somelameo

when do you feel like your future is set and there's nothing you could do to change it?

many people think that if determinism were true and they knew it, they would feel like this all the time. assuming that those people are nuts, or at very least misled by confusion (as i do), how might one come to see his choices and actions as importantly efficacious in spite of the fact that what choices he will make is already set?

let's make a jump for a minute, then we'll come back to this. first, let's both just admit it: if you are reading this, you are NOT on your way to becoming the president of, well, really anything. but, when you were a kid, if you were lucky enough to have parents as encouraging (albeit somewhat misleading) as my own, your parents told you that you could be anything you wanted to be when you grew up. i would contend that your parents were not only not intentionally lying to you, they were, in some important sense, not lying to you at all.

not you, not your parents, not me, not my parents, not anybody (maybe not even 'God', if there even is such a thing) could have known that you would turn out to be the exact person that you, now, are. this isn't because they were stupid or ignorant or idealistic; rather, it's because they, knowing relatively very little of all there is to know out there, even if they had been both the smartest and most educated people in the universe, could not, by virtue of their nature as finite beings in a big fucking universe of shit, have known all they needed to know to know for sure what lay ahead for you. the 'causal fabric of the universe' is really fucking big and really fucking complex, and way too many things are going on and will go on for us to ever know even a significant chunk of them.

that said, we do, however, have the ability to know a whole fucking slew of kinds of things on all kinds of levels about how the world tends to work. potentially, my parents could have mentioned to me how slim the odds were that i would manage to become president of the united states, for example. they could have mentioned the fact that i was from utah, and that i wasn't new england 'old money', and that my father is a shameless atheist, and a number of other things would be standing in my way and greatly reduced my chances of becoming president. (i bet that would have decreased my chances even more, though, considering the from-then-on-jaded person i would have become would have probably been a jerk with no friends. but i digress...) they also could have mentioned, however, that my being white, male, having a protestant mother, and a higher-than-most economic starting point were all working in my favor. they knew all this. and they probably had some idea of what my real chances were.

but the real important thing is that, as far as they knew, as far as anybody could have known, i had some chance. so did you. we rarely know what we're going to do exactly until we actually do it. and back then, when we didn't know what was coming, THAT was when so much more was possible for this precise moment. another example: you didn't know when you started reading this that by the time you got this far along you'd be this enraptured by my genius (annoyed by my egoism?). back then, anything could have happened. now, what's done is done; you hate me. you think i'm a lame, mental-masturbatory ass. or not. as i'm writing this, i'm guessing it's one of those two. but, as far as i'm concerned, anything is possible. (maybe you stopped reading already. good choice.)

ok, so what have i done so far? well, here's what i've been trying to do. i've been trying to establish a reasonable-but-different notion of possibility. not to say it's the only kind, or the 'right' kind, just the kind that i think is most pertinent in discussions concerning freedom. (yes, i know that's actually the first time i've used the word, but you knew what i was getting at, didn't you?) so this kind of possibility is what nerds like me call 'epistemic possibility' and contrast with 'metaphysical possibility', 'logical possibility' and 'conceivable possibility', to name a few of the other big ones.

ok, one more step back before i reach for my conclusion here. remember the stuff about how we know one way or the other about what we are doing right now, and how just a few minutes ago what we would be doing at this moment was just one among a number of 'epistemic possibilities' we had in mind at the time? here's the rub on that: we still don't know much else about the present. though you know what you are thinking right now, you probably don't really know what's going on in your brain, with all those neurons firing and all that jazz, that's making you think all those things. you probably also only know a little about what's going on inside the rest of your body, what's going on in the room behind you and what's going on in the next room, let alone all that's going on in the rest of the universe at large. this is important, because if you did know all these things it would put you in a way fucking better position to know how all that stuff got to be that way. which, doesn't seem all that important right now, but i'm about to get to that.

ok, SO, where i'm going with all this: with every choice that you make you do some one thing out of all the (epistemically) possible things anyone might have thought that you might have done. for all anyone could have known, you could have done any number of other things, the odds against you doing what you do may have been near insurmountable and you may have just made the best choice we could have dreamt up. perhaps the best that you could have dreamt up as well. for example, i say that the odds are high that you would have gotten bored or annoyed with this rant long ago and stopped reading. but perhaps you didn't stop reading. and perhaps your choice to keep reading has done something to you or the rest of the world that is in some way efficacious to you: i.e. you are now late for work, you are now five minutes older and no wiser than you were five minutes ago (and we all mourn your loss), you may now understand the world much better may have multiplied your chances of becoming president of something by two or three times or more. who knows? it's anyone's guess, but my choices at least are not worthless.

man, are you REALLY still reading? go to work already. seriously. go.