[idi banashapan]

whether true free will actually exists, or if everything we do is just the result of prior causes, I'm not entirely convinced we will ever have a definitive answer. When you really dig into it, it's hard to find any decision that isn’t influenced in some way by our upbringing, environment, biology or even unconscoius bias. The more I study human behaviour and influence, the more it seems that our 'choices' are often shaped long before we;re consciously aware of them (see experiments by Ramachandren et al. within the nueroscience arena on predicting 'free will' - very interesting!).

That said, I’ve come to think that it’s not about being free from influence (that’s probably impossible) but about becoming aware of the influences acting on us. From that point, we can start to reclaim a degree of control. This fits with the philosophical view of 'compatibilism', the idea that free will can exist even within a deterministic system, as long as the decisions come from our internal processes and not external coercion (admittedly, I do not knwo much about this, so I'm not going to be able to give deeper detail). However, my understanding is maybe we’re not free in a cosmic(?) sense, but we can still act in line with who we believe we are.

Existentialism takes a different approach and says we’re radically free whether we like it or not, even not choosing is still a choice. I think there;s something powerful in that idea. It puts the responsibility back on us, which is uncomfortable but also quite freeing. It suggests that even if we've been shaped by life, we’re not permanently bound by it.

From a practical standpoint, especially with what we know from behavioural psychology and persuasion science (e.g. Cialdini, Skinner, Pavlov, Hughes, Voss, Ekman, Morris and Carnegie to name a very few I have read and studied the works of over the years, either as part of my Psychology, behavioural or body langage qualifications, or just for my own interests), it’s clear people are being nudged and influenced all the time often without realising. But the more we study those influences, the more conscious we become of them, and in that awareness is where real agency starts to appear. So maybe true free will isn’t binary, it’s something we can increase with awareness, intention and reflection.