Free Will is Dogshit

hot take, I know

Free will is - and feel ‘free’ to disagree - a modern day fairytale. A classist, casteist, privileged notion of how to live life. Nobody has free will, not really. I for sure don’t. This is my attempt at unveiling the real nature of free will and explaining why exactly I think it is problematic. I hope my words do justice to the anger I feel when someone says I have free will.

Will, wishes, demands, wants, needs. All these mean nothing in the absence of a way to execute them. In the absence of the authority of power to exercise your will, you render your so-called free will void. Therefore, will becomes something conditional in nature. Certainly not free then, is it? Terms and conditions applied. Ifs, buts, in case of are the clauses that govern the exercise of free will, thus rendering the definition of said will to differ from person to person.

Free will looks abhorrently different in the case of someone higher in the social hierarchy as opposed to one who is not. An upper class, upper caste man has a different extent of free will in contrast to a lower class, lower caste queer woman for example. Grouping the two under the umbrella of having ‘free will’ is an entitled perspective on socio- political realities. How can the lower class, lower caste queer woman working from day to night, eating meals she can barely afford maybe have or exercise the same free will as the man living off his parents’ money? How can she do ‘anything she wants’ when she has no money, no security, no time?

She can’t wear what she wants while traveling, can’t love who she wants, can’t live where she’d like to, can’t even step out alone after dark without the fear of possibly getting killed or violated. And you have the audacity to tell her she has ‘free will’?

Free will comes at a cost, just like everything else. It is far from free, if anything, it is the most desired thing when you don’t have it. Oh, to do whatever you want, free from societal impositions and intrusions, living your life on your own terms, worryless, stressfree.

Bullshit.