Horizon of Volition

I have intentionally contradicted myself on occasion regarding my views of free will. One moment I state that it is important for us to recognize our choices and to accept responsibility for them. In fact, it was this realization that allowed me to „choose” to bring Shasta home and surrender myself to the police in Cour d'Alene in 2005. Then the next moment I strongly implied that I had no choice but to bring that little girl home and turn myself in, once I „saw the truth”. So how can I have choice and no choice at the same time? To understand we must try to realize that the concept of choice (also free will, volition, etc...) is an illusion, very much akin to the illusion of „the edge of the world” one sees when peering out at the horizon on the ocean. It's only because few of us have yet dared to venture out beyond that „horizon of volition” that this world still imagined that we live on flat intellectual surfaces, where right is always right and wrong is wrong, just as up was once always up, and down was down. The real nature of free will (i. e. the ability to choose right over wrong for instance) is as circular (or globular) as the world; perhaps even more so.

No choice we make is ever personal. First, as soon as the choice is made the entire universe is forever changed! Even the simplest choice, to step over a sidewalk crack on the way to school, for example, will cause unimaginable changes in this world alone in a relatively very short time.

Such a trivial choice, when properly extrapolated, will invariable change the entire course of history and dramatically effect every living thing on the planet in a very short order of time. The choice is not trivial at all!

Second, no personal choice is ever made in a vacuum. Whether or not you step over that crack in the sidewalk depends on your mood, which depends on the weather, and how things are for you at home, and at school, and even the color of a car parked nearby can influence your choice on a subconscious level. And all of those things depend on other choices made by you and other people.

So your choice is really no choice at all, unless! Unless you have the ability to consider every other choice that goes into your choice, and every outcome of your choice for all eternity. And only one being (by definition) has that ability.

God.

Or, „the universe”, in its known and unknowable entirety. So you see, our choices only appear limited by a horizon of volition, but the horizon is only an illusion.

(Originally written by Joseph E. Duncan III - September 11, 2010 – 7:30 pm)