Are we conditioned dancing dolls or we have some freedom of choice ?

Question

It is said that seeking freedom is also a conditioned escapist response which we are conditioned to call as wisdom or spirituality.

Answer 1

Ego to me is when your in the machine. Awareness is getting out and looking at it. I see ego as bias. No bias and you can see objectively. In the brain everything is true, as it exists there. It's very objective. Let it work and it gives you the answers. Ego, opinion, blocks the proper function of the subconscious, but you still have some choice. You choose from the good options or bad. Your choices reprogram the brain to give different answers, more accurate and you can choose one of the ones that will work. You can choose one for a time and another later and reprogram for that direction. You can break a habit in some say six weeks. It's the program that makes is seem you have no choice, but you can break it. With new ideas, information, your free will is reprogammed. I see that with some effort, you can reprogam or see what you want to. The whole world is in there to choose from. From two or three you are progammed, but no entirely subject to it. Intuition can get around the programming. Some would call that learning or evolution.

Answer 2

Your details, reframed: we're conditioned to pursue freedom through what we define as wisdom or spirituality. That, I don't understand. Wisdom and spirituality are two different things, and why are either escapist?
In terms of the question, we always have freedom of choice; we just have to recognize that this freedom is an illusion. Therefore, we are conditioned dancing dolls all the way.

Answer 3

We are both to some degree. I know, giving a shade-of-gray answer to a black-and-white question makes me *so* popular. *lol*

--But actually, there is some truth to this. Even when we are infants, and other people *assume* that in this primitive state that we are *all* stimulus-response....we do some astounding things, in context.

In this month's _Discover_ or _Scientific American_, one of the two, I don't have the paper magazine right in front of me now, there is an extended article on the learning and perceptual abilities of infants that is revealing in terms of how sharp and sophisticated even a baby in a diaper can be when it comes to figuring out faces or recognizing spoken language of *all* sorts.

To me, in my humble opinion, that indicates less of a stimulus-response thing and more of a primitive iteration of the "will to power" Nietzsche discussed. Babies want to learn how to talk and who people are. Aside from basic survival needs, they just want to do that and are *very* well equipped to do so usually.

--Even in the best of old age, the age where you'd expect people to be their most philosophical and free-spirited, a lot of people still wind up becoming creatures of *habit* and not straying far from their comforts.

I know this because I saw this in my grandfather when I was growing up, and how he just didn't feel right until he tended to his strawberries growing on the runners and trellises. I know this because even now, I live in an apartment building with a fair number of elderly people, and even the smartest ones (more specifically a retired watchmaker I know) have their habits or patterns of speech, however lame and outdated they are.

Point is....I think *everyone* has their "dancing doll" moments where they can't be bothered to put out the effort and just take the most comfortable or least resistant path. We all have lazy days.

The catch is, how often do those moments occur, and how relevant are they in comparison to the more dynamic, effort intensive, "free will moments"? Many folks live and die creatures of habit, never once straying from their comfort zone or daring to challenge the resistance in their lives. And some few *never* completely or competently succumb to the stimulus-response thing either, *always* trying to make their lives a free will moment, *always* trying to impose their will whether it's possible or feasible or not.

But for most of us, I'd still hope that it's a more realistic noise-to-signal ratio, that we have our *up* time (free will/choice) and our down time (stimulus-response/habit time). Simply put, we need both to function well. We can't be up and working all of the time--biological brains have limits: likewise, if we are down and surrendered all of the time, atrophy sets in until we are scarcely human to other people.

I hope this helps. ^_^ Thanks for your time.

Answer 4

People can state examples of religious beliefs to argue that we have free will. My own faith states that we are free to choose salvation or damnation.

But if you are looking for an answer based in science, look no further than quantum mechanics. Things have no definite position until they are observed (see Wikipedia for more on quantum mechanics).

So both sources tell me that I have choice, that life is not a predetermined play to amuse higher beings.

Answer 5

Fate versus free will is the ultimate question. We only have free will as long as we believe that our ego is the ultimate truth of who we are. I don't believe that ego is our ultimate truth. The ego is merely the vehicle that allows the wise and spiritual part of us to reach out into the world.