Free Narrative Essays: Do We Really Have Free Will?

Do we really have free will? I thought I knew, but I don’t know for sure anymore. A cursory look at our experiences lead us to believe that it seems our actions, words, and decisions just appear spontaneously, out of nowhere. So much so, in fact, that it sometimes seems to us that we are merely observing what comes out of our mouths, helplessly watching ourselves act, as if it were someone else. But isn’t this just a trick of perspective? An existential sleight of hand? Our conscious selves are more the fruit than the root. This is the reality of all of our existences: We obviously had no say about being brought into it. No free will there. That might sound like a pat truism, but there is more to it. Our DNA, the recipe for making our body and brain what they are, was not of our choosing. But that DNA inheritance sure does dictate our choosing. Interestingly enough, long-term studies of identical twins who were separated at birth to grow up in very different environments reveal shocking correspondences between them decades later. Again and again, it turns out that such men had married similar-looking wives with the same names. They’d wind up driving the same …show more content…
We “know” our decisions are our own. Is that nothing but a pathetic illusion? No. On one level we are free. This is because we are acting in accord with the law of our being, wherever it came from. We are delighted to obey our inclinations, wherever we got them. To do otherwise would be merely to kick against the goads, not really freedom, mere defiance of whomever issues commands we find abhorrent. The factors that have “predestined” us are not compulsions that our already-established selves resent. It is rather that these factors (heredity, environment, previous experiences) have made us the individuals we are, liking what we like, wanting what we want, valuing what we