I feel like a weight has been lifted.
I've been a Debbie Downer for the last week and it stemmed from an
overflow of anxiety about the “immorality of the world” and being
seemingly unaware of the forces that oppose it. Luckily, or maybe it
has nothing to do with luck, I managed to have a few conversations
with friends to talk me down and I figure I’m back around normal.
Maybe it’s the timing, but right as I’m settling back in, the
discussion of free will is back. I want to explore my experience
under the likely certainty that I don’t have it.
If I didn't feel like I had free
will, from where would my anger, angst, or fear come from? Does my
inherent non-belief in it speak to why I don’t generally persist in
these modes of thought to begin with? What personhood named “Nick
P.” is there to justify labeling anything as if he really
understands the nature of it. If I’m at the same time the most
horrible and most moral creature and I’m “one with everything”
then where is the room to get pissy?
If we don’t have a choice, that
shifts the priority. It is no longer about punishment and judgment.
It becomes wholly about the experience; the very fact and act of
perceiving. It’s not confusing why someone would be friends with a
person who is openly “fake” because the experience between those
two is simply a net positive. It’s not a secret why you can switch
areas and switch friends, because it was never about that specific
person, it was about what they allowed you to experience. When the
memory of them becomes non-existent or painful, it slips away. Nor
should you feel like you’re immoral or cold, you don’t have a
choice, that’s how your brain operates.
Speculating from a “universal”
standpoint, if there was one agenda that our cold and empty vastness
could want, it would be to experience itself. I mean, we exist. I see
and hear from no gods or anything else magic. It wasn’t born with a
conception of good or bad. It just is. We just are. Our planet has
seen millions of years of animals be born and go extinct and hasn't
blinked an eye. When you get wrapped up in your personal feelings,
you lose the game you’re not acknowledging you’re playing.
You have to convince yourself you have
control to feel anxious. It’s logically unsound to believe you
control anything. Your decisions are made well before you become
conscious of them. The consequences you see obey different or more
complicated rules than your perception governs.
I think when you lose yourself it isn’t
a bad thing. I’m feeling creepily zen in typing this. I’m not
motivated to get angry and the anxiety has been drained. It’s a
constant reflection. When you’re not afraid you don’t engage in
consequences of the fear response. You don’t have to fear and
speculate about the consequences. It no longer becomes about
justifying a presumed future. You don’t have to denigrate your
current experience or understand anyone else’s as anything more
than something they do in fact feel.
I hope this allows me to conceptualize
my judgments in a manner that does not stem from or create more of
the feelings I've been exploring this last week. I hope if I make
any sort of sense to someone who reads this it allows a deeper
appreciation for our time and experience together. We were brought
here and we’ll leave here without our will consulted. Why should we
think the forces that can do that would concern themselves with the
messy details in the middle?
