Is There Something Called Free Will

The statement ""The concept of free will is a fallacy"" is actually fallacious! How do you live your life? of course you live with free will. You decide what to eat for breakfast, what to wear today and so on. don't you? So how can you not be responsible for your actions?

Let us take a simple scenario to understand the fallacy behind this kind of reasoning. Assume you decide to wear a formal attire to office. And suddenly it starts raining, what do you do? You decide whether to go ahead with your formal wear or to wear casual attire better still call it a day, and end up sleeping in bed! Unfortunatelty, there was a surprise visit from your head office, and you were not available.Which leaves you with a black mark in your office. Normally you tend to blame "the rain" as the factor that caused all the problems.A careful dissection of the happennings will, help you understand the situation better, the intial choice you made was to wear a formal attire. And then "the rain", the external factor influenced your choice. Remember you still had number of choices, but you chose to call it a day! Even when there were external factors affecting you had the choice to act in "n" different ways, and you chose what should happen. So how can you not take responsiblity for something that you have chosen?

Normally, people tend to blame "the rain" or rather the external factor for their wrong choices.It is actually a means by which people tend to escape from the guilty feeling of taking a wrong choice. This approach is ok, to the extent of soothing oneself, for having taken a choice that backfired. This approach is normally taken by people who hide behind a false reasoning, and fear to face the consequences of their actions. But this approach will not work in the long run, you just have to face reality, and take responsibilities of your actions.

In our day to day lives we encounter many such instances that tend to point that the root cause lies somewhere else. But on carefull analysis, the truth will evince that YOU are the reason behind your success or your failure. The "thoughts" you make today transform itself into the "actions" of tomorrow. Let us take another example, the Iraq war, why was it taken up? It was decided to strip of the terrorists. This issue has been the most highly debated topic in recent years. No matter whatever the consequences, the president took responsiblity for his actions and publically acknowledged the wrong assumption of the availability of the WMD( Weapons of Mass Destruction).

The normal human tendency is to blame others, they tend to make reasons, to escape from the bitterness of their wrong choices. As an unsophisticated human being it is acceptable, but in this modern world it is high time we start taking responsibilites for our actions. Let us face the world, without fear!

-Ramesh-