Free-Will

Free will is our capacity to alter our behaviour to conform to abstract standards. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

— Stefan Molyneux, MA (@StefanMolyneux) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The chain of causality that manifests as presence - called the present, i.e. here & now - is determined, and our participation in it - through choice and conscious/unconscious behaviour/activity - most often denied, no matter the degree, producing the self-comforting delusion that it was all inevitable - fatalism - and that it could not have been any other way - innocence.
It is in the fleeting present - here & now - where/when the future is determined, but, because mind lags behind the body's impulsive, automated reactivity, it perceives present, in the past - looking back - creating the perception that some other will, order, is at work - some absolute otherness - and the self is but a medium, a agency, though which it manifests itself.
It takes cultivation - training - to change the automated impulsive reactivity - converting the meme into a second nature, overwriting what has already evolved through trial & error - first-nature.
Eastern martial artists know of how much effort it requires to organize and impose a different automated reactivity to an external event/threat, so that the trained reaction becomes so ingrained that it usurped genetically programmed flight/fight mechanisms.
What makes this possible, and necessary, for survival is chaos. Chaos as that which corrupts absolute order and brings about the novel, the unexpected, the different. The different cannot be reacted to effectively using precedent, so ingenuity factors in - mind/body formulating a new reaction to the unprecedented, or a slightly modified presence.
Chaos is what produces mutations in genetic order, mirroring existence's constant modifications - harmonizing, but not absolutely in harmony, through trial & error. Mutations that were once unfit may become fit - ensuring survival when they once inhibited it.

Chaos is what gives meaning and value to order.
Chaos defined as complexity is another way of describing a mystical occult one-god - absolute order hiding under superficial order.
God/Son in Biblical terms.
Chaos = randomness - energies lacking a consistent, repeating, predictability.
Unable to harmonize with anything - as they are by definition disharmonious - such energies make themselves known via their effect on patterned energies - slightly modifying them through interactivity.

Awareness, knowledge, seems to be about perceiving patterns, i.e., events, or probabilities within fields of possibility.
Understanding is perceiving patterns within the patterns, connecting them in degree. Matrices of inter connectivity with variations of degrees of effect.
Understanding calls these fluctuating variations of interactivity 'meaning' - referring to them as fixed relationships when they are continuously fluctuating necessitating constant reaffirmation.
Nevertheless, their fluctuations do not vary in degrees that would make them useless to a consciousness, but fall within an arc of probabilities which man calls 'order'.

In my view there are also fluctuations that exhibit no such relative consistency, their interactions falling outside, or beyond probability arcs - I call these chaotic and random, because their fluctuations lack a pattern - possibility is not probability, but is open-ended, i.e. unpredictable, inconsistent, non-repeating.
Man can only relate to them by ascribing to them an occult order, or a hidden pattern, as if something or someone were deciding. because man cannot conceptualize anything beyond his own self-awareness.
Possibility lacking or where man cannot perceive a pattern - probability arc - is interpreted as darkness or void.
This is where the 'negative' holds sway over the imagination, allowing the mind to project into its empty space/time whatever he needs/desires, or can imagine - imagination being a product of ordering data in novel ways.
So, man would project into this emptiness his own constructs, and an occult order, because chaos is too terrifying for him to conceptualize or to tolerate.          
Even Penrose cannot help but describe the quantum State as 'deciding' to go one way and not another, as if there were some underlying motive, will, or pattern, because man cannot express nor conceptualize the chaotic; he uses language, a form of representative reasoning order to attempt to understand - see the conundrum in my definition of 'understanding' above?- what is entirely incomprehensible - he gives meaning to what is meaningless and so describes it as if ti had a motive, or a will, when it lacks all forms of order.

Consciousness is incomprehensible to consciousnesses.
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Free-will is what ordering, consciousness, does with what chaos/order energies produce spontaneously - how it reacts to the unexpected and unforeseeable.
Precedent adjusted and updated.

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A card game where some of the cards, during some of the hands, you've dealt to yourself, and others you have dealt to others and to future generations, as they have to you.

Mutations provide an organic pool of variations to deal with this constant fluctuation.

On a cosmic scale, our distance from the near-absolute state of a singularity, we call Big Bang, is still small - meaning that patterns (order) are still dominant, but our movement/momentum towards the near-absolute state of chaos means this state will gradually be overturned, and chaos will be dominant - the absolute state of chaos implies that all that is possible is simultaneously and equally probable, but absolutes are impossible so this approach means that the improbable emergence of a new near-absolute state of order - the duality we wrongly call a singularity - will becomes increasingly possible, if it has not already occurred.
This is the only way we can escape monotheism and still maintain eternal return of existence - defined as a dynamic state of interactivity of both order/chaos, or Yin/Yang, or patterned and non-patterned energies.

Paradoxically, our understanding must convert this into a singularity, a hole complete oneness for it to be comprehensible - the mistake of confusing the representation with the represented.
The cosmic is reduced to a singularity by projecting mind outside space/time, and by reducing multiplicity to a singular idea/ideal, such as Energy.

Mathematics is the most abstract form of language...with the exception of music.
Like all languages it represented the inter-relating matrices of meaning and understanding - giving them a value, representing their degree of relating - measuring meaning.
As representative language, it refers to real events, phenomena, and like all language, attempts to describe how these phenomena inter-relate and to what degree.
As noetic representations mathematics is also prone to nihilistic detachments, representing noetic internal-relationships - imaginary.
Logic is supposed to discipline mental order with natural order, preventing mind from becoming disengaged from reality, converting imagination to fantasy.

What Tyler, or “Thamster” describes is the phenomenology of Willing. Schopenhauer referred to this as the “Kernel of our internal nature”. The “retention” fluctuations he speaks of is the ordering process of consciousness, extrapolating from objects in reality into a cohesion of self and a selfhood/identity.

I would disregard the notion of “nothingness” however, which he incorporates in this process, unless it alludes to nihilism, which is different, because nihilism still has a conceptual motivation towards objects and with aspects of this same subjective process, only with resentment and denial. To transcend the self, is only an overcoming of what was into what is, which is not a state of nothingness, but the perennial cycle of being and becoming. A state of “nothingness” should be a trifling notion, a dalliance of faith.

I would approach the concept of 'nothingness' as the fluid state of the now/here which has yet to be established as presence....but more than that nothingness refers to the no-saying of being alive, and a distinct organism, and of choosing.
I call this here/now the state of interactivity...which is then interpreted after-the-fact.
No-saying is a choosing - since throwness according to Heidegger alludes to a dynamic state which we do not choose, but is chosen for us, but once within it we gradually learn to navigate it by rejecting....like being thrown into a fast river, the swimmer cannot swim against the flow, nor stop in place, but can only direct himself towards an objective, ahead, by rejecting another destination.  

Nothingness is the state of here/now where organism and environment interact determining presence, which can only be experienced as past, once this interaction has already become immutable - falling away.
Man is always experiencing his own existence in the past, after he has already judged and chosen - has determined it as a participating agency.
Cultivation becomes a matter of training the self to have a second-nature to automate this unconsciousness to overcome precedent or impulses - self-cultivation, self-control, self-determination.
It's not an easy process because genes have already an established automation that has to be overcome...to a degree, never completely.

I compare it to martial arts training where the trainee gradually makes the defensive and offensive moves automated, not requiring his consciousness to participate - second nature overturning or sublimating human nature.  

This is exactly where nihilism establishes itself as a defensive reactivity to anything that threatens the conscious self, i.e., ego.
Negation is necessary for life....a constant rejection, repulsion of the unwanted. Affirmation is a no-saying to no-saying, a double-negative is a positive.
Choice is essentially a selective no-saying...and this is how nihilism becomes powerful as it says no to life, or to anything real, choosing its own abstractions which it can control and shape; abstractions that do not exist anywhere other than within minds, its own or its own collective.
Nihilism is powerful when it is a member of a self-validating collective, because its concepts only exists in minds and can only be externalized as art, and/or language.

Satyr wrote:

I would approach the concept of 'nothingness' as the fluid state of the now/here which has yet to be established as presence....but more than that nothingness refers to the no-saying of being alive, and a distinct organism, and of choosing.
I call this here/now the state of interactivity...which is then interpreted after-the-fact.
No-saying is a choosing - since throwness according to Heidegger alludes to a dynamic state which we do not choose, but is chosen for us, but once within it we gradually learn to navigate it by rejecting....like being thrown into a fast river, the swimmer cannot swim against the flow, nor stop in place, but can only direct himself towards an objective, ahead, by rejecting another destination.  

Nothingness is the state of here/now where organism and environment interact determining presence, which can only be experienced as past, once this interaction has already become immutable - falling away.
Man is always experiencing his own existence in the past, after he has already judged and chosen - has determined it as a participating agency.
Cultivation becomes a matter of training the self to have a second-nature to automate this unconsciousness to overcome precedent or impulses - self-cultivation, self-control, self-determination.
It's not an easy process because genes have already an established automation that has to be overcome...to a degree, never completely.

I simply have a difficult time configuring it into the notion of "nothingness". For me i would simply accept it as fluidity, or "interactivity", which is not a state of nothingness, but of activeness; of engagement; unless the mind attributes an "in between", stagnate notion to account for what is not immediately grasped, then perhaps "nothing" becomes relevant, but only for the purpose of coping with levels of fluctuating awareness which do not immediately culminate into a perceived "something", for the purposes of conceptual casual accountability that is. Interaction is automatic, it is the occurrence of self with the world, even if acumen is not occurring with it, its physical exigency is a phenomenon of nature imposing itself upon us, acumen is not always necessary, in fact its a reward, and a well-earned one at that.

Quote :

I compare it to martial arts training where the trainee gradually makes the defensive and offensive moves automated, not requiring his consciousness to participate - second nature overturning or sublimating human nature.

Precisely. This is the "interactivity" taking place within natural process.

Quote :

Negation is necessary for life....a constant rejection, repulsion of the unwanted. Affirmation is a no-saying to no-saying, a double-negative is a positive.

Conflicting and ordering, yes. I view nihilism as a sickness of ambivalence, the self-subversion of this exchange with existence for self-destruction; turning it against oneself.

Kvasir wrote:

I simply have a difficult time configuring it into the notion of "nothingness". For me i would simply accept it as fluidity, or "interactivity", which is not a state of nothingness, but of activeness; of engagement; unless the mind attributes an "in between", stagnate notion to account for what is not immediately grasped, then perhaps "nothing" becomes relevant, but only for the purpose of coping with levels of fluctuating awareness which do not immediately culminate into a perceived "something", for the purposes of conceptual casual accountability that is. Interaction is automatic, it is the occurrence of self with the world, even if acumen is not occurring with it, its physical exigency is a phenomenon of nature imposing itself upon us, acumen is not always necessary, in fact its a reward, and a well-earned one at that.

Yes, I was also taken aback when he sued the term.

Kvasir wrote:

Conflicting and ordering, yes. I view nihilism as a sickness of ambivalence, the self-subversion of this exchange with existence for self-destruction; turning it against oneself.

There are things worse than death....one being living with the awareness of how you compare with others, particularly if you are a mind that is very dependent no the collective or on others for their self-esteem - herd psychology.
The 'death wish' is really a very selfish desire to disappear within a collective or a universal whole.

Hard determinants who also happen to be Marxists are inadvertently contradicting their own desire to escape or change the injustices they feel they are suffering.
If all is determined, then even their social status has been preordained and fixed.
Their only way around this is to then claim that their coming liberation from being victims, exploited by others, is also part of some universal plan - a divine mission - the very foundation of Messianism.

Nature Nurture is at the root of free-will questions.

They claim it is all nurture, others that it is all nature,, the first meaning all is determined by the individual the latter that all is ingrained in their genes.

The truth is a non-absolute.
Nature determined variables, probabilities, and nurture where along these limited probabilities an individual will fall, due to his own performance in relation to and as a reaction to environmental conditions.
Environmental conditions that all not all ordered - patterned - but also include, during this phase in the universe' expansion, degree of non-patterned energies, or chaos. Interactions that manifest in slightly unforeseeable circumstances, forcing the individual to judge and choose.

This choice is what determines subsequent variables and their ensuing options...and on and on.
The individual is participating in determining what will become his 'immutable' determined past, which he may then mistake as being inevitable or not of his own making.

Victim psychosis is sued to justify the option that all is determined and inevitable, - to be suffered and endured - and the individual a victim of forces he can do nothing about and has no role in.

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Free-Will is about responsiveness to change - the unexpected, the novel, the unforeseeable.
Lower life forms have little freedom, so they rely on the more costly trial and error.
Higher life forms can adapt to the unexpected and even foresee, forecast, predict, and prepare by going against precedent.

It is why man dominates and why in man nihilism emerges as a byproduct of this ability.

Once you've convinced yourself that you had no part in your circumstances then you've discovered who to blame as the other, even if you have no identified it.
Once you've convinced yourself that you have no free-will and that everything is determined and inevitable, then there nothing more to hope for but that the universe has also determined your liberation from those that torment you, because even your will to free yourself is also determined, as is the success of your willing.

So then you return to prayer, or to irrational hope as the only source of relief.

As Abrahamics pray that their one-god has decreed that they should not suffer much, so too do Modern secular versions of Abrahamics hope that the universe has or will determine a better fate for them.This is worse than slavery, because a slave believes that it is he who desires to be free and it is he who will choose to act on this desire.
These Modern degenerates do not even believe their own desire is their own, or that their choice to act upon it is their own, but it is all determined by their master.
Their thoughts are enslaved, as are their bodies. They are complete and total slaves.
All just to escape responsibility and what it says about them that they've failed and made consecutive poor choices based no poor judgments.
Their very identity is at risk - their ego - so they prefer to believe they, like everyone else is equally helpless than to face the implications of their entire life's choices.

God has a plan for your life!

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— E. Michael Jones (@EMichaelJones1) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

In secular lingo...
The universe is the plan of your existence.

You just have to learn how nihilism uses and manipulates language to pretend it is progressing when it remains fixed upon its foundation, the 'nil'.

Eventually they let it all hang out. Just like Peterson did.

What constitutes modernity is self-denial and self-doubt, emptiness. To doubt oneself is to give oneself over to the whims of chaos, or to a “higher authority”, an abstraction based in immutability and to “replacement” forms of reality. It is not the external world which is the illusion that the Matrix series gets at, but the self as the real illusion. One’s own existence must be put into question, they must be turned against themselves, making themselves an enemy, something they cannot put their trust into, because they cannot know if something is “real” or not, they must distrust themselves, they must surrender to absolute determinism. The post-modern skeptical nihilism. This is how they are broken down and made malleable to be influenced by systems of control.

Moderns live as slaves. Slaves to the “idea” of freedom. Their desperation and anxiety attests to it. Everything they know about themselves has never been developed into anything real, and so they associate their identities only with the artificial and conceptual, which is why their minds are ingrained in ‘referential knowledge’, what they can defer about themselves to something else. This is why they love pop-culture, and trends, and academia, popular information etc; sources of knowledge they can depend on and access to feel a sense of self.

Levin, Michael wrote:

8.14. NATURAL INEQUALITIES
There is an ancient argument41 for divorcing an individual’s share in wealth from his contribution to it, recently
revived by John Rawls (1971: 101–104).
Productivity is due to talent and effort. But talent and the capacity to exert effort, Rawls insists, are largely genetic in origin, bestowed by the “natural genetic lottery” rather than earned. The natural lottery is not wrongful—thelucky possessors of talent have not misappropriated anything, nor were the unlucky cheated—but it is arbitrary. From this Rawls concludes that natural gifts and their fruits belong to everyone, and that a productive individual may justly keep only as much of the net gain from his gifts as is needed as an incentive to remain active. Conjoining Rawls’ conclusion to hereditarianism, whites just lucked into the genes that make them more intelligent and persistent than blacks, so do not deserve the advantages those genes bestow. This racial consequence has not to my knowledge been explicitly drawn by Rawls or his followers, but its obviousness may contribute to the prestige Rawls (1971) enjoys.
At one level this deduction of socialism from determinism collapses without a push from empirical data, for it confuses entitlement with entitlement to entitlement. An example clarifies this distinction (also see Levin 1979: 257; Levin 1992b: 12; Levin 1994). Suppose you find a gold nugget by glancing into a stream. It was fortuitous that you rather than someone else looked where and when you did; you had no right to be the one to find the nugget. You did nothing to deserve finding it. Yet, having found it, it is yours. You are entitled to keep it. Perhaps only those who cultivate alert habits deserve to be nugget-finders, but all you need do to deserve the nugget is to be a nugget-finder. You don’t have to deserve to have found it.
The Rawlsian question, “Why give Einstein credit, when he didn’t choose his brains?” falsely assumes that Einstein is admired for choosing his brains, or for something that requires that he chose them. In fact, Einstein is admired for discovering the theory of relativity, not for making himself clever enough to do so. He didn’t deserve to be clever, or to make that discovery, but, having made it, he deserves whatever credit is owed discoverers.
“Ah,” replies the Rawlsian, “the question is whether Einstein does deserve any credit (and whether you deserve the nugget). He was lucky to be born into a propitious environment with a superb brain and the will to use it. Why honor a triple dose of luck?” But here the Rawlsian oversteps himself, for in pushing the argument this far he pushes it beyond genetic causation. To reman consistent, he would have to deny people title to the product of their talents even if they did somehow choose their genes, so long as they did not chose the factors that cause them to chose the genes they do. Those who choose good genes would still just be lucky to have been caused to choose good genes by those unchosen factors, hence still deserve no credit for or profit from their genes’ accomplishments. This same verdict would follow if people chose not only their genes but the factors that cause their gene choices and cause those choices as well, so long as at some point choice ends, as it presumably must, with the natural causal lottery resuming control. Rawls’ reason for denying people a right to the fruits of their genetically controlled labors is an equally good reason for denying them a right to the fruits of any labors, any trait, whose ultimate cause lies outside their own wills, whether that ultimate cause is genetic, environmental or some third thing. The Rawlsian position is, at bottom, that no one deserves the fruits of extravolitional factors, from which it follows that, if all behavior is caused by extravolitional factors, no one deserves anything. It also follows that no one deserves the fruit of any uncaused behavior, as nothing could be more fortuitous than a random event. Only completely self-determined choices merit reward or profit.
Despite perennial attractiveness to philosophers (see Campbell 1957; Chisholm 1964; Thorpe 1980; Nozick 1982:294–362), a self-determining will is inherently obscure. It invites but cannot answer the question of what makes such a will determine itself to choose one way rather than another. Not external factors, for then the will is not self-determining.
Not nothing, for a will acting by chance is not self-determining. Not a prior act of the will to choose its choice, for that launches an infinite regress. The alternatives exhausted, a self-determining will is impossible, and should such a will be necessary for desert, no one deserves anything at all.
That many people find this conclusion compelling rather than an occasion to rethink their premises shows that Rawls’ argument touches a nerve. Why should some people, or groups, come into the world cleverer, more able than others?
One can imagine Hamlet brooding over this. But the question, as posed, is unanswerable. Evolution cannot be shown to be fair. It just happened. However, unless it is already assumed that all persons should be equally endowed, evolution cannot be shown to be unfair, either. To repeat, it just happened. There is no positive reason to let its work stand, nor any positive reason to seek to undo it.
Rawls sometimes shows awareness of this. “The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust,” he says; the positions people are born into “are simply natural facts” (1971: 102). Yet to argue for annulling the effects of the natural lottery because it is not just erroneously equates “not just” with unjust. A situation may be “not just” in not being required by justice, without being forbidden by justice, that is, unjust. And, precisely as Rawls says, the natural genetic lottery is neither just nor unjust. That whites never earned their superior intelligence means that their title to it is not required by justice, not that their having superior intelligence is wrong. There is nothing right or wrong about it.
But the role of genes in behavior undermines the natural lottery argument in more concrete ways. Rawls derives the “difference principle,” the duty of the well-endowed to use their talents “for the good of the least fortunate” (1971: 102), from the supposed fact that social contractors ignorant of their eventual positions in a society they are designing will reason as if they were going to find themselves in the worst possible position. But a case can be made (see Gauthier 1984: 249)43 that this derivation also assumes the factors shaping individuals to be entirely social. Certainly, if you think other people helped Jones develop his talents, you will be more inclined to feel he owes those others some of what his talents produce than you will be if you think Jones came by his talents some other way, for instance genetically. Genetic ability is not a gift from society, so does not demand reciprocation. Hence Caucasoid advantages seem less like resources available to others when conceived as significantly genetic.

At the root of the 'free-will' argument is the idea of 'justice' and who 'deserves' what 'fate' has bestowed upon him/her.
It attracts nihilists on the side of 'determinism' such as Abrahamics and recovering Abrahamics who have converted to its secular forms, such as Marxism.

Because nobody can absolute predict the future, it follows that all are 'victim' of blind-luck (chance) - a error based on the binary absolutes of 1/0.
Easily contradicted.
Fro them it is by chance that they are in the situation they are in, just as those above them are there, also, by chance.
It follows that if so, then it will also be 'by chance' that they escape or correct their predicament.

They deal with this with an allusion to divine providence, using the 'we are no the right side of history' motto.
What is implied that the one-universe becoming aware of its own 'injustices' and unfairness' will correct itself via man's interventions - one-humanity replaces the one-god as the ideal absolute, as an agency of justice and fairness.
Determinism is directed by a hidden force to find itself way to Utopia - uniformity - where all suffering is erased, all wrongs righted etc.
A biblical discretion.
Otherwise, there is no way to deal with universal determinism and its implied universal innocence (victimhood) other than endure it, stoically, hoping that it is also determined that you shall fight and struggle and succeed in changing it.  
The true believer imagines himself a agency of universal providence, acting no behalf or as a representative of the divine - he acts in accordance with a universal determination of justice and fairness that will finalize in some future time/space.

Messianism in short.
Chosen to be universal providence's agency - on the 'right side of history', towards a coming future paradise, Utopia, uniformity.

No personal participation must be accepted because that would soil the purity of the delusion.
All, is a matter of determination, and chance.
Causality where organic agency is eliminated as participating in what is being determined...no matter how minimal.
So nobody deserves anything, because they did not participate in it coming about, good or bad. All is fated, written in cosmic sacred text - perhaps mathematically.
Classic Marxist, Leftism - inheritors of the Abrahamic disease.

Christianity accepts a pagan corruptive component, which is why it is despised by more pure nihilistic spiritual constructs - by accepting man's 'free-will' but only as a ruse to solidify its nihilism and to explain cosmic injustices created by a good, absolutely pure, one-god. Man is cast in the role of evil, seduced, with lies, by his self-consciousness, in the form of a snake.
He is offered an either/or duality, which masks a singular 'logical' option - for who would choose eternal damnation other than a madman?
The choice is a ruse corrupting, slandering, belittling Pagan spirituality - integrating it into its narrative so as to reduce it to a nihilistic binary, hiding an absolute nil on the form of a one.

This disease infests the totality of Modern emoting....including race relations.
It claims that neither blacks deserve their bad luck, nor whites their good luck, because it is all chance in the end, and nobody had any part to play in it - it was all determined...therefore it is incumbent upon the fortunate to aid the less fortunate, as part of a progress towards divine uniform parity.
Man is agency of the deterring universal oneness, correcting injustices, creating equality, fairness, because we are all victims of forces we have no way of affecting.

Don't you know that American prisons are full of "innocent" people?
It all makes sense if you ascribe to hard determinism.
All is determined, including their criminal activity, capture and incarceration.
They are not responsible, because they are agencies of divine, absolute order - representations of god's will.
Their victimization is part of universal order - it was always meant to be that they would be captured and convicted for a crime so in a sense they, as individuals, are innocent agencies of a cosmic will - chosen, so to speak, to suffer, in the name of god, or as expressions of universal order.

Innocence is ignorance....ignorance of universal intent, not their own, which determined that they would inevitably go to jail for a crime preordained to be considered criminal by those acting as agencies of evil, in that they believe they are responsible for their actions - agencies of mistaken knowledge, as opposed to the courageous admission of one's own innocence and ones role as universal victim of cosmic order.
Faith is the knowledge, the conviction, that the universal absolute order, i.e., god, has something good in store for their admission and acceptance of their innocent role.

See, the streets of America are full of innocent victims of universal order.
They do not have a choice - their choice is an illusion - they simply act in accordance to how it was always been determined that they would act.
And this repeats eternally.
The same innocent victims, doing the same actions, facing the same prisoner sentence until the end of time - eternally.

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Not holding yourself accountable leads to the repetition of the same actions and choices, producing the same reactions and consequences.
Blaming others, before you hold yourself and your actions and choices accountable, is how the individual becomes trapped in a rut.
Unable or unwilling to evaluate self honestly and objectively it can only find fault in world - tis own repeating patterns become cosmological truths it cannot escape.

In a way the repetition is comforting to a mind that seeks predictability, even if it is negative.
Order is attractive to a mind that has lived in unpredictable, to it, circumstances.

Free-Will is like gravity.
We can witness it in practice, but because we cannot see it we can then deny tis existence.
For most existence is a "thing" - singularity - not process of interactivities.
And, like gravity, because it is a weak force it can be rejected because it pulls things down, rather than lifting them up. Free-will is choice, and with every choice the individual limits his options - by choosing one option he rejects the multiplicity of other options- imagined to be infinite.

as I said....nihilists typically define concepts out of existence - by defining words, referring to said concepts, in ways that cannot be experienced.
In the case of free-will, freedom is defined as an absolute state, which fails to deliver, so the mind turns to tis negative absolute, viz., if freedom is not total, then slavery is total.
The other part of the concept, the will, is also defined out of existence.
No longer a term referring to the organism focusing its aggregate energies - something that can be experienced - but defined supernaturally, in ways that can never be experienced...and when it fails, then the alternative is to claim that will does not exist - either/or absolutism.

Using the same method we can define 'love' out of existence - as Christians do - and when we fail to experience that hyperbolic love we can claim love does not exist....except in the theoretical beyond.
In fact any word can be defined in ways that would render the concept words represent impossible, or supernatural, or surreal.
This, too, is an expression of sedlf-hatred.

Omnipotence is a human abstraction and does not exist independently form a human mind, i.e., as idea.
This is so for all conceptions of absolutes - immutable, indivisible, whole, one/nil, 1/0...The figurative taken literally.

Free-will is also a mater of degree, not of absolute power and independence.
It's expression is via choice, of available options, determining all subsequent available options.
But the choices of others, and the indifferent interactions of existence also participate in the determinations of available options, therefore man can only increase or decrease probabilities through one or a sequence of choices and can never guarantee - be certain - of anything.

Indifference is not a power it is the expression of power. Indifference can be faked with varying degrees of success dependent on the quality of mind of the one perceiving its pretence.
As one approaches, never attaining, omnipotence, one gradually becomes indifferent towards what is within one's power to control - decreasing tis value - and what it has become independent from - care being an expression of need, and need the experience of a lack, i.e., weakness, uncertainty, insecurity, vulnerability, desire for what one does not fully possess.
Independence makes one indifferent. Indifference towards the particular indicates a multiplicity of accessible options, making the particular less valuable - ergo, rarity, and absence of alternate options, increases the evaluation of a particular objective.
 
Power is a measure of powerlessness; strength a measure of weakness; beauty a measure of asymmetry and disproportionality; knowledge/understanding a measure of ignorance.....
The absolute state, e.g., omnipotence, omniscience etc., is a mental projection of a desirable objective, and like all objectives it not only entails a triangulation, determining its appreciation - evaluations of subject/objective and movement/effort - but it also entails motive which identifies the individual, viz., the goals/objectives of an individual characterize, identify, him/her, necessitating actions, i.e., judgments and choices.
Actions - interactions - are the self, i.e., a continuum of interactivities, across space/time, and their consequences, stored as DNA and memories. Body is the manifestation of all interactions preceding the individual's birth, i.e., the immutable past, and mind is the dynamic interactions, i.e., choices, judgments, movements, adjusting these inherited memories to a dynamic Interactive present, via the will.
Will is the focus of organic aggregate energies, i.e., processes, informed by DNA and experience, informed by internal and external datum, directing the organism towards an objective.
This is the extent of tis independence, tis freedom - choice founded on dynamic real-time judgment calls, informed by both DNA - as impulses - and by the accumulated experiences of an individual since its birth - the two sources may come in conflict, as was described in the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Actions are more honest than words because actions entail costs, and the body cannot lie, like the mind can using semiotics to conceal and reveal its motives, or to contradict, i.e., justify, dismiss, validate, deny, its own body's actions.



Identity is founded on a series and consistency of choices to 'not be another, or like another' - I am that what which I choose not to be. I am that which I am not. Discrimination is the foundation of identity.
Life itself necessitates negation of otherness - and herein lies the power of the nil, taken to its extreme - also, herein lies the root of binary dualism, starting with I/Other, I being a qualification of otherness - a separation manifesting a porous physical boundary, e.g., membrane, skin, evolving into more rigid less porous forms, e.g., exoskeleton.
Consciousness begins with the perception and appreciation of otherness, in relation to an unknown self - detaching I from otherness.
Self-consciuosness begins by perceiving and appreciating the method of consciousness - detaching, ego from self - beginning the process of self-abnegation, producing mind/body divide/dissonance.
The body seems to be an external will confronting the lucid ego's own desires, objectives...as if it were some external entity - schizophrenia.
This is often confused for a divine power, conspiring with the cosmos against the ego's will.

Choice is the opposite of arbitrariness.
Choice is the purest expression of free-will, negating the Interactive flux of lifeless existence.
Choice is not omniscient nor omnipotent, but limited by the determined past - causality - yet it expresses a direction contrary to the path-of-least-resistance which defines lifeless interactivity - it chooses the path of more resistance, so as to gain an advantage.  
Choice differentiates life from non-life.
Non life patterns, i.e., energies, have no choice, they simply follow the path-of -east-resitance, like water flowing down a mountain, towards the sea, pulled by gravity, on a Planet rotating no tis axis, around a star that circles around its own axis, a theoretical black hole.
Life can choose to flow sideways, or perpendicularly, or contrary to gravitational pull, or simply choose to stop, resisting it. This seemingly insignificant option differentiates life from non-life.
But nihilists want no such differentiation; they want, they are comforted by the possibility, that even life is, like a river, flowing along paths determined by some external force - faith, or god, or universal order or whatnot.
Their conception of "will to power" - to use their idol's own imagery - is that of an external divine entity, not the individual itself - god's will, to power, using man as its means - a herd psychology...slave morality....
A cell in the human body would want to surrender to the will of the organism, so as to absolve itself of all responsibility.

Why "will to" what is already in the absolutes possession. There would be no reason to move towards what you already have; one does not will what one is or what one possesses - one wills what one lacks, in this case "power", otherwise it would be "will of power"...not "will to power". What would an absolute lack, without contradicting itself and its own absoluteness?
To will something g is to need, or want, or desire something you lack, either completely or partially.

Such psychologies replace Abrahamism with Marxism, and think they've made a grand exit into enlightenment and out of collectivism and slavishness - all they've done is replace one set of symbols and words with another...and this they consider "progress, advacment...no overcoming.

By the time the mind becomes aware of it the body has already made its judgements and its choices.
The brain, then, attempts to understand it.

Ergo....genes precede memes - body precedes mind - actions precede words (logos) - phenomena precede noumena.

Free-will, if it is to become intentional, lucid, must retrain the body to react in accordance with an idea/ideal.
A difficult and painstaking endeavour, few can achieve - called cultivation.

Most remain predictably determined by their physicality, i.e., instincts, impulses etc. - which they sometimes abstract into an external agency - a god - as if something else was in charge and therefore responsible.
Unable to even gain some control over their instincts and impulses they reduce all and everything into slave-morlaity- herd-psychology - physicality - body is what they either want to reject or submit to.
Right/Left brain hemispheres.
On the other side of the spectrum, the opposite extreme, is what leads directly to defensive nihilism: theoretical detachment of mind from body - actions from thoughts, the tangible from the intangible, wanting to attain pure ideality....to reach the pure noumenon, i.e., god.
Either/Or - either mind is God/Satan, or the body is God/Satan.
Here schizophrenia is decisive - mind/body dissonance. Mind declaring the body overcome - transcended - or body acting as if it were god master pulling the mind along with it.

That is why I place the nihilistic paradigm between bipolar absoluters: pure negativity - nil - and positive self-deceptive negation of reality - one.
This, too, is impulsive, since both sides correspond to systolic/diastolic cellular rhythms - metabolic rates, intuitively perceived and abstracted as positive/negative ideas/ideals, i.e., 1/0.
Within its contexts reality stands outside of them both as a nullification of absolute dualities because the organic brain can only perceive and understand using the binary method.

In their ideological framework I am the nihilist; in mine they are the true nihilists....because they negate what we both experience, i.e., a dynamic fluctuating existence with no absolutes: no immutable, indivisible, complete, wholes...no ones or nils outside human abstractions expressed via the language of mathematics; no god, no meaning, as they define it, no purpose, no morality, as they understand it.
Within my world0view morality is independent form individual interrelations and from a singularity, a god...if properly defined; meaning is also true, if properly defined and understood and not defined out of existence... purpose is subjective and there is no one-god.

Like I've said....even their conception of a uni-verse necessitates a noetic projection "outside space/time," beyond existence, to then conceptualize it from without as an abstract complete, one, whole, contradicting its experience from within as multiplicity, fragmentation, movement, lacking all forms of finality, completeness and wholeness....
From the theoretical position in non-existence they conceptualize existence as a singularity, and then declare it 'good' to preserve their Abrahamic superstitions - replacing terminologies to hide the fact that they've never truly overcome the one-god of Abraham and his absolute authority, they've only repackaged, renamed and repurchased the same ideas....this they call "progress" or "enlightenment".
The underlying objective is to either declare themselves masters of their faith - gods - or to declare themselves innocent victims of fate - slaves that can only acknowledge their master and hope he is kind to them; the objective is to evade uncertainty and responsibility for the negative consequences of their judgements and choices by either claiming that they are always intentional or by claiming that they can never be changed, that no alternative could have ever been true.

From sociopathic/Narcissism to paranoid/Schizophrenic - from egotism to cynicism.

Body precedes brain and mind.
Plants are physical entities and have no brain and no mind.

Brain evolves from body and mind is its extension/projection in space/time.
Ergo, body judges, react, prior to the brain becoming conscious of it; brain, via mind, adding or subtracting, dividing or multiplying the body's reaction. It experiences itself after-the-fact of its own reactions, coming to believe its actions were motivated by another, an external will, an external consciousness.
Only mind has the potential to increase its independence form the physical the body, or to surrender to tis genetically programmed impulses.
Free-will is an expression of a higher entity, one that can completely deny the body, or find a Hellenic balance that does not reject but controls by usurping the body's impulses and its subconscious judgments and choices.

Life-less matter is completely reactive - flowing along the paths-of-least-resistance - with no motive, no intent, and no ability to control and direct itself towards paths-of-more-resistance.
Rudimentary forms of life begins to gain such options to choose from....even a plant can break through stone to reach an intended source of moisture or of nutrients - willfully pushing on, despite resistance superior to itself, seeking a level of resistance it can overpower.

Then free will defined as such is something from nothing. A god that can free you from your past. Magic, or a soul.

To see your will as in opposition to and other than your genetically programmed impulses, instincts that emerged over millions of years of natural selection is to see your will as in opposition to itself.
There's no dichotomy here. The past is not an other, determinism is not an other. They are the will of the past manifesting as presence. You.
You can overcome yourself and the past and what you have inherited from it, obviously. But you will do so as the effect of past. Your will to overcome the past is the past's will to overcome itself.

In an absolutely ordered universe free-will would also be determined, so overcoming would not be an accomplishment, it would be part of your fate.
Nothing to be proud about.

Mind/Body dichotomy is most evident in matter so attraction/repulsion - gag reflex, fight/flight, but erotic attraction as well.
It is part of the so called "feminine mystique" or feminine "complexity"...confusion.

It is possible, to be spontaneously, physically attracted to an individual you are mentally repulsed by.
Physical reactions, judgments, choices, contradicted a brain dominated by an ideology.
The mind may be repulsed but the body is attracted.

It is also possible for an individual to be intellectually, spiritually, subconsciously attracted to an individual a mind may be consciously, lucidly, ideologically, conceptually, repulsed by.
why?
Because mind is dynamic, evolved to deal with the unforeseeable, the random component in cosmic order, whereas the body is slow, consistent, representing a determined immutable past - the former expressing a judgment in real time, the latter expressing the settled wisdom - determined judgments - of centuries of genetically inherited programming, i.e., memories.

Conflict between mind/body can reach the level of schizophrenia - psychometric dissonance, where mind entirely and completely contradicts its own body - denies its very relevance.

This is the division between "pure" and "positive nihilism".
A pure nihilist will believe in ego, in will, but not its own, having escaped personal responsibility - accountability - by accusing an external force, e.g., universal order, fate, one-god.
For them the body is but a shell, a reflection, of universal order, the ego lacks agency...ironic that many think of themselves as egoist, exposing their self-decieving confusions. An ego with no agency is but a fare - a vacuous empty shell, a conduit of another's will, or a superior ego it is but a shadow of.
But anyway...for pure nihilists all tangible, experienced reality is illusory, a farce - this is why many are cynical clowns laughing at the seriousness of others.
Nothing they enjoy or suffer could have been any other way. they are impotent, innocent bystanders of their own existence. Indirect minions of universal absolute, totalitarian order, i.e., one-god.
They can neither take credit not be blamed for anything.

On the other side of the nihilistic spectrum we have the deluded positivists who have replaced god's will, gods word, with their own. Language becomes their creative omnipotent power over their destiny.
God did not die he was reborn a spirit that is them. They are Jesus, the saviour, reborn, bringing his message that all men can be their own saviours, their own gods.
Most often these morons become cult leaders, gathering lost souls, uncreative minds, under their guidance, giving them "salvation" - though they name it "freedom, liberty, value, love or power".
It doesn't matter what word is used as the symbol of their godliness, what mater sis that they believe they are the absolute creators of their own fate - the first declares itself without agency, this narcissistic type declares itself absolute totalitarian agency over themselves, their private - subjective - world and everything and everyone, including other individuals.
Where the first has renamed and surrendered to the absolute one-god, this type has renamed himself one-god.
Positive nihilists usually need to have a following that validates their self-agrandizing delusions.
They can do no wrong, they have always determined whatever occurs to them, and it is only infidels, doubters, non-believers who are to blame for whatever negativity befalls them, contradicting their proclaimed omnipotence and omniscient. They've predicted everything, they've foreseen everything, they are the puppet master all others imitate and worship, even by rejecting them; all is part of their grand scheme - bit players in their play house.
For them free-wil is absolute, if only you believe in it; if only you know it; if only you can cope with the responsibility...see Sartre.

Two insane extremes in a bipolar defensive psychosis.
No gradations, no balance - either/or dualisms.
Man is either a slave or a master - either absolutely unfree or absolutely free - either an empty shell, a conduit of a larger self, or master-god creator of his own destiny.
Either/Or dualities are the defining traits of nihilism.

So, for modern minds if man's will is not absolutely free - saved from determinism, from the past - then it can only be absolutely unfree - entirely and completely determined by the past or by universal order.
Man cannot be a participating agency contributing to what determines his fate - not entirely innocent, not entirely a victim...but neither a master of himself.
Becoming....movement towards.
Will to....

So when a woman judges it prudent to choose to dress in a particular way when going to a particular place then what occurs may not be entirely foreseeable, because other wilful agencies are involved, but her choices, based on her judgments, will increase the probability of something occurring rather than not occurring.

Another example...if a woman chooses to sleep with multiple men, as is her right to choose to do so, then the probable consequences are predictable....within a range of probabilities.
If she then demands the collective pay for her mistake, or the chance she took, it is so that she can continue to behave with impunity.

This collectivization of consequences is part of post-modern and Marxist theory - even distribution of rewards and costs, so that the illusion of parity is to be maintained, in the post-modern context, and in the Marxist paradigm to preserve the fair distribution of rewards and responsibilities so nobody is exploited when the foreseen or unforeseen negative is suffered.

From collectivization of resources to collectivization of responsibilities - producing artificial parity within which the sober, pragmatic mind absorbs the negative costs of cohabitating with the flaky careless imbecile...
Negative consequences evenly distributed so nobody suffers more than anyone else.

The long-term consequence is decline and collapse.
With no culling - natural or social - nobody adapt, because nobody has to - no necessity no inventiveness.
Nobody learns so they continue acting and judging and choosing in exactly the same way - or even worse they become even more careless, carefree, and impudent.
The free spirited slut begins sleeping with more men because there is no severe negative e consequence the collective will not absorb. Promiscuity relieved by abortion, producing gender parity within a controlled man-made environment - institutionalization.