I don't know for sure, but with the advent of easy communication and access to information through technology and the globalization of culture, we would have to actively hold on to old biases, which contradicts the very reason behind biases. So as it gets harder and harder to hold on to those beliefs, and generations raised in times before such easy access die out, we may find ourselves (and I am using the royal "we" here) in a world where there truly is less prejudice. Don't get me wrong; people will always seek scapegoats. What I believe this post is saying is that we can (and should try to) give those people a run for their money.
And yet in the novel it is those with free will who are able to think the most beautifully and complexly. In an all-or-nothing world, I would choose free will, with all of it's ills, over control any day.
Unless, freewill is merely an illusion and we are all already androids with our fate predetermined. Maybe you are like Anaximander and you haven't discovered what real freewill is yet.
I define freewill as the ability to influence our own future. If we each have a destiny, and we cannot influence our fate, then we would subsequently have no freewill. I've put a lot of thought into this actually and I still have no idea what to believe about freewill. We may never know
Do you believe that there is any way to measure, pardon my terminology, the organic-ness of decisions and impulses? I think the greatest danger to free will is not fate but rather chaotic input into our minds; our own personal Chinese rooms.
I think there could be way to measure and even predict an individual's decisions if you were to account for everything he experienced and his DNA. Then would we be all slaves to our own biological makeup and experiences? Does too much chaotic input remove freewill if it exists?
I believe to an extent that we are and it does, but not in such a way that it destroys free will completely. We may be slaves, but we can choose our chains, if you pardon the cliche. I think oddly enough it is the mixture of both chaotic input and our genetic coding and experiences that keeps us free--or at least free-er.
Do you believe in an all powerful god? I'm not going to judge. I'm just asking for the purposes of this discussion because if there is a god that knows actually what we are going to do, then wouldn't we have no freewill? If we could really choose a choice besides what god already knows will happen, then each of us has freewill and therefore a power over an all powerful being. I don't think I am articulating this thought process very well. I don't mean any offense
I take a more deistic standpoint but still within the traditional Christian belief of an all knowing God, though more with the justification that since God exists outside of time he is conscious of what will happen in any direction of time. I do agree with you, however, that justifying an all knowing God by saying either He decides our fate or He knows us well enough to determine our actions does disqualify the possibility of free will as we are defining it. What are your view on an all powerful god?
I happen to be Catholic, so I also believe in an all powerful, all knowing god. Maybe He has the power to control our actions, but decides against it and is just aware of what we will choose. But if He is aware of who we are and every decision we will make, what would be the purpose of our existence?
Maybe He is lonely? Maybe He, like us, wished to create in both the physical and the artistic sense? I think when it says we were created in His image, it means we were created with his same base desires and attributes (creation, company, communication, and freedom) even though we have to an extent perverted these attributes, it is only within ourselves that we can find His motives. As far as individual purpose, I think we are meant to help others and help ourselves achieve a more godlike existence (of course not in a divine way, but in a sense return more to those unperverted base attributes and "declutter" in a sense).
You can say that and there are soo many awesome people but unfortunately they aren't the ones making decisions and even more unfortunately they aren't the majority
I agree with curtron. I believe that people are generally good natured. The problem is that other people tend to label the other people that they disagree with as bigoted or backwards
If you think that, your a special kind of stupid....