Who are you really?

These days, I keep wondering to myself if I have any sort of free will, or if my life is scripted by previous events. I'm sure a lot of you agree that past events and your environment have at least some kind of pull in your decisions, but are we really choosing out of 'free will'? Or are we choosing based on a countless factors that made us who we are during our lifetime?

Not to mention, many decisions that affect us are made by our predecessors and/or legal guardians while we're young. Are 'rebellious streaks' just part of our beings because of previous events? Do we really have any choices that we actually choose?

I think i need to blaze trees to answer this.

blaze trees?

If you really think about it, no one truly has complete and total free will. Your perception of good and bad, likes and dislikes, are all shaped by the area that you live in, the people you meet in that area, that country and its culture, and ESPECIALLY your parents.

Growing up you never really have a good choice of friends, it isn't until college that you get to truly choose your friends. Because in elementary, middle, and high school, you are forced to interact with the people that you happen to be stuck in classes with. In a small confined space. Most of the world is closed off to you and you are forced to learn about the outside world through a narrow, governmental regulated scope. (IE textbooks, teaching requirements, subject requirements, awful testing mechanics and subjects.) I feel like I never truly awoke as a person until I enrolled in college. Now I finally get to choose what I want to learn, and be taught by professionals rather than people that are struggling to make ends meet. (Which is a whole other huge issue on its own.)

Maybe I'm being over-reactive, maybe I'm pessimistic, I'm not so sure anymore.

I don't think you're overreacting at all. I would go so far as to even say the people I chose to associate with after high school, are related to how I grew up in the environments I grew up in.

That's not to say I don't at all associate with people outside of that scope, but I don't spend all that much time around them, and I do enjoy spending more time with people I have common interests with, or who give some sort of a nostalgic feel.

I grew up believing firmly in manifest destiny, that we have complete control of our actions, but after I grew up and actually learned a few things, I am starting to question everything I once took for granted as 'facts of life'.

I am glad to hear that someone agrees with me. I feel like many people that are considered "awkward/outcasts" in school are that way because the random chances that they had to make friends did not end up in there favor, either because they come from another place, or their interests just don't peak the interests of others.

I was lucky enough to have 2 or 3 friends that I consider brothers as we have known each other since elementary. Sometimes I just sit around creating different variables in my head and applying them to really question what my life would be like somewhere else.
For example: Lets say for some reason if I grew up in a country like Japan rather than America, would I be massively different? What would my views be like? How would I interact with others? Would my grades be better? What would my political views be? And sometimes, if I met a version of myself that grew up in another country, how would we interact? At this point it sounds like i would be a completely different person, but just looks the same. Its bizarre to think of.

Look at all this determinism.

True, I don't want to believe in determinism, and want to believe free will really does exist, but I sit on the fence about it, because I haven't been able to prove to myself, with any example from my life, that determinism is wrong, and that what I want, free will, is correct.

That isn't to say others don't have any solid examples of where free will really does exist, but I have become highly skeptical after being given many fake stories. Granted, some people have also given me valid examples of how their past did determine their actions, but those could have been just as fake.

So, until some all-knowing entity tells me otherwise, or we manage to prove one way or the other with the scientific method, I am forced to sit on the fence about this, as I cannot honestly believe one way or the other 100% with how my life has played out.

In layman's terms, I'm too pussy to stand on one side or the other.

An all knowing entity would support determinism, not vice versa.

There is no such thing as "perfect autonomy", we're subjected to external influences, biological, physical and social. That doesn't mean we can't think rationally or make decisions "intelligently" based on reflective-awareness. Self identity is born through rationalization and reflection. It's okay to not have the world figured out, not being able to see or know everything doesn't mean you don't have the ability to conceive it.

Although I'm not exactly well versed in metaphysics, I recommend you read Philosophical Explanations by Robert Nozick.

Well, this conversation certainly gave me something to look into my 1 day off each week. Though, today, I think I'll relax, since I work tomorrow and start college Monday.

Although, I'm not usually off on Saturdays, but someone else needed extra hours, and my boss didn't want to pay me more overtime pay than he has to.

My boss is going to have me working graveyard on some days, soon, since I can't do the morning shift during Mondays-Thursdays.

If I can get Fridays off work, I'll be at home to relax all day that day. 6 days on work/school, 1 day off. I can manage that better than before I recently quit at Dairy Queen and was working 7 days.

Enough about my unimportant work schedule shifts - what do you, personally, believe? I'm interested to hear whether you believe in free will or determinism, and why.

I just look at it as I am me, nothing more nothing less. I believe in making my own choices and deciding my own fate. Sure there may be cards dealt to me that I had no control over, but everyone does and some have more/less then others. What cards I pick I pick on my own accord or if someone/something plays a factor in my choices then I just hope that it's a good choice. Ultimately though I am the final vote in things, I myself can decide whether to say yes or no, go left or right, even up or down. If that choice was somehow made for me beyond my control then so be it and the next time I can actively decide the next step I will do it.

I just look at life as a mixture of action and reaction. I am not completely free of influence by external forces and fate/destiny/society/whatever is higher in influence/power may affect what happens to me, but they do not control me 100%. I can decide to act on my own accord to whatever extent I can do.

So I just look at life as this is me and what I do with myself is my own choosing regardless if it is me influencing or others influence. I am many things but the word "me" describes myself perfectly.

I believe in Free Will and I don't believe in physical determinism. As into why, I don't feel like there's enough information proving the absence of free will or the existence of "fate". Randomness will never not be a thing. The fact that we can conceive different possibilities is in itself an indicator (at least to me) that we have ability to dictate some direction.

I don't 100 percent believe in determinism. I do however think that variables come into play that massively impact you as a person. Free will is something that I believe in more than the other, But I think it would be foolish not to admit that your surroundings affect you as a person and your decision making in a way.

Im just a black man tryin to conquer the worlds fortune.

So what you're saying is, that you're a Jew?

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Great movie.

Soon to be rich jew yes.