Sleepless nights and coffee overdose. Free will? No. Circumstance.

Free will, in morality, is seen as the expression of the freedom of man. This was always the case for me but on that dark dreary afternoon while I was reading Nietzsche I was hit by an idea. Free will gives not freedom but bonds man to a different purpose and ironically gives man responsibility.

First let me explain a related concept: option paralysis. This is the case in which an individual, given a wide range of choices becomes paralyzed and becomes unable to act. The individual then cannot make a choice until a “rallying point” becomes apparent and the individual goes with that said rallying point. The problem in this system has surfaced hasn’t it? The rallying point. Therefore, to become an autonomous individual, one has got to have a perfect, if not, functioning moral mechanism.

That aside, we go back to free will and ask why it gives responsibility. Free will gives the individual a free rein on whatever actions he wants to make. But there is still the issue of right and wrong, of good and bad which is inherent in every human being because he/she is a rational being. The ideas of good and bad, right and wrong can be collectively known as a person’s moral mechanisms. Thus, free will dictates that man must act according to his moral mechanisms.

Free will, in instilling a sense of right and wrong in the individual, helps keep the society running properly as each person has responsibility in his own actions and can be punished because he himself made that wrong act without putting the blame on things other than his own will. This then gives the society, the government, the establishment or whatever name you want to call it, the right to hand out punishments which restrict the expression of the individual.

From the previous statements, it can be said that free will was invented because it’s inventors wanted the right to punish and by doing so, they created the social device called guilt.

Men were considered free so that they can be judged and punished – so they might become guilty. Consequently, every act must be considered willed so that every act lies within the consciousness of man.

Man has no one to blame but himself.