We keep asking, in one form or another: are our actions predetermined or are they free? That question has been around pretty much forever. It seems to me that we have a lot invested in it. We ask it not because we actually want to know what the universe is 'really like,' but because we want the universe to be a certain way in order to satisfy a sense of identity that we already have. We want to be free, and yet we keep inventing conceptual systems in which we're not. I don't know that we have enough information, or even the mental capacity, to ever answer that question, and frankly I no longer really care about the answer. But our relationship with the question, how important it is to us, how much we want a certain answer but can't seem to find our way there, is fascinating.
Posted by orion at June 6, 2006 5:36 PM