Brilliant stack. This is what I love about substack - it is a place for learning, a place for intellectual stimulation. I had never heard of Robert Sapolsky but as he was talking (in the style of Yuval Harari) I kept imagining Gad Saad giving a commentary about the inevitability of his conclusions given his parasitized mind. That sprang to my mind as I mused over his choices of tragedy and heroes. On a completely different and frivolous note when I read 'Back in the day, when I could listen to Sam Harris without vomiting' - it made me laugh so hard I had to call my husband in to read it to him. My husband always disliked Sam but I made him endure many of his conversations because 'Jordan Peterson thinks he is worth listening to' but now I can't bear to listen to him. Which also made me muse over the fact that not one person in my friend circle has ever heard of or listened to Sam Harris or Jordan or Gad because I now live in a world they don't know about. This is another reason I love substack as it is place for meeting others who live where I now live.
Your point about echo chamber fracturing is so true. I'm thinking that even among my awake friends most wouldn't know who Gad is. And yes, it's also one of my reasons why I love Substack.
So true, Patricia. I live in a world my friends and family (including my husband) don’t know about. They no doubt think there is something “off” about me these days. My husband has said as much.
I am sorry to hear that Janet. I am so very fortunate that my husband, my daughters and their partners are all red pilled. I can't imagine how you must feel being isolated from close family especially your husband - that must make life very hard. Most of my cousins think I am nuts so we have to engage in small talk and the same applies when I talk to friends. I find it very uninspiring to say the least.
I think my husband is wary of what’s going on but he has a very high IQ and verbal skills that he uses against me at times. We’ve been married 57 years so I’ve learned to ignore or snap back. Lol. Otherwise, substack is about all I have for sharing truth. You are blessed. Small talk is my life, even though one sister and I used to get deep into stuff but she and I are on opposite planets about the important issues now. She will be fighting against her bank now because lack of security allowed someone to drain her bank account of all she had in December. The bank is dragging its feet on information plus how long will it take the “fraud department “ or police to take care of it. Back in 2009 the banksters destroyed her business leaving her eventually in poverty. (Lives in Ireland).
Free will is inherent to the soul, not the body. Sapolsky can only state we have no free will if he denies the existence of our souls. But we do have souls, it is the heart of our being. Nietzsche said, 'we are souls with a body, not bodies with a soul' (or something in that veign). The first hermetic principle says: All is mind, the Universe is mental. Matter is but a manifestation of the mind.
This agenda of 'we have no souls (Harari) and no free will is in effect a sign that this whole agenda is evil, rolled out by God's nemesis. It has only one goal: to destroy. To annihlate everything that is good, and just, and beautiful. What better way than to convince God's creation (man) that he has no soul, no free will, to turn him away from God's love and his own destiny, which is to live happily in God's garden and to help Him create beauty?
An important topic and I agree with your reflexive response to Sam’s ideas who loves Status-Statist Quo Authority and genociding pesky Palestinians.
And yes, some of the neurobiological science is rationalization justifying irresponsibility.
Excellent acerbic, mind-cleansing video by Natal, new one for me, thanks.
And yes, key point, no Free Will, means the State WILL take away your Free Will/Freedom and you will never notice it since you are not supposed to have one.
And the Carlin rant is a fav.
To add to your excellent effort:
“The tendency to evade responsibility may be subtly abetted by our vocabulary, that is, by the absence of a verb for ‘responsibility’ corresponding to the verb ‘liberate’. When a person unjustly deprived of liberty is restored to freedom, we say that he has been ‘liberated’. However, when a person unjustly deprived of responsibility—by being declared incompetent to manage his finances or stand trial—is restored to responsibility, we do not say that he has been ‘responsibilitated’, because there is no such word. Instead, we think of such a person also as having been liberated, which is true, since depriving a person of responsibility is one of the most effective ways of depriving him of liberty as well. Nevertheless, liberty and responsibility are not identical; they are two sides of the proverbial coin, each with its distinctive markings.
“One of differences between liberty and responsibility is illustrated by the following observation. The transformation of the child into the adult constitutes (ought to constitute) the paradigm of the process of a person’s attaining the benefits and burdens of responsibility. We do not call the result ‘liberation’ (unless we regard childhood as a period of painful unfreedom, which seems to be a relatively uncommon sentiment). We ought to call it ‘responsibilitation’.” Thomas Szasz
I see "Liberty" as the steady-state foundation of all living things. "Responsibility" is the self imposed boundary to that Liberty. The inability to self limit personal Liberty, could be called insanity, most often expressed as psychopathic?
I agree with your statement on self-limiting one's liberty which most people do mostly successfully to the point of keeping themselves out of jail, and I would add the opposite "self-limiting" MOST people do, which is NOT exercising their Will to be Free/Free Will.
As Erich Fromm put it, most want to. "Escape from Freedom". So I would add to your negative view of "Responsibility" the positive view of enacting it more rather than limiting it.
And to me, the most importance enactment of being responsible for one's freedom positively is to practice and advocate Voluntaryism.
I am currently setting up a "Forum" online (not sure if it will be on Substack), tentatively called Free Friends: Abandoned To Ourselves—Intending a Humanist, Naturalist, Individualist, Free Trader Voluntaryism.
Also, currently, on Substack, I am having an extended exchange with Tereza Coraggio here https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-dogma-of-atheism/comments who is coming from the Transcendental Sacred against my Humanist Profane—our exchange a preface to my coming Forum.
If this kind of discussion/debate interests you and you want to join our Forum once launched, email me, Jack, at responsiblyfree@protonmail.com and I will put you on my email list.
"Removing Free Will, removes Agency which removes Sovereignty².
While Agency is the capacity to act independently and make free choices, Sovereignty is having ultimate authority and control over one's own life, body, and decisions".
Which is exactly what the globalist types want us to believe, and want to legislate against us... Great article...
WEF, WHO and UN's feted guest speaker Yuval said the days of "my free will" are over... Oh and "Human Rights are just a story we've invented"... These sickos are straight from the cult sent to rearrange your thinking and common sense...
nice article! we can definitely change anything. All life is interconnected, and we as part of the whole have the power to change, and hence change our environment. Positively or negatively. No in between.
Dr Benjamin Hardy - behavioural psychologist, presents a lot of material on how to change human behaviour and improve your life. He's written a number of books and has numerous YT videos.
Brilliant. You are on a roll, brother, with the truthtelling. Thank you!
In regards to the free will topic, the implications of the discovery of neuroplasticity* - the ability for thought to change the physical brain - makes mincemeat of these spurious 'we are just along for the ride' arguments. Of course, the brain changes with experience and physical actions (ie exercise) but to change the body's 'physical matter' through THOUGHT alone not only destroys a mechanistic behaviour argument, but the whole edifice of mainstream medicine.
Every thought contributes to our creation of ourselves.
Loved the Carlin clip! The meaning of life got upgraded - We exist because the earth wanted plastic to come forth. 😂
This “Free Will”, or as I transpose it, “The Will to be Free” topic, will be one of many such controversial topics we will be exploring and explicating on my just being launched Forum, tentatively titled:
Free Friends: Abandoned To Ourselves—Intending a Humanist, Naturalist, Individualist, Free Trader Voluntaryism.
Anyone interested in joining (free and, hopefully, freeing), email Jack at: responsiblyfree@protonmail.com and I will email you to join once we launch.
My claim concerning Free Will:
“We are free to the degree: we will ourselves to be; take the responsibility to be; allow others to be; and trust ourselves to be.”
I have only 2 comments. 1. Excellent article and timely. 2. Sapolsky is dangerous without probably knowing he is. Anybody who believes what he is saying has abandoned self responsibility and can’t think critically. Frightening that an ’educated’ person can actually believe this. Or does he really? According to our learned friend one might as well conclude ‘poor Hitler’, poor Netanyahu’, poor Zelensky’, ‘poor Blinken’,
Why are we so obsessed with freedom? Free products, free money, free breakfasts, and free will. Paraphrasing the ancient wisdom, “Free will is the dream of people who cannot decide what to buy and must watch dozens of reviews in which others will convince them to give up their freedom oh choice.”
We are trying to revolt against what is our deepest nature. We are not free. We will never have free will, because we live in the intricate networks of interdependencies with everything around and within us. Sure, we can will things to happen, but imposing will on others - restricting their free will - is the opposite of free will.
We cannot even see through candidates in elections, and we beg to be persuaded one way or another. Not willing to remember a single benefit which has ever been returned to voters after the game is complete. We call it freedom: the possibility to choose A or B.
Interdependency is the essence of this existence. The generation of our grandparents know it well. Our offspring are constantly being trained and programed to deny this and push and force and demand and enforce: teamwork, leadership, proactivity, uniqueness, mastery, success… Never-ending fight. No free will. You must be just like the currently valid behavioral model. “Be yourself, drink our stuff.”
Freedom in any form is just a delusion. Nothing in this world is free. We are all interdependent on other people, animals and objects. We are only recently learning painfully that the fate of the whole mankind depends on (among others) bees, mosquitos and house flies (yes, the nasty ones), which all play some minute role in the homeostasis of Life, but without which the whole system will be heavily disturbed or doomed to collapse.
There is no difference whether it is for financial (material) freedom or emotional freedom. The essence is the same - separation from “the other”, which we express as “I don’t need” or “we have other options”.
Well, we don’t. Even if we isolate ourselves in an off-grid haven, somebody will have to clean up our mess, including bodily secretions. Human, animal, plant or rain, the interdependence will appear right in front of us.
But we like to set unreachable goals, pursue impossible tasks and self-hypnotize with obvious untruths. Strange as it is, some of us feel better in fairy land than in reality. Nothing wrong with it. It’s just that there are other versions of this Life, perceived in different ways and played differently by different people.
Yes, I have noticed this very clearly. There comes a point at which the person makes an inner decision to depart. I’ve seen it mostly not related to any stress, incidentally. Subjectively, of course, I interpreted these situations as if the person came to the conclusion that 1) they have nothing more to do here (in the positive sense, no resignation, no negative emotions), 2) if they continued, they would have been too much of a burden (to relatives or to themselves, also without negative associations). Almost all of these observations come from the work with the elderly. They are much more mature, have strong and solid life experience, and in the last stage of life are usually in harmony with the inevitable change.
Unlike younger ones, especially those disappointed with their work failures, family challenges, lack of perceived personal value, absence of professional achievements, etc. These would want to be immortal, although they do not know what they would do with it. They can’t handle critical changes in life with understanding. I wouldn’t call it “stress”, though. My view is that such people are empty - they have not managed to fill their being with what life brings to their table every day. They rush and run and do a lot of stupid things to satisfy others at the expense of their own energy. This emptiness is very loud when Life knocks at their gate. The elderly are nothing like that.
I'm with Sapolsky 100%, having come to realize that everything I ever thought, said, or did came from the infinite and unique circumstances leading up to them. Personal "sovereignty" is a useful concept for shared mutual human dignity, but otherwise, and this is NOT for me a religious statement: otherwise, only the Great Creator God is sovereign over each and all of us. I'm reminded of the 12 Steps of AA and Al-Anon, which talk about powerlessness over our vices... here it is most clear that the only "will" to triumph is through conscious surrender to our Higher Power, which is precisely that which both frees and elevates, *changing* one's aptitude towards better outcomes.
Not really, while I ignore most of what a doctor says, I still need certain aspects of their care. I take the parts I find useful and disregard the rest. We have State and Federal laws we have to follow. Those are often wrong or Unconstitutional.
Brilliant stack. This is what I love about substack - it is a place for learning, a place for intellectual stimulation. I had never heard of Robert Sapolsky but as he was talking (in the style of Yuval Harari) I kept imagining Gad Saad giving a commentary about the inevitability of his conclusions given his parasitized mind. That sprang to my mind as I mused over his choices of tragedy and heroes. On a completely different and frivolous note when I read 'Back in the day, when I could listen to Sam Harris without vomiting' - it made me laugh so hard I had to call my husband in to read it to him. My husband always disliked Sam but I made him endure many of his conversations because 'Jordan Peterson thinks he is worth listening to' but now I can't bear to listen to him. Which also made me muse over the fact that not one person in my friend circle has ever heard of or listened to Sam Harris or Jordan or Gad because I now live in a world they don't know about. This is another reason I love substack as it is place for meeting others who live where I now live.
Your point about echo chamber fracturing is so true. I'm thinking that even among my awake friends most wouldn't know who Gad is. And yes, it's also one of my reasons why I love Substack.
So true, Patricia. I live in a world my friends and family (including my husband) don’t know about. They no doubt think there is something “off” about me these days. My husband has said as much.
I am sorry to hear that Janet. I am so very fortunate that my husband, my daughters and their partners are all red pilled. I can't imagine how you must feel being isolated from close family especially your husband - that must make life very hard. Most of my cousins think I am nuts so we have to engage in small talk and the same applies when I talk to friends. I find it very uninspiring to say the least.
I think my husband is wary of what’s going on but he has a very high IQ and verbal skills that he uses against me at times. We’ve been married 57 years so I’ve learned to ignore or snap back. Lol. Otherwise, substack is about all I have for sharing truth. You are blessed. Small talk is my life, even though one sister and I used to get deep into stuff but she and I are on opposite planets about the important issues now. She will be fighting against her bank now because lack of security allowed someone to drain her bank account of all she had in December. The bank is dragging its feet on information plus how long will it take the “fraud department “ or police to take care of it. Back in 2009 the banksters destroyed her business leaving her eventually in poverty. (Lives in Ireland).
Wow married 57 years - that is to be applauded. Sorry to hear about your sister - was it a push payment scam? If so this might help her:
https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/technology/2023/06/07/news/banks_will_be_required_to_reimburse_app_scam_victims_from_next_year-3329977/
BTW my email address is pathutchinson@proton.me if you fancy a chat.
Free will is inherent to the soul, not the body. Sapolsky can only state we have no free will if he denies the existence of our souls. But we do have souls, it is the heart of our being. Nietzsche said, 'we are souls with a body, not bodies with a soul' (or something in that veign). The first hermetic principle says: All is mind, the Universe is mental. Matter is but a manifestation of the mind.
This agenda of 'we have no souls (Harari) and no free will is in effect a sign that this whole agenda is evil, rolled out by God's nemesis. It has only one goal: to destroy. To annihlate everything that is good, and just, and beautiful. What better way than to convince God's creation (man) that he has no soul, no free will, to turn him away from God's love and his own destiny, which is to live happily in God's garden and to help Him create beauty?
Great comment, Minky. Thank you. All so very true and your second paragraph is 100% spot on.
Well collated and explicated, thank you.
An important topic and I agree with your reflexive response to Sam’s ideas who loves Status-Statist Quo Authority and genociding pesky Palestinians.
And yes, some of the neurobiological science is rationalization justifying irresponsibility.
Excellent acerbic, mind-cleansing video by Natal, new one for me, thanks.
And yes, key point, no Free Will, means the State WILL take away your Free Will/Freedom and you will never notice it since you are not supposed to have one.
And the Carlin rant is a fav.
To add to your excellent effort:
“The tendency to evade responsibility may be subtly abetted by our vocabulary, that is, by the absence of a verb for ‘responsibility’ corresponding to the verb ‘liberate’. When a person unjustly deprived of liberty is restored to freedom, we say that he has been ‘liberated’. However, when a person unjustly deprived of responsibility—by being declared incompetent to manage his finances or stand trial—is restored to responsibility, we do not say that he has been ‘responsibilitated’, because there is no such word. Instead, we think of such a person also as having been liberated, which is true, since depriving a person of responsibility is one of the most effective ways of depriving him of liberty as well. Nevertheless, liberty and responsibility are not identical; they are two sides of the proverbial coin, each with its distinctive markings.
“One of differences between liberty and responsibility is illustrated by the following observation. The transformation of the child into the adult constitutes (ought to constitute) the paradigm of the process of a person’s attaining the benefits and burdens of responsibility. We do not call the result ‘liberation’ (unless we regard childhood as a period of painful unfreedom, which seems to be a relatively uncommon sentiment). We ought to call it ‘responsibilitation’.” Thomas Szasz
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Agents-Evolution-Gave-Will/dp/0691226237/ref=sr_1_1
Kevin Mitchell argues for FREE WILL in BS 213 October 27, 2023
https://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/2023/213-kevin-mitchell
Free Will is the Will to be Free.
Keep free, keep safe.
That's great, thank you.
“All the problems of the man who fears for his humanity come down to the same question: how to remain free?” Stefan Zweig
I see "Liberty" as the steady-state foundation of all living things. "Responsibility" is the self imposed boundary to that Liberty. The inability to self limit personal Liberty, could be called insanity, most often expressed as psychopathic?
I agree with your statement on self-limiting one's liberty which most people do mostly successfully to the point of keeping themselves out of jail, and I would add the opposite "self-limiting" MOST people do, which is NOT exercising their Will to be Free/Free Will.
As Erich Fromm put it, most want to. "Escape from Freedom". So I would add to your negative view of "Responsibility" the positive view of enacting it more rather than limiting it.
And to me, the most importance enactment of being responsible for one's freedom positively is to practice and advocate Voluntaryism.
I am currently setting up a "Forum" online (not sure if it will be on Substack), tentatively called Free Friends: Abandoned To Ourselves—Intending a Humanist, Naturalist, Individualist, Free Trader Voluntaryism.
Also, currently, on Substack, I am having an extended exchange with Tereza Coraggio here https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-dogma-of-atheism/comments who is coming from the Transcendental Sacred against my Humanist Profane—our exchange a preface to my coming Forum.
If this kind of discussion/debate interests you and you want to join our Forum once launched, email me, Jack, at responsiblyfree@protonmail.com and I will put you on my email list.
Get free, stay free.
Saving this excellent comment, EVJ.
STL I hope you will join our new, still to be launched, Free Friends Forum? Just email me, Jack--responsiblyfree@protonmail.com
and you will be on our invitation list.
Get free, keep free.
"Removing Free Will, removes Agency which removes Sovereignty².
While Agency is the capacity to act independently and make free choices, Sovereignty is having ultimate authority and control over one's own life, body, and decisions".
Which is exactly what the globalist types want us to believe, and want to legislate against us... Great article...
WEF, WHO and UN's feted guest speaker Yuval said the days of "my free will" are over... Oh and "Human Rights are just a story we've invented"... These sickos are straight from the cult sent to rearrange your thinking and common sense...
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Alhj4UwNWp2m/
' They' sure do use words to confuse people.
nice article! we can definitely change anything. All life is interconnected, and we as part of the whole have the power to change, and hence change our environment. Positively or negatively. No in between.
As a therapist, I agree, but some (in my experience) need to be ‘allowed’ to, probably due to years of leftist conditioning.
Evil only exists with intention.
Dr Benjamin Hardy - behavioural psychologist, presents a lot of material on how to change human behaviour and improve your life. He's written a number of books and has numerous YT videos.
Brilliant. You are on a roll, brother, with the truthtelling. Thank you!
In regards to the free will topic, the implications of the discovery of neuroplasticity* - the ability for thought to change the physical brain - makes mincemeat of these spurious 'we are just along for the ride' arguments. Of course, the brain changes with experience and physical actions (ie exercise) but to change the body's 'physical matter' through THOUGHT alone not only destroys a mechanistic behaviour argument, but the whole edifice of mainstream medicine.
Every thought contributes to our creation of ourselves.
Loved the Carlin clip! The meaning of life got upgraded - We exist because the earth wanted plastic to come forth. 😂
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944261/#:~:text=The%20findings%20from%20studies%20in,and%20function%20of%20their%20brains.
Indeed, I had settled on 42 being the answer, but now plastic seems to be a better explanation. 🤣
For those of you viewing Kevin Mitchell’s work on Free Will, I just found this article
THE FATE OF FREE WILL The New York Review by James Gleick January 18, 2024
In Free Agents, Kevin Mitchell makes a scientific case for the existence of human agency.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/01/18/the-fate-of-free-will-free-agents-kevin-mitchell/
Also, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosopy’s comprehensive article on Free Will
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
This is to add to the other materials I posted below:
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Agents-Evolution-Gave-Will/dp/0691226237/ref=sr_1_1
Kevin Mitchell argues for FREE WILL in BS 213 October 27, 2023
https://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/2023/213-kevin-mitchell
This “Free Will”, or as I transpose it, “The Will to be Free” topic, will be one of many such controversial topics we will be exploring and explicating on my just being launched Forum, tentatively titled:
Free Friends: Abandoned To Ourselves—Intending a Humanist, Naturalist, Individualist, Free Trader Voluntaryism.
Anyone interested in joining (free and, hopefully, freeing), email Jack at: responsiblyfree@protonmail.com and I will email you to join once we launch.
My claim concerning Free Will:
“We are free to the degree: we will ourselves to be; take the responsibility to be; allow others to be; and trust ourselves to be.”
Unbekoming, I hope you will join us.
I have only 2 comments. 1. Excellent article and timely. 2. Sapolsky is dangerous without probably knowing he is. Anybody who believes what he is saying has abandoned self responsibility and can’t think critically. Frightening that an ’educated’ person can actually believe this. Or does he really? According to our learned friend one might as well conclude ‘poor Hitler’, poor Netanyahu’, poor Zelensky’, ‘poor Blinken’,
David Hawkins provides amazing research on Consciousness.
https://philberg.substack.com/p/live-your-life-like-a-prayer
Why are we so obsessed with freedom? Free products, free money, free breakfasts, and free will. Paraphrasing the ancient wisdom, “Free will is the dream of people who cannot decide what to buy and must watch dozens of reviews in which others will convince them to give up their freedom oh choice.”
We are trying to revolt against what is our deepest nature. We are not free. We will never have free will, because we live in the intricate networks of interdependencies with everything around and within us. Sure, we can will things to happen, but imposing will on others - restricting their free will - is the opposite of free will.
We cannot even see through candidates in elections, and we beg to be persuaded one way or another. Not willing to remember a single benefit which has ever been returned to voters after the game is complete. We call it freedom: the possibility to choose A or B.
Interdependency is the essence of this existence. The generation of our grandparents know it well. Our offspring are constantly being trained and programed to deny this and push and force and demand and enforce: teamwork, leadership, proactivity, uniqueness, mastery, success… Never-ending fight. No free will. You must be just like the currently valid behavioral model. “Be yourself, drink our stuff.”
?????
There is no Free lunch. Intellectual and emotional "Freedom" have nothing in common with an 'apparent' release from financial obligation.
Emotional Freedom is accepting that there are consequences for every single choice we make..
Even when subjected to the most dire threats and force, we always have 'Choice'.
Freedom only dies when an individual surrenders Choice. Then that person becomes a Zombie.
Freedom in any form is just a delusion. Nothing in this world is free. We are all interdependent on other people, animals and objects. We are only recently learning painfully that the fate of the whole mankind depends on (among others) bees, mosquitos and house flies (yes, the nasty ones), which all play some minute role in the homeostasis of Life, but without which the whole system will be heavily disturbed or doomed to collapse.
There is no difference whether it is for financial (material) freedom or emotional freedom. The essence is the same - separation from “the other”, which we express as “I don’t need” or “we have other options”.
Well, we don’t. Even if we isolate ourselves in an off-grid haven, somebody will have to clean up our mess, including bodily secretions. Human, animal, plant or rain, the interdependence will appear right in front of us.
But we like to set unreachable goals, pursue impossible tasks and self-hypnotize with obvious untruths. Strange as it is, some of us feel better in fairy land than in reality. Nothing wrong with it. It’s just that there are other versions of this Life, perceived in different ways and played differently by different people.
In my view, you are so wrong.
The only guaranteed thing in the "Reality" that we understand as "Our World"; that is that we will "die" and leave that reality behind.
In my experience, "The Will to Live" (or lack thereof) is a very real aspect.
Some people (under various stresses) choose to withdraw. Some refuse this option at any price. For me, this is an ultimate expression of Freedom.
Yes, I have noticed this very clearly. There comes a point at which the person makes an inner decision to depart. I’ve seen it mostly not related to any stress, incidentally. Subjectively, of course, I interpreted these situations as if the person came to the conclusion that 1) they have nothing more to do here (in the positive sense, no resignation, no negative emotions), 2) if they continued, they would have been too much of a burden (to relatives or to themselves, also without negative associations). Almost all of these observations come from the work with the elderly. They are much more mature, have strong and solid life experience, and in the last stage of life are usually in harmony with the inevitable change.
Unlike younger ones, especially those disappointed with their work failures, family challenges, lack of perceived personal value, absence of professional achievements, etc. These would want to be immortal, although they do not know what they would do with it. They can’t handle critical changes in life with understanding. I wouldn’t call it “stress”, though. My view is that such people are empty - they have not managed to fill their being with what life brings to their table every day. They rush and run and do a lot of stupid things to satisfy others at the expense of their own energy. This emptiness is very loud when Life knocks at their gate. The elderly are nothing like that.
A generalization, obviously.
I'm with Sapolsky 100%, having come to realize that everything I ever thought, said, or did came from the infinite and unique circumstances leading up to them. Personal "sovereignty" is a useful concept for shared mutual human dignity, but otherwise, and this is NOT for me a religious statement: otherwise, only the Great Creator God is sovereign over each and all of us. I'm reminded of the 12 Steps of AA and Al-Anon, which talk about powerlessness over our vices... here it is most clear that the only "will" to triumph is through conscious surrender to our Higher Power, which is precisely that which both frees and elevates, *changing* one's aptitude towards better outcomes.
Not really, while I ignore most of what a doctor says, I still need certain aspects of their care. I take the parts I find useful and disregard the rest. We have State and Federal laws we have to follow. Those are often wrong or Unconstitutional.
What do you believe?
Can an individual be fated ( what happens in retrospect) to believe in free will?
Or can an individual be fated to not believe in free will?
Was it the chicken or the egg?
I was a nihilist until this genocide shit happened... I like to ' chose" to get pissed off about child poisoning but did I?
Does it matter?
I have managed to get this far by accepting paradox... Please don't go and solve paradoxes now please! 👍😆
P.s. I think Sam ate one too many green eggs.