Does Free Will Really Exist, or Is It an Illusion?

The ancient Greeks believed that when they had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving them an order.  Apollo was telling them to be brave, or Athena was telling them to fall in love.  Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy them, but now they call this free will. – Chuck Palahniuk

            Isaac B. Singer was once asked whether he believed in free will or predestination.  “We have to believe in free will,” he replied.  “We have no choice.”  Free will is an important concept in the discussion of individual freedom, for if we don’t have free will, then we are not really free agents.  Almost everyone believes that they have free will.  This makes sense because people have a deep desire to be free, to think that they are in control of their own choices and actions.  Determinism, on the other hand, is the notion that everything that happens, including our own actions, is based on previous events or causes.  For millennia, philosophers have argued for the existence of free will, while others have supported determinism; still others have found middle ground supporting both positions simultaneously.  I tend to follow this middle position, because we can see clearly that determinism is in play, at least to some extent.  There’s no question that past events shape our current actions.  That’s not to say, though, that all of our decisions are not of our own volition.  We are able to think through things and come to decisions, even though they are surely shaped by previous events.

Life is like a game of cards.  The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way play it is free will.

– Jewaharlal Nehru

My view of free will is that it’s limited by several factors, many of which I’ve already discussed.   It’s obvious, for example, that past events can limit our free will in the present.  I believe that our personal characteristics can be equally impactful on our free will.  There’s ample evidence to suggest that many human traits are inherited, which implies that we may have less control over our preferences and therefore our choices than we would like to believe. Think about our two primary personal characteristics – intelligence and personality.  In our postmodern society, occupations are sorted primarily by intelligence.  Not everyone can be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer.  So, in this important part of one’s life, one’s occupation, is at least somewhat predetermined by one’s intelligence.  And we know that pay and status of occupations are directly related to the intellectual requirements of the occupation.  More intelligent people tend to have higher paying and higher status occupations and thus end up experiencing a greater degree of freedom over the course of their lives.  In this respect, intelligence may be the biggest determinant in one’s overall freedom.  Moreover, intelligent people tend to attain higher levels of education, which helps them to gain a more profound understanding of the world.  I would go so far as to claim that more intelligent people, on the whole, make better decisions or choices.  Their advanced intellect and education enable them to reason through complex problems and ethical dilemmas and to consider a wider range of possibilities.

On the other end of the education continuum is ignorance, and it is possibly the greatest limiter of one’s freedom.  Personal freedom is limited when individuals don’t even know what choices or possibilities they have within their own reach.  This lack of vision is common in places of high poverty and low educational attainment.   I see it in Appalachia, where I live and work.  It’s difficult for people to break the cycle of poverty because they can’t envision any other sort of life, and after a while, they give up hope that they can improve their lives.  Education is the best hope people have of ever breaking out of poverty, for education enables people to see beyond their own lives to what their potential could be.  And only those who can see how their lives could be are truly free.

Only the educated are free. – Epictetus

Personality goes a long way in determining how you react to others and how others react to you.  Whether you are an introvert or extrovert, for instance, helps to shape your personal preferences in a number of areas in your life.  Our personality determines whether others will like us and associate with us.  People with high self-esteem tend to be more successful.  Optimists tend to have a more positive attitude and tend to stick with problems longer.  People fortunate enough to possess certain personality traits, like optimism and an internal locus of control, are more likely to experience greater levels of personal freedom.  People with an internal locus of control believe that what happens to them is directly attributable to the choices they make; or, in other words, they feel that they control their own fate.  Another powerful trait, hardiness, describes individuals with great resilience and stick-to-it-ness.  They don’t let setbacks hold them down, and they tend to think that they can succeed with hard work and perseverance.  It makes sense that personality traits like these predispose individuals to experience greater degrees of freedom over a lifetime.  Although it is unclear how much people can alter their base personality, it still makes sense for people to accentuate their strong personality traits while trying to develop traits that would help them experience a greater sense of personal freedom. 

The Fitness Index

The Fitness Index

For those who really want to challenge themselves and compare their level of fitness to others, I came up with what I call the Fitness Index. The Fitness Index scores your performance on several of the measures listed previously in this chapter allowing you to arrive at a grand total, or index, which can then be compared to others’ scores. See the table below to see how to derive your index score.

Fitness Index
Measure	Description	Points	Score
Pushups	The number of pushups completed in 1 minute	1 point for each rep completed
Situps	The number of situps completed in 1 minute	1 point for each rep completed
Dips	The number of dips completed in 1 minute	1 point for each rep completed
Pullups	The number of pullups completed in 1 minute	1 point for each rep completed
Bench Press x Bodyweight	The number of reps completed in 1 minute using one’s bodyweight	2 points for each rep completed
Deadlift x Bodyweight	The number of reps completed in 1 minute using one’s bodyweight	2 points for each rep completed
Subtotal	Scores of above measures added together
1-Mile Run/Walk	The time it takes to run/walk 1 mile	Total time x 2 and that number subtracted from the subtotal
Grand Total	Subtotal minus score for 1-mile run/walk

Rating Scale

<41 = Below Average

41 – 70 = Average

71 – 100 = Good

101 – 140 = Excellent

141 – 180 = Remarkable

181 – 220 = Freakish

221 and above = Superhuman

Here’s an example of how to derive your score: Let’s say a trainee performed 30 pushups, 40 situps, 10 dips, 4 pullups, 5 reps on bench, 6 reps on deadlift, and did the 1-mile run in 8:30. His/her score would be 30+40+10+4+10+12-17=89. This puts him/her in the “good” category, as this is a respectable score.

Why Most People Don't Exercise Regularly: The Law of Conservation of Energy

People cite all kinds of excuses for not exercising as much as they should, with the most common one being lack of time. While this is true for some, it doesn’t fully answer the question as to why so many don’t like to exercise and, like other forms of work, avoid it like the plague. I have a theory as to why this behavior is so prevalent among most people (and, really, all animals) and always has been. Borrowing a scientific term, I call it the conservation of energy. In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Energy can be converted from one form to another, but the amount of energy in a closed system remains constant. The food we eat contains energy that is either converted into glucose for immediate energy or stored as fat for use when incoming energy (food) is low. The amount of fat we have depends upon the balance of energy coming in, in the form of food, versus the amount of energy we use, in the form of work, exercise, metabolism, and other bodily functions like breathing, which keeps us alive. Throughout this complicated process, though, the amount of energy doesn’t change.

Humans, like other animals, conserve energy primarily due to the fact that our lives depend upon this precarious balance between calories in versus calories used. I contend that our bodies have been programmed, via evolution, to not waste energy. From the beginning of human history we have had to expend energy gathering energy, i.e. food to eat and fuel to keep us warm. There were times when food and fuel were scarce, and therefore our energy stores dwindled to dangerously low levels. In essence, the success of the human species has been about pursuing, using, and conserving energy. Due to periodic famines and the inconsistency of food sources, our bodies became very efficient at storing energy – fat. From that standpoint, it would have been unwise to waste that stored energy on activities that did not result in the acquisition of more energy. And that’s why people today avoid all excess movement. Over the millennia, these behaviors became embedded deeply in our genetic makeup. Now still lurking in our unconscious, our brains tell us that exercise is a waste of valuable energy. It also explains why most people, in general, are somewhat lazy, due again to conservation of energy. We see the same behaviors throughout the animal kingdom. Predators expend most of their energy stalking and running down their prey. When they are not hunting, they are laying around. Just observe your cat or dog for a while, and you’ll see what I mean. You’ve no doubt heard how busy bees are. As it turns out, bees are idle about 70 percent of the time. It appears as though energy conservation within the animal kingdom is a natural phenomenon, one that impacts humans as much as any other species.

A second major consideration of the law of conservation of energy involves the body’s preference to maintain homeostasis, which centers around a balance of energy out versus energy in. In other words, the body attempts to maintain a constant weight. That’s why your metabolism decreases in response to a drastic drop in caloric intake. Your body senses this drop in incoming energy and adjusts itself to utilize less energy. Similarly, if you use more energy by doing more exercise, your body senses this, too, and responds by increasing your appetite so you will eat more and thus make up the energy deficit. You may also be inclined to rest more and move less in response to an increase in exercise, which, again, serves to conserve energy and maintain homeostasis.

And finally, there is a somewhat mysterious fact regarding the health benefits of exercise that rarely gets any attention and few people even know about. It appears as though regular exercise is not healthy for all individuals. A recent study looking at common health measures of those engaged in regular exercise found that a full 10 percent of test subjects experienced adverse changes in one or more of the following heart disease markers: resting systolic blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and insulin.