypocrites - a bad combo preserved over time due to human interventions - contributing to the pollutions man produces with his constant interventions upon natural processes.
according to Degenerates, even this human intervention, has been determined and so is inevitable. It could not have been any other way - fatalism, inevitability.
They mask the "should' with a "could".
Some apply this method selectively, so that they can preserve pride in regards to successful outcomes, while simultaneously, denying culpability when the products of their choices prove to be negative and a source of personal shame and embarrassment. This is a natural by-product of this mindset.
They progress from using this method to blame others, implying their own innocence in their own affairs, to a method of accepting the innocence of all - universal innocence reverting the Christians universal guilt - so as to maintain personal innocence - non-culpubilty in ones own negative circumstances, though they still manage to secretly feel proud when the circumstances prove to be positive.
An example of self-deceit, where body exposes the pretences of the mind.
But, ideologically, as a matter of remaining consistent, they accept universal, uniform innocence - equality of irresponsibility. Implying communal victim status. Actor and acted upon are now equalized as victims of a universal order towards which they remain innocent, because all they can do is accept its dominance, its Will, what has been determine for them. Both victim and victimizer find parity.
And yet, many still find ways to accuse, the evil other, the capitalist, the Nazi, the friend who wronged them, the idiots who populate the earth etc....exposing their duplicitous motives.
See, for them their own agency, their own participation in the circumstances of their life, must be selectively accepted. If negative, otherness will be blamed - more on this later - but if positive, then they claim full, or a dominant, responsibility, experiencing pride in their positive accomplishments.
Some are called out on their convenient double-standards, to preserve innocence before the negative...so they reluctantly accept universal innocence, in theory, so as to preserve their own irresponsibility, in practice.
Blaming another is replaced with a vague accusation against universal totalitarian order.
They could only have chosen and acted in accordance - reluctantly submissive - to universal order, as it determines them and everything that exists. All could only have turned out as they did....and no other outcome could ever have existed.
All this convenient assumption is made after-the-fact: once they've acted and chosen, determine an outcome do they declare it the only, the absolute, unalterable, immutable....because it is already part of the past, which they made probable within the field of possibilities available to them.

Now we get to the meaty parts.
Christians put themselves into a bind, using this previously mentioned method of self-deceiving self-purification.
Their "problem" was a product of how they defined their God - or their version of absolute order - having included in the definition, along with omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence the difficulties of consciousness (wilfulness) and absolute goodness (morality).
They had to scramble and adjust their methods so that their lies were not fully exposed.
If God created all, and was absolutely good, then from whence came evil, or the negative? This painted God as a sadist...not good at all....or it challenged the idea of his omnipotence and omniscience...also not good.
They invented the narrative of Adam & Eve, and the "forbidden fruit", to deal with this "problem" they determined with their own discretions, but then claimed to be innocent of all responsibility.
Now god's omnipotence, absolute order, could be blamed on the Devil. But this did not resolve the dilemma, because according to them the devil, Satan, is also god's creation- i.e., also determined,. caused, by god. They settled on obscurantism and mysticism - linguistic word-games - the only way contradictions could be covered over with semantics and definitions of terms that, over time, become conventional. God, they declared, is too mysterious, he works in mysterious ways....he has his reasons and they are absolutely good. Perhaps god is testing man's faith, his ability to reject Satan's lies - the lairs cast blame on other, to hide their own practices; a duplicitous liar is quick to accuse another of duplicity and lying, so as to hide himself in the accusation - vice masking as virtue.
Secular atheists, and absolutists, have no such trite dilemmas. They reject Abrahamic definitions, claiming to have overcome them, or progressed. Their version of the same absolute is neither Good nor Evil - Nietzsche is popular among these creatures for this reason alone. Their version of the absolute, of absolute order, renamed Universe, is Beyond Good and Evil - it has no moral component. It is absolute but with no moral essence; no conscious wilfulness.
Or is the universe wilful? It seems the only thing "overcome" and "surpassed", is the language, validating their claim of enlightened progressiveness; god's description as an anthropomorphic goodness, the idea of god itself, is abandoned and replaced with a more abstract version of the absolute - 'one'...to which Satan is still present as 'nil' (1/0).
In all else the description remains unaltered - with perhaps a change in terminology to mask the connections to this despicable, Abrahamic past. To free themselves from the immutable past, they must detach from all connection with it. Causality becomes a vague reference to a past, which is never fully developed, but kept obscure so that each can find causes for his own personal predicaments, preserving innocence.
They are crypto-Christian in all things existential, except the moral angle.
A talent they must have picked-up from the Jews, no doubt. Known for their long history of crypto-Chrsitianity, and for rejecting their memetic offspring Islam and Christianity
So, secular absolutists - i.e., nihilists as I describe them - have no moral paradox to resolve. They can blame it on universal order - or cosmological totalitarianism - without suffering from moral qualms. Their innocence is preserved indefinitely.
Sacrificing pride so as to escape shame, they live in a psychological realm where everything that happens around them, is happing to them - without them having to lend consent, but only endure the outcome.
Stoicism is big, as is cynicism, among these types. An increasingly quiet desperate submission to their fate - which they play no part in producing.
All their choices and the courses of actions they took, can now be blamed on universal factors. Not only is past determined, and absolutely determining of present, but the present is absolutely determined - there is no wilful agency, choice is illusory, the individual is but a cog in a universal fascistic system that acts and chooses in accordance to what has already been decided/determined; individual is but a middle-man, a agency expressing universal order - or God's will, if we change contexts returning to the origins, i.e., Adam and eve acted, chose, in accordance with how God had made them - minus the Satanic agency of the snake.
Is it any surprise that many of them turn to Communism as a way of accusing without actually doing so?
But, if they remain true to their won beliefs, the capitalists is no more to blame than the bourgeoisie or the masses he exploits? What choice does the capitalist have in not exploiting those that he does?
Why is the capitalist a wilful agent and the impoverished a helpless innocent?
Christianity morphs into Marxist paradigms - altering the lingo.
Absolute totalitarianism loses its moral dilemmas, and becomes absolutely and indifferently totalitarian - answerable to nothing and nobody.
Moderns learn to acknowledge and rejoice, in their described incarceration, their slavishness. They say "yay" to it, as a way of pretending joyful surrender to their fatalism, because that is what noble minds, supposedly do; they stoically accept their fate, in which they presumably had no part in shaping.

Now what are my positions.
True, the past is determined and determining of present/presence; true it is immutable, and mostly unknown, and unknowable.
But it is in the present, in the dynamic interactions we call existence, where I part ways from the rest.
The present is not immutable, nor entirely determined, but it is being determined; dynamic and fluid, not yet solidified into immutability. Just as we participated in the causal sequences that manifested in our present circumstances, we are wilful agencies participating in the determination of our future circumstances.
Causality simply refers to options available to us, as circumstantial.
Our choice, our course of action, is not yet determined, but is being determined, with our participation.
We are not "innocent" bystanders surrendering to an exoteric will, or to our organic impulses, we are wilful agencies choosing and acting and with every act and choice contributing to what circumstances we will exist within in the future; determining if we will even have a future to experience.
We participate as wilful agencies in causality - along with other wilful agencies - of varying degrees of wilfulness ; wilful agencies (living) and non-wilful energies (non-living) - interactions I call them in summation, including both types.
Existential dynamism, fluidity is interactivity. we act, and interact - repel/attract.
Although our choices, our course of action is compelled, by physical memories (DNA), like a plant's or a bugs, or a cows, we, as more advanced agencies, also have the choice to refuse to submit to this compulsion, thusly shaping our destiny with more intent - wilfully.
The strength of our will, and the energies available to us - power - determined the degree to which we can shape our future circumstances, in the present.
The brains and nervous system evolved to control physical impulses - to dominate memories, to even reshape them....producing other problems, such as the current Identity Crisis.
We are not like plants, nor are we like lifeless matter, simply interacting in accordance to their essence - i.e., as patterns repulsing/attracting. We perceive options, in advance, and we can choose contrary to our impulses; we can repress and redirect - both a blessing and a curse.
Existence = dynamic, interactive, present/presence, interpreted by a conscious mind as appearance.
Past does not exist. It has ceased to exist and "fallen away", continuously "falling away" - preserved as memory, manifesting as presence.
In the present the future is being determined - we are the dynamic cause of what is to come, and will be referred to as immutable past in the future.
We are not innocent victims, or indifferent bystanders, simply observing what has been determined to happen to us.
We are wilful agencies, concious causality, participating in the determination of our future - destiny.
Although our options are already determined - with or without our participation in the past - which options will be chosen has not been absolutely determined, but we are participating in their determination as wilful agencies.
The only way this is possible, to any degree, is if order is not totalitarian, not absolute, but "flawed"....like Abraham's god - not absolutely ordered, but also somewhat chaotic, random.
Ordering, not ordered, as Being is Becoming.
Linear time points to increasing disordering, increasing randomness/chaos, i.e. decreasing probabilities in an expanding field of possibilities, tending towards uniformity.
Probability is another way of describing order. Certainty being a description of the absent absolute or absolute order - singularity.
Space/Time = possibility, adopting this from Heidegger.
I am currently reading a book on him, titled: Heidegger's Hidden Sources.
It's about Heidegger's eastern influences - something common with both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
Nietzsche's Hindu influences are most obvious. Changing terminology does not alter the essence of an idea/ideal.
So, Nietzschean and Schopenhauerean lingo cannot hide their eastern influences, no more than altering Abrahamic terminology and upgrading Biblical lingo can mask the Desperate Degenerate's shared nihilistic inheritance.
Currently some Degenerates are attempting to reinvent Christianity, and Communism, using different semiotics - changing the scripture to an upgraded form, then claiming to have progressed, by adopting different imagery (packaging), to sell the exact same ideas/ideals.
How many do not hasten to declare themselves "genius" and messiahs by simply declaring the old is now new, because it has been expressed using new words?

Quote :

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

"Absolute order by any other name would feel as comforting; cleansing our sinful culpabilities, returning us to a desired state of pristine innocence."

Upon who or what can we unload our cares and woes, if not upon an anthropic domineering authoritarian one-god? Why not a totalitarian universe; an abstraction, an idea/ideal void of moral principles and judgements?
Have we not already determined our future, shaped its probability, by believing there is no escape, no way to change our fate?
Have we not intentionally sacrificed our agency to the master, to preserve our innocence; have we not changed Eternal Life, with the idea of eternal return, sacrificing any divergence for the sake of survival, at all costs?
We describe existence as a repeating, predictable, cycle of the same, believing this is an affirmation of our existence, when it is a preservation of the mundane...with no hope of escape.
Hindus and Buddhists have a way out of the cycles of repeating rebirth, not truly believing we relive the exact same life over and over.....but still they offer an escape. Desperate Degenerates, being hypocrites and cowards, will settle for nothing less than absolute survival, even if it means the repetition of the exact same life, as if it deserved to be preserved eternally.

Whew....now that that's done with, I can move on to other, more interesting subjects.
See, my choice has determined my future options.
The text was posted as a reference....so that i can escape being bogged down by idiotic declarative presumptive, posters.
These are my positions. until better ones are offered, I have no need to change them.
Will I be able to resist returning here - especially after a few taunts by imbeciles?
Don't know.
A test of my wilful agency and my ability to control my impulses.
How can I shape my destiny with something as simple, but difficult, as a choice?

Hoffer, Eric wrote:

Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.

Cultural decline promotes the feeling of a collective, in suffering, in loss of identity.
One lost soul seeking in another some form of what is no longer available.

There are many ways to ridicule, or to attempt to destroy a concept.
One is to deny its utterance - or even the mere thought of it - punishing all those who speak of it, either through institutional rule, using law 7 order as a medium of the collective will, or by the more intuitive method of peer-pressuring social methods, using shame, sarcasm, and ridicule to enforce silence.
Another is to define it out of existence, thusly making it impossible to attain - such as an absolute - or an absurdity no rational mind would even consider without losing self-respect - such as the god of Abraham.

Nihilism is a linguistic ideology - imitating the methods of a genetically-based virus - that does just that. It defines words - and with them the concepts they represent - out of existence, placing them in an imaginary realm 'beyond space/time' or in some forever immanent future that can never be present; or by placing them in some occult realm - buried beneath appearances - accessible only by the properly initiated, those who have the "gift," or those who can suspend reason, and suppress scepticism, as a sacrificial rite proving their worthiness to be "enlightened," "saved," and/or "liberated" from their own past, from the world itself.

The concept of "freedom", properly defined, is a threat to the uniformity of the collective.

Hoffer, Eric wrote:

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

You can lead a horse to water, but without the herd it will not drink.
For a social organism, such as man, the very idea of freedom exceeding its comfort level, is terrifying - like being cast out of the group to face nature on their own.
No matter how absurd, the idea that promises the lie of absolute uniformity and belonging, will be preferable to the truth.

Imagine, undermining the very foundations of western civilization, by negating freedom, as a probability, and not as a absolute that can never be validated nor justified.
Imagine considering yourself the inheritor of what you dismiss.

Madness?
No, simply self-deceiving, self-comforting, self-flattering, confused Desperate Degeneracy.
An esoteric slave, exoterically pretending to be a master of his own destiny.  
Character  (public self), versus personae (private self) - mind/body dissonance.
Dissonance between noumenon - idea/idea, the theoretical - and phenomenon - the real, the actual.
Ironic that one can be a Christian, to his core - while telling himself he's an atheist - in his self-aware ego; one can identify with a victim, while pretending to be a victimizer - prey acting as if it were a predator.

Why?
Because failure is equated with slavishness, and only success is consider noble and masterly.
As if a man is only a man when he always wins; a warrior always a warrior when he is victorious over his enemies.
This is how fucked up todays, so called, Europeans are.  
They only want to partake of the victory, and dismiss the vanquishing as belonging to another.
They know not what nobility means.

If victory and dominance is certain and guaranteed, then you are not a noble warrior, but another member of the necessary, but irrelevant, canon fodder.

Doesn't the fag show a hyperbolic pride in his admission that he enjoys being penetrated by other males - a shaming fact for any healthy male?
Why, then, are we surprised when men proudly denounce freedom, or any probability for it?
Why are we surprised when men, and women, show so much bubbling enthusiasm when declaring how submissive they are, and will continue to remain, to others and to another's opinions on reality?
Why are we not disturbed when parents proudly admit their children still, literally, believe in the fairy tales told to them, by the parents themselves, when they were much younger?

Because innocence is a virtue, and dependence is something to be proud of.
Like a Christian sinner proudly and publicly admitting his shameful sinfulness.
It's a call for help, that will reject it if it is ever offered.

This is why I do not consider freedom, or anything an absolute, i.e., a complete whole.
"Freedom from" (negative) refers to past/nature.
"Freedom to" (positive) refers to future/ideal.

The struggle occurs in the present, i.e., nurture, choice, action....
The tension of past, in relation to future, is manifesting in the present.
The determining/determined immutable past (god), goes through us, as natural agencies, to determine the yet-to-be future.
Self is integrated into the idea/ideal of the absolute, most often called "god," but increasingly called "order," and/or "one," in secular times.

If it's not free, then it's not substantial. What is the promise of society, herd? Reducing cost.

"Chance" is what I call chaos, i.e., randomness.
Causality refers to order.
Cosmos is chaos/order, interacting.
So it's both and neither, because neither is absolute, it is a movement towards order or towards chaos.
Free-will sneaks in with chaos, or in the absence of absolute order, and is expressed as choice.

Of course neuroscientists and predict an individual's choice before he is even aware of it - or makes it.
This is what I called the lag between reacting to stimuli - mostly automatic, like in plants - and becomes are of stimuli, due to the processing time required for the stimuli to be transmitted to brain and then converted to image, or sensation or abstracted into idea.
I think Heidegger described it as a "looking back" - we live life forward but we experience it after-the-fact.
Body has evolved, like plants, to be reactive on a local level - for instance, we get goose pimples locally, when we touch cold, and this cascades across the surface of our skin, but we become aware of it afterwards.
There's a built-in dissociation of body/mind, which can be made larger, through nihilistic ideologies and spiritual dogmas, or shrunk, through practised meditation.
Asceticism - mind body exercises - is how the conscious mind can cultivate an overriding of evolved automated reactions to stimuli - this cultivated gradually overrides the evolved physical reactivity, and is passed on to the next generation genetically.
Whether conscious or subconscious all choices are expressions of self, so all choices, whether made consciously or not, is an expression of the essence of an organism; they are the organism, for identity is nothing more than a sum of interactions.
Responsibility is what they want to escape - to claim innocence...ergo to support victim status.

They through all sorts of mental acrobatics, like accusing others of what they are guilty of.....to blame other for the actions of selfless.

He says "virtual reality" where I use the term "interpretation". We construct - i.e., we interpret reality - by converting stimuli received from external sources into forms - codes - we can process, e.g., neural pulses.
The accurate of the interpretation determines success or failure - natural selection. Over time every species evolves an interpretation which works for it - a niche.
The world is shared, but the interpretation are not - subjective/objective.

Causality includes the agent, so the individual participates in the choices it will make in the future - or in determining the options it will have to choose from.

Chance, or chaos, is the component the free-will evolved to deal with.
It is in chance occurrences that the natural selection process evolves the ability to reprogram reactions, or to control impulses if they prove to be detrimental to the attainment of an objective.

With the exception of the ones who have convinced themselves that there is no such thing as freedom.
Like the herd animal who cannot imagine a life, a world, outside the herd, or the fencing that keeps it enclosed and safe, and taken care of.
For it, the very idea of freedom and the responsibility and uncertainty it entails, is so terrifying that it dismisses the idea of an outside the enclosure altogether, so as to justify why it does not even try.
In Orwell's 1984 the mind was enslaved by the manipulation of language.
This is already a fact. We live in a Dystopian world. Men are women, blacks are white, homosexuality is normal and no different than heterosexuality...our language has ceased to have meaning, outside texts, scriptures, books.  
When the definition of freedom has become something extraordinary, or when the very concept has been discredited or made to mean the opposite - slavery is freedom & freedom is slavery - then the very concept of freedom is impossible to conceptualize.

War is Peace
Slavery is Freedom
Ignorance is Strength
Victory is Defeat
Individuality is Collectivism

There is no truth, no objectivity...nothing but the socially constructed and enforced. all is part of a collective; all is d
subjugated by a greater absolute authority.  



There is no past, present, future, except what the "party", the collective, says it is.
Not in the individual mind but the inter-subjective, collective, hive-mind, delivered by sanctioned and approved of "experts" - in the absolute order of
Universal totalitarianism.  
It is the end, the telos.....the peak.
The Last Man is here.

Rejoice, for if the Last Man has already appeared, then this can only mean a new beginning is on its way.
But, the road will be long and hard, and it may take decades before we see the last of the Last Man - for he is the last of a memetic kind and not a last of a genetic kind.

In closing...because this topic is boring now....

I have a choice, based on an opportunity, which has been determined by events outside my choices, but partly determined by my own participation, though my choices, i.e. I can either expose myself to an under-aged girls, knowing the conventions - the environmental circumstances, or I can choose not to expose myself in public where I can be arrested; I can choose to peep into a house, hoping to catch a glimpse of a woman undressing, or a couple fornicating - knowing the possible consequences, or the probabilities of these choice - or I can choose not to take the risk; I can choose to take an under-aged girls across state lines, knowing the laws and repercussions, or I can choose not to do so, when the opportunity arises.
it doesn't matter what my ideological, philosophical positions are, or what "expert" above my pay-grade I defer to, like a slave to a master, because the environment is a given...and I choose to ignore it or to challenge it.
This has possible consequences....which I cannot then blame the police, the judge for. I cannot blame god or universal determinism, implying that even the choice made had been determined, so I am really an 'innocent victim" of nature, or the universe, of god's creative will.

My choice, among may options, was my own.

Similarly, I may choose to ignore a stop-sign, or to take what is not my property - and I can justify it with anarchism and then debate over the nature of property, on philosophical grounds...but this ignored the circumstances - the environment within which I made the choice.
Either I am obtuse, a moron, and did not accurately read the environment, or did not evaluate the probabilities correctly, or I chose, out of multiple other options, to take the risk.  
I cannot claim innocence and the police, the judge to be blameworthy. Either all are innocent victims or all have absolute freedom.....in the either/or dualities of an imbecile nihilist's world-view.
The third possibility is a synthesis of both.
All are determined, most more than others - before my birth, and I am forced to choose from the consequences, but after my birth I am participating in the causal chain, with every choice I make, determining all my future options, and those of others,a s well, because my choices affect another's, just as another's affect mine.

So free-will does not absolve the individual of all responsibilities or dos not apply it selectively.
It states that even a friend, who I trusted, can choose to harm me, and I am responsible for his choice as well, and to a degree, because I failed to appreciate this possibility as a probability, and I misjudged my friend's quality.
So, both are true. He chose to harm me, for whatever reason, and I failed to judge him accurately....because fo emotion, idealism, romanticism...because my empathy was corrupted by sympathy/antipathy....for whatever reason it is I who failed to accurately evaluate this person who I considered my friend.  
In other words I failed to accurately approximate the probabilities of him choosing what he did.
If I had, and he did it....then it will not hurt my feelings, nor will it surprise me, because I am ready or I have predicted this probability - its percentage - and I wilfully accept it, for whatever self-serving reasons, as a risk worth accepting.

If I know that by exposing myself I may go to jail and be labels a sexual deviant, affecting my life, and all my future options, then I cannot hold the police or the judge or the state responsible for a choice I made.
If I do...then I'm a hypocrite and only indulging in self-comforting - desiring to absolve myself of all the negative outcomes for my every wilful choice...whether I understood the risks or not.

Another final example...
A woman chooses to dress provocatively and go to a bar. It doesn't matter if she understands the risks, or has a deep understanding of human sexuality, or she justifies her dress choice with emotion or taste or whimsy or whatever girlish naive method she uses to explain why she leaves the house with a dress that exposes her sexuality publicly - knowing the multiplicity of eyes that will see her.
Maybe she incorrectly evaluates the risks; maybe she chooses to ignore them, and strut her stuff; maybe she's a retard who is completely ignorant....doesn't matter.

Every choice has probable costs, and not only benefits. A win/win scenario is a naive delusion.
Every choice, based on a judgement calls, exposes the mind's quality, in relation to its environment.
Every choice has consequences determining all future options to choose from. Good and bad choices are evaluated by the consequences, in relation to the intent, the objective, and by the quantity of options it opens up, expanding the individuals freedom within the environment.
In general bad choices are those that decrease all future options available to the individual - shrinking his freedom.
there are choices that wilfully choose to restrict freedom due to a factor the individual cannot surpass, such as mortality.
So, an individual may choose to reproduce, limiting all his future options, because he is not immortal, and desires his genes to continue on, after he dies.
Here mortality acts as a n inhibitor to freedom.

The only way we even have options is because absolute order is a myth....a secular version of the one-god - the absolute singularity.
One god, of Abraham is translated into another nihilistic form - secularized - as one, or absolute order.
Chaos is the factor that allows for choice, and choice is an expression of freedom - a measurable, falsifiability, phenomenon.
Of course, once the choice has been made - either consciously or unconsciously, it seems as if it were the only choice that could have been made - something cowards, imbeciles and hypocrites take advantage of to imply that every choice is, itself, determined, describing, indirectly, a totalitarian, universe, or the same Abrahamic one-god. A type of universal fascism where man is but a witless and will-less automation, and existence a broken record repeating ad-infinitum the same - they retain eternal life, indirectly and hypocritically.
In this context, there is no will, other than the universal one, and therefore no right/wrong, because all si part of a universal plan...including paedophilia, rape, murder, bestiality...and incarceration.
A coward and a hypocrite comforts himself knowing that whatever wrong judgement he made was part of a universal plan he could not have chosen to evade - he could not have not raped, or killed, or gone to prison, or exposed himself in public; he or she could not have not raped a child, or eaten shit, or fucked a cow, or cut off his penis and had it for breakfast, or raped a chicken, or his own mother...and his father could not have not raped him, because nothing that is done could have been any other way.
There is no nobility or ignobly. all is part of god's will...or universal order - the absolute.
Ha!!!
 
I'm done with the free-will issue.
Ta,Ta,

Identifying with the ego is how a desperate degenerate claims to be innocent of all that he does or says.
It sides with the lucid part of the self - the conscious part, so that the unconscious can be blamed for what the conscious part disapproves of....hypocritically.
The gene can be blamed, when the ego is entirely submissive to the prevailing meme, and its laws and ethical standards.
So, a paedophile can claim that he could not resist his impulses....like a external will was controlling him when he was raping the two-year old girl. he is "innocent" of what his body made him do. his mind appalled by what his body did.

He rejects the self, as a manifestation and continuance of the past....so as to then claim that his unconsciousness, and his inheritance were not given consent by him....see how these freaks gather in communes?
He is ashamed of the self, and the past it represents....and which the ego must tolerate and forget and deny - negate.
Sum of all past nurturing = nature. He is ashamed of his nature, as he inherited it from his parents, representing choices made for him, not by him - he being the manifestation, the end result, of all those choices. He will not accept responsibility for choices made for him, even if these choices resulted in his birth.
Self-hatred is rampant - usually expressed as a resentment towards the parents....or past. Ridiculing all traditions...especially true for mixed culture/genetic children.

How does this internal dissonance relieve itself?
Humour....i.e., psychotic/cynic; laughter is how physical stresses are expunged.
Laughter is how the terrifying the disturbing is experienced, as if it were occurring to another.
This is the source of the ancient Greek tragedies/comedies....theatre. The audience experiences the tragedy, occurring to another as a relief., expunging the anxiety in fits of hyperventilating gesticulations; mockery, ridicule is a way fo pushing away...or rejecting, without having to justify the act.

Freedom is not absolute....means one deals with what confronts him, mostly what has been determined by another's choices or by unconscious cosmic energies, and he deals with it using the inherited mechanisms passed on to him/her through natural selection - which now is becoming social selection.
But he may choose not to deal with them using this automatic reaction...and may choose another method, suing his knowledge of the past - precedent - as a guide to evaluate the degree of success/failure in relation to a goal - triangulation.
It is in this choice where freedom lies.
In an absolutely ordered cosmos free-will is impossible. Existence is a repeating tragic joke....a cycle of reliving the exact same events ad infinitum.
But the cosmos is not absolutely ordered, otherwise our level of consciousness would be unnecessary. It would never have evolved above the level of discerning the pattern and then applying the same reaction...over and over again.
Pattern A + pattern B = respond AB.
No higher cognition required...it would all be automated, and self-doubt, would hinder the efficiency of the predictable process.  
Higher cognition would be detrimental to survival, and would never evolve over a certain degree of utility.

Higher cognition is only advantageous when the cosmos is not entirely ordered....and unforeseeable events, to a degree, circumstances, slight modifications, emerge, requiring an appreciation (judgement) and the formulation of a new unprecedented reaction.
History repeats but never in exactly the same way. This slight modification is a product of chaos....random factors, non-patterned energies.
This is where higher cognition offers an advantage over lower cognition - plants, microbes, reptiles etc.
Lower life forms work on the method of trial & error...mistakes are eradicated, and correct reactions are rewarded. This is possible due to mutations. A slow and costly method of evolving, adapting, adjusting to the unforeseeable.

Notice how Abrahamic minds agree...and Aryan minds agree.....this is a memetic divergence between two incompatible world-views.
Individual of mixed genes tend to rely on authorities to resolve their internal dissonance - some choosing one set of "experts; the other another diametrically opposite set of "experts".
Choosing and living with the consequences of one's choices....or being chosen, and feeling comforted by the fact that all is being chosen for you, so you are but an innocent ego, suffering the consequences of what has been chosen for you - herd psychology.

The debate over free-will can be divided between Abrahamics - "males" and females, of Semitic origins, and Aryan males, further distinguishing the attitudes and their source in genes.



You can always trace some Afro-Asiatic blood in those who deny free-will....or a domination of a Afro-Asiatic meme, zombifying them.
This is where Hellenism splits from Abrahamism....though for some the overlapping Christian nihilistic spirituality, confuses and blurs the distinctions - particularly when Hellenism includes monism and all kinds of superstitions.

*Defining concepts in absolute terms sets-up a predictable failure, which implies the validation of a position the hypocrite cannot defend, because the exact same arguments he uses to dismiss free-will, can be used against him.
Absolutes absurdities necessitate absolute absurdities to negate them or refute them. once you even enter into a process of dialogue with it, you have already accepted a ridiculous concept.

*Properly defining concepts does not make them arbitrary , or subjective, or culturally determined. The opposite, in fact, it places them outside human subjectivity....in the world.
Concepts, like morality and god, can be defined out of existence, i.e., in ways that reality cannot give evidence for their existence. This is a self-deceptive defensive method....not evidence of integrity - it is arguing in bad faith.

*Choices are not only concious and rational....plants are evidence of the unnecessary agency of self-awareness. In fact, most choices are made unconsciously and automatically, because self-consciousness is a latecomer...it evolves after conciousness, and conciousness develops from the rudimentary plant level awareness up towards more sophisticated forms.

*Ignorance is not a synonymous with innocence.
Ignorance simply means you are not aware - whether this is true or a lie - and unawareness is a weakness; an admission of a personal failing, an inferiority.
Being "ignorant" of your trusted friend's true nature, does not mean you are not responsible for what he does to you; it means you are naive, gullible, too trusting, or a moron.

*If there is no free-will there is no evolution. Nothing is being selected, when all has been predetermined. This implies, though hypocrites will deny it, that the universe has a telos, a purpose, an end - it is another way of claiming God is the creator....it is Abrahamic superstition in disguise, explaining why the same types of people are attracted to its principles.

*If there is no free-will, and all is determined, there is no fitness, no right/wrong answer, no hierarchy, no superior judgement, where are only events that exist exactly as they were meant to exist. This is the implication Desperate Degenerates want to indirectly support.
There is no overcoming, no advancement...it's all predetermined and according to a plan. A paedophile, a necrophile, a man who prefers intercourse with cows, are all part of how things have been determined - part of the same plan....god's plan....no, universal order's plan.

*The brain is an organ in an organism.
An organ that evolves after all the other organs. It's ability to intervene upon the body's automated processes and reactions, is limited.
The mind becomes aware of its own organic reactions, choices, after they've been made...and this is why nurturing, cultivation is a lifelong process; difficult not easy.
Habituation reinforces the same ingrained automated reactions (genetic), or it inhibits them (memetic) - brings them under control.
This is free-will...an intervention upon precedent, inherited genetically and performed unconsciously, automatically - impulsively.

*Postponed gratification, without a certainty, is what distinguishes the free-will from the compulsive, impulsive, salve to its own genetic programming.
Such individuals wind up in prison....now that is telling, or fall into the same errors over and over again, unable to unwilling, to understand how and why - always blaming others, the world, the cosmos, one-God, Satan, or some external agency, for their predicament. Trapped in a cognitive loop, repeating the same mistakes...seeking help from another, just as they blame another.

*Societies are not a state of nature"....noumenon usurping phenomena....because man intervenes to change his fate, to control his own destiny.
He has free-agency....that rejects precedent so as to promote specific behaviours - according to ideals.
Nihilism is the ideal which contradict, entirely, completely, or in degree, the real.

This is a different aspect that I have been thinking about myself -

It turns out that fatalism is a pretty poor motivator for revolutionary action but pretty great when you're already in charge; you see a lot of contortions toward determinism based on whether an ideology is in charge at the current time or not.

— Friendly Whale Shark Jackson (@TAJackson20) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

We are what we are but besides that a different outlook and understanding of ourselves affects our thinking and decision making. Fatalism keeps people from rocking the boat and cohesive as a group. It also hinders individual excellence.

For these 'hard-determinists the absence of free-will means their ideologies are divine in origin - part of a universal plan which they are agencies that bring it to fruition - doing 'god's will' in a secular form.

When in power their power can be claimed to be part of universal order- god's will - and when they are not in power rebelling against power can also be a part of some universal plan...claiming god''s will as their own.

Jewsih 'choseness' now becomes a universal plan....they were divinely determined to be the saviours of man...or whatever bullshit they tell themselves to motivate themselves.

Free-will is not 'freedom from' but 'freedom to'.

Place this into the triad of past (determined), present (determining), future (yet to be determined).
Choice, the will towards, is to be placed in the middle between immutable past, and unknown possible future.
The mind can choose the unprecedented, that which has not been chosen in the past, in effect contradicting its past choices with a new choice, opening up new possibilities.

Freedom is expressed through choice.
Choice is a dynamic action.
Therefore freedom is not an escape from past, or causality, but a divergence from precedent.
The degree of the divergence expresses the degree of freedom being expressed. Mind chooses to diverts from the body's impulses, forcing the body to act in ways that contradicts precedent - or its past habituation.
This is why will-power implies the mind's power over the body's automated and intuitive/instinctive impulses.
It is the very meaning of cultivation - gene to meme.  

The body's judgements, evolved over time, and the mind's judgements, cultivated during a lifetime, come in conflict.
The mind dopes not deny or reject the body but it sublimates its impulses and adapts them to an ideology - directed by a objective.

Nihilism is the inversion of past, or its theoretical negation, which is impossible in practice so it always remains theoretical - in the mind.
If it were possible the body would also follow, but it never does, creating the dissonance between mind/body or between ideology and reality. This is why I said nihilists must lie, and cannot remain alive and also true to their own stated beliefs and principles.
With nihilism the body is selectively or completely denied, so as to allow the mind's ideology to usurp its impulses - its nature.
This translated into a negation of the empirical and the linguistic detachment of the ideology from reality - reality being the corporeal, the tangible, i.e., matter/energy existing independently form the mind's desires and interpretations.

Freedom is not from past - causality, nature - but to, towards - despite past, nature - without denying past.
It is redirection, diverging from precedent, but never detaching form it....for this would be impossible.
A slight modification of momentum/movement that takes the organism to a different direction.

This does not change past, nor does it have to know it, because the past is presence. It is in the present where free-will, to whatever degree, is expressed as and through choice.

Power determines how much divergence the organism can archive, and how many options it can choose from.
The relationship of power and freedom is obvious.
Awareness is the perception of options, which may not be accessible due to a lack of power.

Idea that humans have an identifiable faculty called mind is singularly E, and so is the idea of free will. Without these two intertwined concepts, there can be no philosophy. Non-white world never identified mind and free will - this explains their utter lack of philosophy.

— Dr. Ricardo Duchesne (@DuchesneRicardo) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Concept of free will was invented by E because only they realized the mind is the agent capable of knowing the truth 'as it reflects on itself', and that man is master of his acts only through his thinking will, and that free will can only proceed through the faculty of reason...

— Dr. Ricardo Duchesne (@DuchesneRicardo) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]