“Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.”

Spinoza 

Can we imagine a world where we first become conscious of what determines our actions and form our opinions accordingly?

I read Spinoza’s quote in the following way: we are conscious of shouting at another person and the anger we feel; consequently, our opinion is that we are angry at that person. What might have happened and caused your anger was the realization (at the crossroad of your conscious and unconscious mind) that you were caught in a lie, and you don’t want to admit it and protest loudly and angrily. And if the person was, in fact, insulting you, how does an insult actually hurt you? Most of the time, the feeling of anger has little to do with the person you are angry at but more with a complex history.

Another example is sports. If you catch a ball in mid-air, you might proclaim that you caught it, as in you guided your hand consciously to the ball by “telling” it where to go. The reality is that your hand can’t wait for your brain to make these decisions but has a shortcut to your eyes and other senses; we catch balls unconsciously, you might say. It’s the same with walking; we are not active in it, but it sure feels like we control every move. In reality, we merely point to a general direction and let our legs and the rest of our body do the rest.

Thinking about free will is hard. Try to think why you decided to get up and get some coffee. You might say you want some coffee, and that’s why, but where came that urge from? Why now coffee and not 5 minutes ago? Who and what in you “decided” that you want it now? You can say that the “I” that wants coffee we talk about here is (the whole of) you, including all your unconscious behaviors and needs. But most people feel some sort of central place within that is their “I”, the place where our thoughts come from. But then we must return to the quote above and use it to analyze this place we call “I”. Try it.

“The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.”

“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure.”

“I realised that all the things which were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save in so far as the mind was influenced by them,”

Baruch Spinoza

Day 884, free will.