Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Myth of Free Will

“Do whatever you wish to do”, this is a sentence that we have all heard be it from our parents / siblings / friends / girl friend / boy friend / even politicians and the so called liberators. The sentence seems to be simple and clear but the question that arises is do we really do what we wish to do even when we are told to do so. The answer to this question is tricky as the question itself, it is a fact that whenever we are told to do whatever we wished to do , at these very moments we actually are supposed to do the opposite i.e to do whatever we are expected to do or simply whatever the other person wishes us to do. So most of the times we tend to do whatever others wish us to do. Now the question arises does the free will exist?
“Free Will” has been linked to freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of thinking, but how free is our mind today, how free and independent is our thinking? The media is controlling what we think and how we think; media is proclaiming the accused as criminals even before they have been proved so in the court of law. This has led to jury being influenced by the media trails and recently many faulty judgments were passed which many intellects opposed. what is right what is wrong , what is moral what is immoral is being decided by the people other than you, other than your own intelligence and analytical mind. Whatever we do is always dependent on the fact what others will think of it rather than what “I” as a person think of it. Let me try to give an example, let us say a college girl in a western country does not wear miniskirts or other such clothes, what is the image she creates for herself- that of a bore, unattractive, idiot and nobody pays attention to her or gets too much of undue attention…. she is forced to wear the kind of clothes which helps her to move with the crowd. Now take the example of a college girl in a conservative Asian country, if she dresses the same way as girls in west she would be considered a slut and looked down upon. What happened to her freedom of wearing whatever she thinks is good for her , what about her free will. This is just one example, this applies to almost all walks of life be it when we vote for a political party , it not we who decide whom to vote for but the some other person who tells us this political party is good that is bad, who tells us these policies are good those are bad. It is same when deciding about whether a movie is good or bad, say you have heard a lot of good stuff about a particular movie from almost every friend of yours and you decide to watch it. After watching the movie you do not find it up to the expectations but when your friends ask you how you liked the movie you have doubt about your own assessment and join choir praising the movie. Almost everything that we have to decide is being decided for us by somebody else, but we fail to realize this.
Free will goes for a toss in every aspect of now days life, the only place I think of where it may still exist is the solitude of Himalayas. But it isn’t easy to go there and be there so we better continue to cherish the pseudo freedom , pseudo democracy, pseudo equality …..

3 comments:

  1. Weather can be a problem in Himalayas..will be too cold to concentrate and write.Probably you should continue with blogging...to express you "free will".No one can dare do anythin..:)Anyways good thoughts put into words.Like them.

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  2. Well, the "free will" you have discussed here completely & entirely depends on individuals. For me joining a gang and singing the same song was a trend till my grad days. It kept on changing where I have made my stand clear in each & every issue that I found credible enough. It made me infamous in few circles, it gave me the tag of 'boring', but at the end of the day it made me stand out as well. You should never think of the reaction if you feel you must stand for what you believe in is right (sometimes may be wrong!).

    But, yes; we do have to bend our basics a little to make the person/s in front us happy or make them feel that we also beileve of what they think as well. Chalta hai re...

    Finally, Himalayas is a great place(I had a small glance at it when I had been to Kashmir 3 years back), but you can't say that it's the 'only' place where one can exercise his/her free will!! India is full of quiet, peacful yet outstanding places where you will be lost in the midst of nature unknowingly.

    Good that you question things... kee it up dude.

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  3. i am not in habit of replying to comments , but today i make an exception and try to reply to all the comments . it is good to see that so many people many a times don't agree to my point of view. good to know that i am not always right. i feel that even if one among you because of my rubbish writing is able to see this world from a different / new perspective my mission is accomplished. thanks for all your support and comments, keep it coming whether through mails or comments .

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