Written by Edgar Luna

I was listening to an audiobook of a scientist that wrote his book to make his case that “Free will” does not exist. 

During the first chapter of the book, this scientist dives into explaining that our actions and thoughts are basically being formed throughout centuries of evolution as well as all that time of experience which all depends on the environment that surrounds us. 

Things like the way we were raised, what type of experiences we were exposed to, happy memories, traumas, emotional scars and all those things that we are exposed throughout our life.

He also dove in detail into how scientifically a thought is created, for which an ultimate action which is derived from a thought that is preceded by an impulse from a neuron which is caused by another upstream neuron, which is a chain reaction caused by another neuron, the question is. 

Which neuron starts the chain reaction? 

Well that has not been understood yet. And everything that he said makes scientific sense up to a certain point. And we might be conditioned to make certain decisions based on all our experiences or influences, and we might have automatic responses for some situations, in most of the cases we default to certain responses that are familiar to us when we are faced with an uncomfortable situations, and that default response might not be the one we want. However I believe that the result or consequence of a certain decision is something that we can analyze, learn from it and determine if we can make small changes that will give us different results.

When you only look at it scientifically and mainly focuses on measurable data, you don’t see the whole picture or reality. Even in todays world there are so many things we can’t measure and because we can not prove it with data many scientists say it does not exist. 

Well I think that if your brain has been programed over time to makes certain decisions easier, the claim from this scientist is very true.

However the fact that we have the ability to experience from those actions, take time to meditate and analyze our result, we can start sending that information back to our brain and slowly change that automatic response to a certain condition or event.

Sure our brain is a magnificent computer filled with information and automatic responses to certain situations, but we also have the ability to stop, analyze ,review and change our response to those situations, we just need to have the will to learn from our experiences and make changes for the better.

I believe we have free will to make decisions and that if we make a mistake, we have the opportunity to let go, forgive ourselves and move on. Learn and try not to make the same mistake.

So even if you think things  are stacked against you, you still have opportunity to work on you and grow and change.

You have Free Will to do whatever you want, but everything has certain consequences, the question is what are you going to do with that freedom and are you willing to live with your decisions.

E.Luna