A Human Challenge

Well I always felt that wars were waged not always just for other than the fact the general wanted to announce his prowess and fulfill his purpose as a general. If there are no wars, what does the general do? If the world would put down all the weapons, what does the general do?

That's a interesting view on war. However, to initiate war (in the position of a general), there are certain requirements to be met(varying). In addition, a general's purpose isn't just to lead a army, but to train them as well. To create strategies for every possible scenario. To be prepared in the case of invasion. I'm sure it has happened before, but the likelihood that it is a very common recurrence seems unlikely in my honest opinion.

It's difficult to argue that there is no conflict in human nature. If we want to call ourselves rational and we believe we have free will, then we have to take responsibility for humanity's myriad conflicts. We are the agents, and the locus of control is within us.

What is it then, if we do not believe we have free will?

Whether it makes sense to say there is something we can call "human nature" in any kind of definitive way, or to then single out one particular trait within "human nature" is a very moot question, given the complexity and ambiguity of human existences as lived by the Self.

And if we propose a list of examples of this struggle, we find a plethora of different kinds of struggle that, it seems, makes the use of one word to describe what is going on extremely tenuous.

We see, or want to see, the struggle of Beethoven to compose a symphony on his messy scores. We see, or want to see, the struggle of a young boy to master a tricky shot on the pool table.
We see in many the struggle to overcome physical problems or to overcome addiction. We see in others the struggle to avoid what they see as sinful thinking or behaviour. We see in combat, one soldier struggling to keep himself and his comrades alive in a firefight.We see an actor struggling to memorise the lines of his character. We see other beacons of light risking their lives in a struggle against untruth and intellectual oppression.

From a personal to a social level, the same multiplicity can be illustrated from 5000 years of recorded history. The struggle of a people to maintain their identity and territory against more powerful neighbors, the struggle of workers to unionise, the struggle of a orchestra to achieve a perfect performance, the struggle of authors to find a way to publish in a closed society, the struggle between four claimants and their adherents for the Empire of Rome. And so on.

Hobbes saw human nature as a perpetual war of all against all, others saw it to be just the opposite and pointed to the noble savage; so not only is human existence extremely complicated, but no one can agree on which accurately describes human nature.

How many people who have launched a war have blamed the puppeteer holding their strings? Not even Pope Urban II, who launched the First Crusade, blamed some external agent.

The fact is that we DO believe we have free will -- at least the vast majority of us feel responsible for our own decisions. If we did not believe we had free will, you'd think we'd protest against this mysterious external agent that moves our arms and legs for us, especially when waging wars.

An interesting and insightful comment.

---------- Post added 08-25-2009 at 09:05 PM ----------


No one, until afterward.


Depending upon what you call free will, I don't.


I'm not quite persuaded that feeling responsible and believing in free will are necessarily inseparable.


Those whom I've met, myself included, who don't recognize free will accept such(in one way or another). Really, I don't see the problem with a lack of free will. It makes sense. I shudder at the thought of a world that didn't.

Of course, this all depends on the definition of said subject in question.

It is epistemologically impossible to differentiate actual free will from the belief in free will. From a functional point of view, as long as we viscerally believe that we are the agent behind our actions, then we are.

Are you familiar with Determinism?


Which is the subject of question.

Determinism is 100% incidental if we believe we have free will.

We are certainly biologically "determined" in some way, but it doesn't matter because the constituents of our thoughts' mechanistic underpinnings exist FAR below the resolution of our self-awareness.

In other words, you may have little midichlorians at a control panel inside your brain, pulling levers and pushing cogs, but if you are 1) unaware of them and 2) believe within yourself that your decisions are free, then this is functionally synonymous with free will.

I don't see what you're getting at here.


I'm not so sure awareness has anything to do with free will.


That's one of the problems. I don't.

ok -- so the devil made you do it

Not at all; there's no entity(ies) to blame. In fact, "blame" isn't really even a factor.