The death of spontaneous freewill

 

I was first introduced to a screen in the form of a television. We had a color television and VCD player. The only tv channel we had was Nepal television. My father and uncles used to get CDs on rent and we watched movies. It was an occasion every night. I used to wait enthusiastically for the CDs that they got from the market never knowing what movie we were going to watch next.

I remember one Saturday when my school was off. We had planned to watch a Bollywood movie that day but we had power cuts for the entire day. I remember walking to the electricity authority office a few kilometers away just to ask when they were going to fix the issue. All this just to know if we could watch a movie on VCD that night.

It is safe to say that I was introduced to digital media through movies. The only cartoon that I ever watched was Moomin and tom and jerry. I used to be glued to the tv from 12 pm and suffer through the 12 pm news and a few old Nepali songs to watch Moomin.

Thankfully most of my childhood was spent outside, in nature, in the dirt, with my friends and having memorable conversations with my grandfather about plants, trees and agriculture. Screens were just something that was there and not the ruler of my time.

Then I moved to the cities and got access to cable tv. For the first time in my life, I had access to unlimited tv shows and movies. I became immediately hooked to WWE, which has become a lifelong passion and something I consciously never let go even after I grew up. My screen time was on the rise.

I got my first computer when I was studying in the 6^th grade. I was so addicted to pc games that I started spending a lot of time at home on my PC. My studies were affected. But I was still in control of my brain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PSYCHOLOGICAL EXHAUSTION

 

We all have finite psychological energy. Psychological energy is not just mental energy; it’s the energy of the soul. The type of invigoration that we experience after a long-awaited vacation. It is the energy that keeps us sane. The energy that protects our faculties and is the resource we exhaust when we do anything that is slightly mentally, physically or emotionally taxing. There is no definite way to measure this psychic energy. It’s like we are riding on an invisible motorcycle. We can feel the throttle, the energy but don’t really understand or realize what happens inside.

As a kid, I had a vast reserve of this psychological energy. I didn’t know how to utilize it. I channeled it to various avenues and became somewhat of an amateur polymath. I was excellent in studies; I was involved in sports. I wrote poetry and sang songs. I even had the audacity to tackle philosophy from a very young age. All of this energy came from within. It was natural.  I didn’t have to force myself to study philosophy or write poetry or contemplate changing the world. The energy was so vibrant that my entire mind, body and soul were in a state of rapturous perpetual flow.

Where did that energy go? Where did the dreams die? What made me lazy? What drained me?

I am not even into my 30s and I feel like life has been sucked out of me. I feel drained. I am frustrated, disappointed, angry and diabolically cynical regarding the world and myself. Everything triggers me. I feel that nothing is right in this world. The politicians, the capitalists, the actors, the stars, the social media influencers; everyone seems to be an integral part of the matrix and everything they say, do, or believe seems to propagate and grow the matrix even further.

 Maybe the world was never perfect. We always had wars, famine, homicide, suicide, racism, poverty and disease. The only thing that bothers me now is the sheer accentuation of the problems. We live in the most technologically advanced, healthiest and richest (on a global average) human society, yet this feeling of psychological void, incompleteness and meaninglessness has never been more prominent in history.

It’s not that I am being drained of my psychic energy. The collective psychic energy of the entire planet has been held hostage and it feels like some ruthless demigod is directing the flow of time and human evolution. Humanity is choking. We just haven’t realized it yet.

 

 

 

The  demise of  the individual

The death of spontaneous freewill

What is an individual in today’s world?

How do you define self in a world devoid of self-reflection and self-knowledge?

Do we really know ourselves anymore? I am perplexed by this burning question each day. Only a free soul can know thyself and freedom is the lack of outside influence. A free individual acts on his own accord and more importantly observes and understands and interprets the world using his own intellect and knowledge. A free individual has an independent and uncontaminated freewill, however limited freewill might be.

Freewill in a seemingly deterministic universe is a limited resource and the matrix has hijacked that limited and valuable resource. The modern individual is dead or merely a shadow of the matrix because his limited freewill has been contaminated by components of the matrix.

Imagine walking on the aisle of the supermarket and you see a good “X”. You decide to buy it after a few moments of contemplation. Now you can argue that you bought that good by using your own freewill. But did you? We can no longer be sure.

It is more probable that the subconscious idea of buying that product was already been planted in you head via the myriads of advertisements you saw months or even years ago. Maybe one of your friend or colleague uses it and a subconscious desire to get it, use it, experience its benefits was already seeded in your mind while he boasted about using the product. Maybe you saw it on the annoying ad that plays in between your YouTube video. Maybe one of your favorite celebrities uses it. The matrix attacks you in a million ways. You are bombarded with idea seeds, desire seeds and freewill seeds (an idea implanted in the subconscious that triggers actions which appear as if they were the results of spontaneous freewill.) thus, the modern man doesn’t really have any freewill. It’s impossible. Every action, idea, already has a seed in your head planted by the matrix, ready to be triggered but in such a way that the individual doesn’t realize that he is acting out of a freewill seed and not his spontaneous freewill.

An individual confirms a personal identity when he is part of a group. I can only know that I am different when I meet someone who is different from me. If I live in desolate isolation, I will undergo an individuation crisis. I get my individual identity via interaction with a group of humans. If I miss out on that, I will be what I am but I will never know how I am different from others. A delicate balance of social interaction determines whether an individual forms a personal identity or dissolves into the group identity. I will try to show that both identities are necessary for the individual to survive.

1-     The individual should form a personal identity and separate himself from the group in order to fully embrace his individuality and uniqueness.

2-     The individual must have enough characteristics, thoughts, actions, beliefs in line with that of the group but excessive association with a group identity can completely dissolve the individual’s personal identity.

It’s somewhat counterintuitive or even contradictory. The modern individual has forgotten (or was never taught) how to maintain this delicate balance between individual identity and group identity.

The alarming scarcity of individualization

The accurate knowledge of who I am, what my beliefs are, why I do what I do, why I like or dislike something, what I know and what I don’t know, my dreams, desires, strengths and weaknesses, self-knowledge, self-control and self-actualization more or less completes my individualization process. I can call myself an independent individual only when I am confident of all of the aforementioned entities and have a spontaneous freewill oriented reasoning to justify each of my choices and desires.

We lack all of it today. The herd mentality is an epidemic. We are so engrossed to our group identities that we fail to analyze and scrutinize our beliefs and choices. We are perpetually hypnotized by our group identities.

Having a group with similar beliefs, thought process and aspirations is an important asset but obstinate and dogmatic clinging, almost superstitious attachment to a group identity is deleterious to both the individual and the society. This defensive attachment to a particular identity and blind faith in it leads to polarization that we are facing today.

The individual no longer thinks for himself. His role has been reduced to a transmitter machine.