“You can read the life you’re living, but you cannot change a word” -Leonard Cohen
Free will. We all feel like we have it. We feel like we make decisions and either suffer the consequences of those decisions or reap the benefits of them.
We regret choices we’ve made in the past and have a strong intuition that we could have done otherwise. These intuitions are sometimes even backed up by our partners telling us how we should have done otherwise.
We feel we should have tried harder, pushed further or we wish we’d given up sooner. But, if we were put in the exact same position as before, could we have behaved differently, or is the sense of agency and control we feel just an illusion?
In this post I’ll pull on a thread that I hope unravels your preconceived notions about free will and agency. And perhaps even changes the way you feel about things like hate, regret and luck.
Continue reading “Free Will is an Illusion & Why You Should Care”