Free will
I wanted to write something on free will, but I decided not to, so here it is.
We do not perceive animals as having free will (humans are, of course, the only ones worthy of it - we have the divine spark, the "God-given free will" (what an irony, hah)). But for a species that prides itself on uniquely possessing free will, we simultaneously invest a great deal of effort in destiny, fate, religion and all those other elements of our belief that actually clamp down on free will. We will bend our pride in free will to the mysteriousness of Nostradamus' prophecies, purchase horoscopes, consult "professional astrologers" (who in my opinion have the best job in the world - imagine being paid to tell people what they want to hear), and generally perpetrate the belief that despite our reams of free will, we are incapable of controlling our own futures.
It's funny. The purpose of free will and freedom of choice is so that we may feel responsible for our own actions; yet, the very nature of the human psyche is to blame someone or something else, for the notion that we have brought down the consequences of our own actions upon our own heads is near intolerable. And so, as humans do, we apply our logic as narrowly as we see fit: thus, I chose to buy a lottery ticket of my own free will, hurrah I won; but conversely, it wasn't my fault that I chose to buy 50 lottery tickets, none of which won anything, and now I am in debt, it was the God of Bad Lottery Tickets who rained bad luck upon me (and so you see how the need for religion arises (heresy!)).
What interests me more, though, is whether it is even possible for us to have free will at all. I may choose to turn on the radio when I wake up, or put on a CD instead; I may choose to stand on one foot for a week (and it would be my choice of which foot, hooray); I could even choose to eat monkey brains, or not. But if I chose to flap my arms and fly, or touch my right elbow with my right hand, I would be denied the ability to make that choice, because it simply is not available to me. We say we have free will, but really, we have free will within boundaries - we have limited free will. And indeed, animals have free will within physical or instinctive limits. Consider. Are we really all that different? Is there some scientist looking down at us sculling around aimlessly in a cosmic petri dish, thinking "Poor animals, no free will at all"?
Is limited free will really free will?
And now that my own words are starting to worry me, I shall assertively exercise my own free will and choose to end this sente
[Update] I have observed that upon two occasions in this entry I have resorted to the terrible sin of using (double-ended (brackets)) <-- that. I repent for the aesthetic (and most probably grammatical and/or punctuation-al) transgression. Forgive me. It wasn't my fault.