Will

This morning I woke up thinking about the disconnect between the macro and micro worlds, wondering how, and if ever, they connect. Large objects obey the rules of inevitability, cause and effect: energy is conserved as one event changes another, which changes another. Small things obey the rules of probability, as seen in the electron orbitals around atoms. The probability remains constant, while the electrons themselves appear completely randomly; no one ever knows where exactly one will be. So these are the too ways in which change occurs: randomly, or by cause and effect.

But there is a really weird kind of energy (or means of change) that can exist on the scale between the micro and macro--incidentally the size of intelligent organisms on earth: will. We are as large as a universe to our atoms and as small as atoms to the universe. We are hinged between the two worlds, our brains having a quantum nature, and our bodies a physical one. We function using both processes, all the time. And we can feel it. We always have. What else is responsible for the idea of spirits being separate from the physical world, the overwhelming feeling that we are made up of two elements, the sense that we are wearing our bodies. Humans and large brained creatures like us are dichotomous beings. And when you combine the laws of the micro and macro, you get something very odd, that can affect the universe in a new way, and it looks a lot like free will. Will is neither cause and effect, or probabilistic randomness, but the connection between them, a new force that exists when those processes touch. It is intention and choice, a means of influencing matter that rarely occurs in the universe, and it is the avenue by which the universe draws meaning from its inherently intentionless and purposeless nature. Will may have been evolved through natural processes, some odd by-product of natural selection, it may benefit the propagation of certain 'selfish genes,' but once accidentally established by evolution, it breaks from the inevitability of natural selection and can even fly in the face of it, creating creatures that have the ability to destroy themselves, and may very well choose to do so. Will, as well as consciousness may be an illusion, but I feel that I'm real, and I choose to have free will, even if the universe never intended for me to have it. Choosing to make free will a reality is the ultimate manifestation of the energy itself; what power is there in agency, if it wasn't your choice, if it was handed to you by some other being?

I actually remember the moment I chose to be more than chemistry, and a victim of the macro laws. As a child, the chemicals in my body were causing me to be in perpetual fear, and my actions weren't under my control. I literally didn't decide where my legs took me, if I got scared enough. I've never been sure why, but one day in ninth grade I chose to have a will. I had been functioning purely under the laws of cause and effect, when suddenly my brain made a leap and I said to myself, "feel the fear, and then move anyway." I was able to set aside cause and effect for a moment, and jump to a new way of thinking, without following any concrete mental pathways. This is why you need the random element in order to have will. Brains have the ability to jump from place to place because of their quantum nature. In that moment I chose to have the ability to decide. And there's really no reason it should have happened; most anxiety disorders don't just slip away, most people need therapy (the purpose of therapy being teaching people how to choose.) But I stopped walking painfully fast, I started choosing to go to public places again. The universe changed, just a little bit, and the force behind that change was intention, choice. To me it doesn't matter if will is an illusion or not. We make it real.