Skip to main content

Free Will

Ofcourse there is no such thing as free will. It just so happened that was reading Robert Sapolsky's Determined when I also tuned into this podcast while driving. I had not particularly sought out the book or the podcast. The later was quite entertaining and it kept be company for the entire trip. The book I found fairly tedious reading. It reads like Sapolsky's notes and rants collated over time processed rather hastily into a book. The number of pages is definitely not warranted. 

The point he is trying to make was clear quite early. The reader will choose to agree or disagree as is their right. So what should an author who is intent on proving free will is a myth do at that point? Cite authorities who share his point of view, dismantle the arguments of those that disagree. He does all that but that is where tedium begins. There is a point to the book, in the pile of raw notes there is content that could have been shaped to make that point with more elan. Maybe Sapolsky lumps his readers in the same bucket as his students who have absorb the material in whatever style he chooses to deliver it. Us readers, unlike his students have a choice - we can move on to other books and other things in life. We are not beholden like they are. I wish Sapolsky had tried a tad harder on behalf of the reader. 

Ironically, a few dozen pages in I recalled a story my mother told told me about the questions Yudhishthira was asked by Yama and how he responded to each of them. The precision of the responses made a lasting impression on me - that is probably why such things are taught to kids when they are still young. When I thought back about the questions and answers in later years, it clarified that whole point was establishing a framework. It does not mater nature or nurture (the simplified version of what Sapolsky is describing the reasons why a person cannot have free will), the framework is universally applicable and it helps people do more right than wrong in their lives no matter their disposition, the impossibility of exercising free-will. This is how things can stay in balance.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
111 comments
Read more

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...
6 comments
Read more

Carefree Wandering

There are these lines in Paul Cohelo's Alchemist that I love about the shepherd turning a year later to sell wool and being unsure if he would meet the girl there But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. What is true of the the power of love and making a person want to settle is also true of  finding purpose in life. If and when a person is able to connect their work to purpose they care about, the desire for change disappears. They are able to instead channel that energy into enhancing the quality of the work they are already doing. As I write this, I remember S a brand manager I used to know a couple of decades ago. He worked for a company that made products for senior citizens, I was a consultant there. S was responsible for creating awareness of their new products and building awareness of what already ex...
Post a Comment
Read more