After writing my post, Do We Have Free Will?, I was left to wonder what that would mean for society as a whole, and what our world would look like from this new perspective. Hence why I would like to dedicate this post to talking about the application of this theory.
The first application of this idea leads me to believe it should be theoretically possible to predict someone’s entire life. I am not saying we are even close to having the capabilities to do so now, but maybe in the future, it will be possible. With the right materials and knowledge, I would bet anyone’s life could be predicted any minute before it happened.
Secondly, I think life would be a lot more peaceful if we found this to be absolutely true. Most people, including myself, are initially sad when they first believe that we have no free will, yet as I thought through this, I realized it was not sad at all. With no free will comes no responsibility, life just happens. If bad events occur in our lives, we would instead see them as merely something that happens, rather than happening to us. Negative experiences would feel a lot less personal, which would alleviate us from any pain it could have caused.
A third application of this theory is that I am the universe, and more specifically, we are the universe. I came to this conclusion by considering what makes us ourselves if we are not the ones doing so. As a recap, by stating that we have no free will, we are assuming that we are controlled by the nature and nurture that dictates every part of our personality and thoughts. To go further with this line of thinking, one must consider what dictates nature and nurture, and this is where the universe comes in.
The universe is everything from the room your sitting in, to the force that rotates our entire galaxy. It dictates the process of natural selection that the human race goes through which developed an ingrained sense of selfishness and the desire to seek answers in such a mysterious world. The universe makes us who we are today, and since we define ourselves by how we act and think, then it would make sense to consider ourselves as the universe.
I am not going to lie, I do not think humanity is ready for these realizations. Our economy would crumble, laws would become optional, and personal motivation would cease to exist. I think these things would happen initially and over time they may be restored in a new, brighter light, but I am not sure. I’m not sure if society is ready for the transition, for a new take on how we see ourselves and others.
This is why my take away for the post is not to run around the streets naked because Jake said life does not matter. I write about this to get you thinking. To start the process of seeing the world from a different light. Not to get rid of the old light you hold, but to instead hold both. To compare the two and see the flaws in either one. I think humanity as a whole goes through most of life with tunnel vision on far too many subjects, so let us try to change that one thought at a time by considering the seemingly impossible option in an unbiased way.