Free will and our purpose

When I was giving my presentation about chapter 5 and chapter 6 of Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life I had mostly talked about Free will vs Predestination. Part of this blog post will continue that discussion, another part will talk about our life and the meaning we give it or that is given to it.

If we are given free will that means that every single thing we do can and will affect our future, making it to where we are not guaranteed a set future. The future would be ever changing and evolving if we believe in free will, but if we are told that our future is predestined that would essentially mean that nothing we do matters. Our future is set and nothing we do can and will change that.

This image, while being a joke on the illusion of free will, is to show that if we are predestined for something that the choices we make do not matter in the long run since no matter what path we take we will always end up in the same place. So what is the point of doing something if in the end it may not matter since we do not know if we are predestined for something or have the free will to do what we want?

When talking about the future we as a species can get scared since the future is full of unknowns that could be a reason for why predestination came into being. To help people and to put them at ease with thinking there is a plan for all of us, but most of these beliefs come from Christianity. This is probably something that sparked the debate with free will vs predestination. If one exists the other can not. There is not a possible way for free will and predestination to coexist. The bible and Christians' say that god gave humans free will for us to choose how we live, but it also says that God has a plan for us. That would mean that there is both, but that makes no sense since predestination is in direct conflict with the concept of free will. So which is it? Does free will exist, or does predestination exist?

Personally, I think that both exist and that is just your choice to believe in one or the other. You get to make the choice to believe in one or the other, and with whatever you choose you will not be in direct conflict with whatever was chosen. If you choose free will it is just your choice to deny the other, but if you choose that predestination is right then that means you were destined to come to that choice eventually. I feel like no matter what you choose as long as it's what you chose to do that matters.

There is a quote I believe works really well for the topic of predestination. That quote comes from Benjamin Franklin, “"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." This comes from his 1789 letter. To view the rest of the quote go to https://www.shmoop.com/quotes/nothing-is-certain-but-death-and-taxes.html

Going on to the second part of what I want to discuss in this blog post. Is what gives our life meaning. I chose this topic to also discuss since this will also pull in parts from the free will versus predestination discussion that I had talked about previously. This comes from one of the discussion questions that I believe I brought up in class when giving my presentation. The question posed was, Do you think we give our lives meaning and purpose based on helping others? This falls into something called the pragmatic theory which states that anything can be useful as long as it is helpful to continuously believe in. This being said you can not flip flop beliefs if it is just helpful to believe in that specific moment.

So using the pragmatic theory as a basis for the question I had posed we can continue the discussion of what essentially gives our life meaning. Is it helping out those that are around us, is it just being happy with the choices we made within our lifetime, or is our meaning in life already chosen for us? With this we can discuss how all three can potentially be the answer to the question that I had posed just a little bit earlier. 

When helping others around us does not just mean helping our neighbors or helping our friends. It means helping everyone we can no matter how close we are to that said person. We can not also be forcing yourself  to help that person because you want to make yourself look good for others, but because we want to help that person out of the goodness of our hearts

If it is because we are making choices within our own life that are making us happy that is not a bad thing as long as those choices we make are not directly harming others whether it be directly or indirectly. Happiness is what we feel when we are doing the things that we love. It can be a variety of things from hanging out with friends or even getting married. I think as you are doing what you love and not harming others then that can be what gives you meaning in life.

The final thing that I would like to discuss in the topic of what gives our life meaning is that our meaning is something that is already determined. Our purpose that we have in life is something that was predestined for us. It could be anything from helping those in need or even something like curing cancer. It may be something that may not even happen till after you have died and been buried. This is what gives someone peace knowing that no matter what happens their life had meaning may not have been directly in their life but it could have also affected others lives.