Recently it came to me the idea, that arguments of determinism and free will, there is a middle ground. When we look at the small components of life, or our day to day activities we see our actions carry something like a free will. As example since the day begin, you may have made some choices, like what to drink in the morning, a cup of coffee, a glass of water or some milk. You may have decided to go to work or be at home. But, when we look at the big picture, life seems to be a random walk, like the dog, the boy and the mathematician story. And more about these determinism and free will you will find in my previous article. I did not know much about it back then and the article end up without conclusion. And I think the conciousness is wiser a little better than those days that, we can try to answer the question of determinism vs free will, just a little push towards of more.
Estern vs Western paterrn of thinking.
If you read the article on wikipedia on determinism and free will you would find that it devides arguments into two sections. One ,western and one eastern. The westerns argue determinism and free will as two opposing arguments. However easterns argue (specially in buddhists according to wiki) that world is neither determinstic or free will. What does this mean, and what is the importance of knowing this. Can our practice of mindfulness answer such a question like determinism?
Some examples of deterministic world and free will.
Imagine our birth, and death. Which we have no control at all most of the time. We cannot chose the time and place we are born, and we cannot choose our death either. But, like we discussed earlier we choose or think we do, in between. And it seems microscopic activities it is true. But if we see the big picture, every action of ours start to create a snowball effect after sometime, (which is explained in chaos theory of life) that ultimately it is difficult to determine wheather it is good or bad. It seems what follows after seems true random. Too many variables to count after some time. Just like ripples in water, every action every tiny incident is inherently bound with everything happening everywhere, eventually. So, do we really have a free will in this chaos? or our thoughts are just some ripples which were determined by similar former actions which happened since the begining of time?
This made me think, What if both determinism and true will are true at the same time? Imagine yourself. As long as you are not a hydrophobic leaf, you would think that 'you' have a free will. To the extent that you start an eternal search for some 'peace' some, 'status' some kind of a liberation. And this will of yours, (we can call it a desire) will continuesly feed for we will be there, just like a forest fire which keeps spreading, as long as there is wind, as long as there is dry grass and as long as there is desire. What will happen if there is a rain, even after months even after years. There will be a big rain, big enough, to put out the fire entirely. And it seems the life, has a free will. As long as there is fire, or life, there will be a free will. But once the fire is put out, there will be no free will, and there will be no life as well. Similarly death will be there, if there is life, and if there is no-one living, the death will no longer be there.
Someone can argue that, well that is good for a fairly tale. Life is not as simple as jumble of words. And it is true. Life is not a jumble of words. I am sure the meaning of life, is not written not in English, and not in any other language that man made. We are fools if we think that it is. And if we look carefully you would see all we have done since our birth is jumbling our words. To identify a new meaning. Using same old words, that we used foreever, to get a meaning of happiness. If you read the article on language you would know, where we go wrong. Hence, I invite you to tap into your conciousness with new intutions provided by mindfulness to go beyond words and find the meaninging of life and death for yourself. It is not my story, you know what is happening in your story, and give it a rest from the eternal search.
In summary deterministic world and free will,
when we look at life we can see life is having features of both determinism and free will. And these are just concepts which themselves bounded by limits of language. Hence, neither is true or false. It is difficult to see the deterministic nature of life. Mindfulness is the science we use to understand our true nature.
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