Opposing Perspectives

The first chapter of my mini book series entitled "Introduction to Free Will".

Let's face it. Humans are ignorant. We focus on our own lives, we worry when something in our life goes wrong,

we get happy when something in our life goes right; yet so many of us fail to study and learn more about

ourselves. Don't get me wrong, it's not our fault at all. Hormonally we've been programmed to live our

own lives and avoid danger, hormonally we've been programed to reproduce, hormonally we've been programmed

to survive. Hormonally, we've been programmed. 

What is free will? Google defines free will as "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or

fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion". I personally like to definie free will slightly differently,

as "the ability to choose and manipulate how we act in our lives". To help truly encapsulate that feeling where

one lacks free will, just walk around a supermarket for an hour with $10 and try not to buy anything. Hormones

like dopamine and serotonin are begging you to just spend only $3 on that cool toy. 

In order to believe in free will, you inherently believe that hormones either do not control us or do not

control our minds to a certain severity. In order to believe that hormones cannot control us, you must not

believe in concepts such as "roid rage". It is a scientific fact that hormones do, indeed, control our minds

and ways of thinking.

Alternately, in order to not believe in free will, you inherently believe that hormones control us and not the

other way around. What I mean is this: think of a substance-addicted individual, one's life is centered around

obtaining this substance, in other words their free will has been hijacked, so to speak, by this addictive

substance. Assuming this hypothetical person chose to consume that substance the very first time, they have

"rewired" their dopamine, serotonin and endorphins; they, in essence, have manipulated the very hormones said

to manipulate them.

In this situation, we hold two opposing perspectives:

a) We are like flies, just mindlessly flying towards the light because that's what our hormones tell us to do.

b) We are conscious individuals, holding the ability to ignore our hormones and do as we choose.

Take your pick.