Honest Doubt Part 10 - Caught in the middle

This was about free will. We heard from Spinoza (again), Schopenhauer and Freud. Are we free? Are we determined? Are we somewhere in the middle. Spinoza felt we were determined apart from when we understood why we did something, and then we were able to change the "cause". Sounded a bit convoluted and not actually logical - but anyway the suggested conclusion was we are somewhere in the middle.

I'm not sure quite what the point of the program was - religion can go either way on determinism (Calvinism etc) and free will (Arminianism, Pelagius etc). Even if determinism is true, that doesn't really tell us how to act - it could really only lead to some sort of fatalism, but even that is illogical as we think we have free will, so we have to act as if we have choices anyway.

What is more interesting is weakness of the will - why do we do things we don't want to do? Is there some way to help us have more will power? Do we really know what we want anyway?

If religion was actually able to show people how to follow through with their plans it would probably have more impact, I don't doubt there is probably some spiritual tradition that is helpful - in fact this would really prove the value of religion if it could be shown there are spiritual techniques that strengthen our wills - but could we be bothered to do them?

The other aspect of "free will" is political - what choices do we have? Poverty, inequality, crime etc all contribute to people being unable to develop themselves and become who they could be. Someone born in poverty will have far fewer choices and options than someone born into wealth - this is the more important aspect of free will.

Addition
At the start of this program the example is given from Blade Runner in which a replicant discovers they are not a real human, but something different, programmed to resemble humans but to last for only four years.

Perhaps a similar example is the science fiction film The Island in which the inhabitants of a large colony are told they take part in a lottery to see who will live on a beautiful island, but in fact they are human generic clones of rich people, created in case the original person needs body parts from the clone. The "winner" of the lottery is in fact killed and their organs used as replacements for the original. So again the people are not who they think they are.

This is the backdrop to the rest of the program - suppose we think we have free will but in fact we don't? Suppose we are different to who we thought we were ?

This seems to link back in to later in the program with Freud's idea of the id, the ego and the super-ego. All this way of thinking seems to assume we have some single essence or identity, which may or may not be free or determined.

In fact this is remarkably similar to the Biblical idea of being caught between the "flesh" and the "spirit" where the "flesh" equates to the id or unconscious, and the "spirit" equates to the super-ego, with the "self" or soul caught somewhere in the middle.

Perhaps the truth is somewhat different. We seem in fact to be many roles or people, rather than one single identity - we get our identity from all sorts of places, I might be male, English, middle aged, Christian, a father, a football fan, a Green party member... and so on. We change roles through life and work our way into and out of roles. Whether one of these roles or identities is behind all the others or is in some way more real or more true seems doubtful.

Perhaps what is important is the way the roles relate to each other, that they aren't in conflict, even - possibly - that they tell a single story.