For millennia, philosophers, psychologists, and scientists of various sorts have asked if humans have free will or if they are pre-determined in how they will be engaging in their lives. Can they make choices? Really!
The seekers are, for the most part, seeing this as a true and false test and looking for evidence. They are asking this question from a particular world view which makes it impossible to examine with proofs and reasoning, drawing on scientific tools we always turn to. Tools like those of the senses or extensions of the senses like telescopes or surveys, or experiments with variations in outcomes that emerge from different interventions.
Free Will Capacity Development
In our Developmental School, we believe that free will is not a given but has to be earned, developed as a capacity, and hard-won by developmental effort on our part. Humans work with different levels of mentation and are sourced from different levels of capability to engage with and manage our mind(s). Humans are not born with free will and default to adopted ideas and borrowed mental processing. When they say they are thinking, that is not the case. The quantum physicist David Bohm, says we are, for the most part, ‘thoughting.”
Why We Fall Short
We are mechanical adherents to patterns of thinking that are repetitive. Our thoughts do not come from a new process, nor as a result, do we rarely have new ideas, but regurgitated and recycled thoughts we have had for decades, maybe even a lifetime. Even though we think we are choosing a thought, we are spewing the same old thoughts. We have no freedom of thought. We do not even know the source of the thoughts we are repeating and think it is ours pulled from reasoning, deduction, scientific rationale, well analyzed and interpreted examination, it is not current nor well examined. When we lie to ourselves that this is thinking, which is most of the time, it is not. Under these circumstances, we have no free will.
One of the purposes of Developmental Schools is to give us the capacity and capability to awaken real mentation. It requires disrupting our ideas about how humans work. We think of humans as fixed from birth in intelligence, character, and approach to life. In our School, it starts with believing humans can develop and change, even becoming someone quite different. Development Schools are established around the world, especially when times have interventions by degenerative forces, like wars, economic crises, and climatic and social crises. Schools arise to develop new patterns for humans that are presented in communities.
Four Efforts of Free Will
Free Will is an instrument in our development and maturation and not the goal of our development. Free will capacity is necessary to free our mind from mechanical processing. It allows us to overcome, not only our preformed ideas but our ability to see how the ecosystem, society, humans, and the specifics of ourselves work, which is not even remotely how we think. There are four efforts we must make to gain the capacity for Free Will. The more we work at putting effort toward them, the more force we grow in ourselves.
Effort One: We have to see the reason for having free will. The value it brings to your own life and contribution it makes possible which will never happen when we operate as machines seeking only contentment and joy. This discovery sources motivation to put into the effort to bring the free-will capacity to life. Humans, along with each species, have an evolutionary role that is interwoven into living-systems ‘at work.’ For humans, in many Wisdom Schools, this is the first door. Humans build the field of conscious energy by observing their own thinking, thereby putting choices of thoughts. We deepen this by watching from where our thought was being sourced. Eventually, we can produce more mindfulness than we need in a moment so it fuels a field in which we, and others, can work.
Effort Two: We have to learn to see what we call the six energy drains, that scatter our attention and therefore the inner force to work on important things. There are six energy drains.
1. the attachments to how things are and will be in perpetuity.
2. fabrications used for self-justifying that we use to construct stories in our heads,
3. identifications so the tribes we belong to are protected and our belonging to them,
4. fears of the unknown or inability to understand how to relate to it,
5. solipsism which invites us to see the world as revolving around us and how it benefits us,
6. wasted effort which is not a nodal or a highly leveraged focus but consumes us.
These six energy drains are rarely observed, much less examined for their accuracy, utility, or value. Learning to observe and manage these is the second effort that is to be made or what frees up the free will. All of these energy drains are what locks us in mechanical patterns[1].
Effort Three: Clarifying a Singular Direction for your work and endeavors based on making a difference by a purpose fulfilled, in a direction of a market or client. This Singular Direction is drawn from your revealed Essence, Global Imperatives for vitality and viability, and the distinctive offering that you bring. Not three different things, but one interwoven direction grounded in these three vectors. Singular indicates the extraordinary, exceptional, remarkable, but with a nodal focus. This is not the same as your own purposes or a North Star. Singular Direction is very demanding which fuels free will to regenerate the will in the face of restraint. To retrain the Will, it has to be worthwhile to do something more than ourselves, at three levels of work—self, community, and social and planetary imperatives.
Effort Four: Setting Inner-Being Aims based on what we want to manage in ourselves. We often find this inner-being aim while observing our energy drains. It is hard to manage our reactions and ego natures when we are seeking to make a difference. Inner-Being Aims are part of all wisdom traditions. They are sometimes called Mantras, or Chants, Incantations, and are the primary instrument to making our free will accessible to us again. They are silently remembered.
Hidden Path to Free Will—Embed in Institutions
These four efforts are not taught in families, education practices, religious settings, or institutions we participate as adults. And therefore, we have not developed the capacity for free will. And most processes work against learning or retraining the will to be freed of our mechanicalness. Families affirm their children for following their parents will, not their own. Education processes are graded based on agreeing with the teachers and ignoring their own will. Religions, likewise, do not encourage asking disruptive questions. Nor do hierarchies in organizations and institutions invite Will to be exercised. Unless we change our institutions and their role in developing humans, the answer to the article’s opening question, about whether we have free will, will always be no. Humans will also not learn to hx build the capacity to play their specific role in the ecosystems.
[1] More introduction to energy drains in The Regenerative Life: The Regenerative Life: Transform Any Organization, Our Society, and Your Destiny by Carol Sanford.