Against The Current

These past few days we have been discussing the possibilities of choice and of free will. I have heard several people’s conclusions and have come to draw my own. In life there is partial free will. You do not choose to be born a “slave boy” but you do choose between hitting him or not. This is clearly mentioned “And remember, you cannot demand an equal share if you did not do the same things, with a view to getting things that are not up to us” (25). This made me change my previous conclusion. If someone who works harder can get more, then we are not stuck into the positions we were born into. A beggar who works hard can advance through society and maybe, a few generations later his family will not be that of beggars. This symbolizes change, and that the desire to accomplish something is the only thing needed to accomplish it. It is obviously easier for some to do what they please, but through hard work everyone can pull through. Yes, it is true that we cannot choose our appearance or our abilities but if we do all that is possible with what we have failure cannot occur.

We can also see very close ties between letting go and free will. Someone who lets go obviously has free will, and the simple act of being alive, means that there is free will. As humans, it is in our nature to look forward to things. We look forward to things like a banquet and to things like having children. It is in the way that we form these expectations that we are able to go through life. I personally go through the whole week waiting for the weekend, only to get there and start again. Some might say that if this is done, life is pointless. We create problems in order to solve them, and spend our whole lives trying to find the answers to things that will not affect life in general. Is this Handbook suggesting that in order to obtain a utopia free will must be stopped? If we create the places that we are born into, then there has is total free will. A beggar and a wealthy man are both created by society. We choose to create everything that is here today. Are we defying nature’s rules?