Although not talked about in these terms outside Philosophy classes,
the problem of free-will consumes more of man’s attention than anything other than food.
All religions, all judicial, political and economic systems
teeter on the needle’s point of the problem,
balanced between trying to explain it away and attempting to pave it over.
Were not men’s brains programmed to conceive of the problem of free-will,
they would have never been able to fashion the collective concept of civilization itself, and the unique significance of the individual.

Without the all pervasive, though indirectly stated question of whether
man is free to do what he wants or is not,
life as man knows it now would not exist.
From his most exalted parliamentary debates,
to his lowliest personal conversations and private thoughts,
the tacit question of whether man  is capable of freely choosing his actions and words is always present;
a silent, subtly ominous shadow that falls everywhere on his universe;
the supreme, Unanswered Question  --  indeed the one men shun,
and refuse to even address,
(outside the meaningless confines of theoretic intellectualism).
 

Even though the problem permeates every pore of their existence,
men do not want to know if they have free-will or not.
Each man wields an ad hoc determining knife whereby,
as the instant conditions call for, he mentally grants or withholds the ability to
exercise free choice to himself and/or others;
the most common exercise thereof being that in an intercourse:
he had no choice but to do as he did,
while the other party did have freedom and took their unfortunate action willfully.
This is the first and final chapters of all ordinary men’s life diaries,
but this Daily News is for readers keeping another non public journal, whose interest
is not in their required tango de terminare relationship with other human beings,
but rather in their own-with-their-self,
which more technically accurate should be described as their:
wanting to know what the hell this thing in their head that seems to be their self is,
AND:  how the fuck it can have a relationship with itself.
Trees don’t have a “relationship” with themselves  --  they’re just trees!
That’s it; they are what they are, and how can a thing have a relationship to itself --
--  it IS itself, for chissake!
(Whew!  we must be understanding of such outbursts as some of our readers can get a bit worked up over all of this.)
 
 

The entire ancient notion that man is born to one state of mind or consciousness,
but that through certain efforts can bring on a better one
is based squarely on --  but never saidedly on  --   the problem of free-will;
if man can be in a superior state of consciousness  --  and is free –
then why is he not in such a state?
And once you learn of methods that promise obtainment of the state – if you are free --  why do you not relentlessly execute them?
If you are aware of things that keep you in your present state --  and you are free  --  why do you not refrain from or avoid them?
If you are a pretentious fool --  and you have been given the freedom to
realize you are a fool  --  why don’t you stop being a fool?
 
 
 
 

Thought lives in a glass roundhouse;
only the most childish, rudimental minds perceive otherwise,
(read six billion normal minds);
thought is oblivious to the geometry of its residence,
and its invisible form of containment leaves thought unaware of its captivity.

Being round, (and in no small part, assisted by its pathetic memory –
--  about ITSELF),
thought is never confronted with mental dead ends, brick walls or cul de sacs;
forget that speed freaked bunny --  thought is the thing that just keeps:
going --  and going --  and going  --  and going.

This is how normal human consciousness is able to live with the
unbearable question of whether man has free-will or not;
even if you try to answer the question  --  you cannot --  or:
you can try & apparently come to a sudden, expedient conclusion that
personally satisfies you  --   for the moment  ---  BUT:
were you free to come to that conclusion, OR:
was your destiny already so arranged that --  blah, blah, blah.
 
 

A few people are born with a brain in which the glass roundhouse that
hosts ordinary men’s minds has a door,
and the surest way to locate it is by jumping full throttle directly at the throat of the idea that exists only in your brain: Am I free  --  in here  -- or not?

It is a nasty, frustrating tussle, one with absolutely no information of any sort
from any quarter of any help;
not one person in this entire universe can help you one little bit in
wrestling this private, neural virus into liberating submission:
it is strictly a job for the lone ranger --  not the one with a sidekick --   the LONE ranger;
indeed, the pickle in this instance,
the milk bottle nailed to the table in the carnival game of the mind,
is the fact that fighting barehanded with the free-will question
makes you into a sole practitioner  --  a true lone ranger,
for no duo --  no partnership can ever be free,
for the simple reason that no two people can ever agree all of the time
on what they should do;
only he who has no partner, no shadow, no second guesser  --   can be free,
(or in the alternative: can understand the problem of free-will,
........which constructively is the same thing...........or perhaps, the best thing available).
 
 

Everyone is a car;
everyone is on a trip;
the trip lasts your lifetime.
In your car are two occupants: a driver and a passenger;
the driver does nothing but drive and never speaks;
the passenger talks constantly and seems to have a map
which he recurringly consults and comments on.
Non stop, the passenger talks about the trip and himself;
the great majority of the former, the driver ignores,
but periodically he will employ one of his suggestions;
the remainder of the passenger’s monologue is concerned with him
explaining incessantly, the kind-of-guy he is.
For the entire trip, the driver never says a word:
not one word about the trip –
not a single utterance about himself,
but he is the one who drives the car & gets them both to their destination.
 
 

.......Et dona ferentes timeo goobers