The problem of whether or not our lives are ultimately determined by natural forces, whether we have the power to choose a new path besides the one set out before us at the genesis of time, is the most intriguing philosophical problem. It involves questions of spirituality, identity, language, science and ethics - and we must inquire into all of these subjects with a reference of meaning that we have to define for ourselves. The answer, in short, is no - there is no free will. Everything about my life is predetermined by the nature of the reality around me, and there is nothing within me that reaches beyond my life conditions to change this. This does not negate conscious decisions and responsibility for our actions - in this sense, "free will" is a paradox, illuminated by a better understanding of personal identity that calls one to see the depth in things.

Most of my behavior results from natural responses to stimuli. These responses, such as to jump when hearing a jarring noise, are determined by my mind as it unconsciously consults a conditioned set of ideas that I hold about the world, and choses an appropriate course of action. To use another example, I will often be so immersed in a conversation with somebody that my replies are completely unconscious until I've said them, and yet they are perfectly coherent and agreeable. In these situations, I will often spontaneously say something even more profound, or funnier than I've known myself to be capable of with conscious effort. All of the causes for this type of unconscious response are out of my control, occurring spontaneously in my environment. My conscious decisions, as Sartre makes clear, are determined by "the value which I implicitly give" to the motives for those decisions (Condemned to be Free, 230). Ultimately, however, I am still consulting a similar set of values when giving meaning to whatever phenomena acts as the motive - it is just that in these cases I am aware of the underlying surface processes involved in arriving at the decision, such as a logical thought pattern. The values used in this process are mostly created at a young age, and are based on observations I have made of my social environment. Some of these observations occurred unconsciously, while others I have arrived at through a conscious logical process. For example, my high school had a tradition which restricted all non-seniors from walking on the campus grass, and contradicting this rule resulted in severe punishment - thus I consciously conditioned myself not to walk on grass while at school. Being a boarder, however, this meant I was always seeking out paths instead of taking the usually shorter route, and this behavior became an unconscious routine. Even out of school, I would unintentionally avoid walking on any patch of grass, and often I would catch myself taking a far longer path to reach my destination. In such cases, I could consciously update the set of values which governs my decisions, and trod confidently on the soft lawn, and to this extent there is a faculty within me that can make conscious decisions. However, for these times which I am conscious of the decisions I make, in no way are these decisions "free". For instance, when I consciously decided to walk on the grass, I am still doing so only because I have in my mind the idea that it would be quicker to do so. If I choose to stay on the path, it is only because I am trying to disprove an idea proposed to me, I.E. that I have no free will. In both cases, there is something which pulls me towards one decision or the other, and those external factors determine my course of action. Even if I subjectively just "feel" like walking on the path, there is nothing within me that chose to acquire this partiality. As Locke puts it, "What is it that determines the will? The true and proper answer is, the mind" - but the processes of my mind, and the variating factors used in these processes, are beyond my control (651). Thus there is no room in this system for such a concept as subjective freedom; "man cannot be sometimes slave and sometimes free; he is wholly and forever free or he is not free at all" (Condemned to be Free, 231). By this logic, that there is no human freedom, it is implied that if the progression of the universe in time was to begin again, at this exact moment in time nothing would be different from what it is now. We did not reach this situation by random chance, but rather through patterns of growth that can be broken down recursively to simple, logical sequences. This calls into question any decisive power that I have - am I really no more than just that which is consciously aware of the processes that determine my actions?

The question, "who am I?" is certainly the most interesting question one can ask, and yet it is impossible to answer satisfactorily. We all have some idea of "myself", a sense of personal identity that we use to relate to our social environment, and its meaning is evident in our everyday use of language. For instance, I might say, "I am writing a philosophy paper", meaning that I have an intention to express the contents of my mind in writing. On the other hand, the natural processes of the body, such the beating of my heart and the digestion of my food, are not performed by "me" as I perceive myself when I decide to write the paper. Interestingly, during the natural process of thoughts arising in my consciousness, I say "I am thinking", as if in some way I control this process, when in fact I am merely paying attention to a sub-vocalization of mental patterns. Paying attention to my thoughts is actually very much like paying attention to the beating of my heart, but in the latter case I still do not say, "I am beating my heart", but rather, "I am listening to the beating of my heart". It is clear then that I identify myself at least as that which is aware as well as that which is responsible for the development of ideas - as Descartes stated, "I think, therefore I am". However, when I am sleeping deeply, I am not aware of anything, nor paying attention to my thoughts, and yet I still say that "I am sleeping", or "I am unconscious". Thus, the definition of "myself" extends to that which can somehow be both aware and unaware - "I" still exist in sleep, I am just not conscious. The statement, "I am driving while listening to the radio" can mean that I am driving to a destination, even without paying conscious attention to the process of driving, while placing full attention on a broadcast. I say that "I am driving", because I had the intention to drive, while I am listening to the radio because my conscious awareness is on that. I am not merely listening to the radio at this time (even though this is the only thing I am conscious of) because I am also busy performing a task, I.E. travelling. Thus, I am that which is responsible for intention. We also say, "I am looking at myself in the mirror", rather than "I am looking at my body in the mirror" - implying that I am also my appearance, even if I am not necessarily my body. It is thus clear that "who I am" is composed of symbols, rather than anything physical. I am not my head which aches, nor my heart which beats, nor my eyes which are bad, but rather I am strong, intelligent, tall and have good taste in the arts. This concept of myself, which is thought of as an entity somehow encapsulated within my body, is also supposedly able to take in stimulation from my senses, use my mind to evaluate it, and then decide upon a course of action. I can decide upon a course of action because this entity provides "presence to myself" (Condemned to be Free, 231) in that I am a rational force that governs my faculties. Thus, supposedly, I can choose how I wish to shape human reality through the meaning this entity, "me", gives to phenomena. Because this entity is supposed to be unique in each person in the world, the resulting course of action would be different somebody else's, given they were in the same circumstances. From this perspective, the world besides these decisive, meaning-assigning entities is seen as entirely stupid and blind, like the heart which beats for no reason, or the fingers which simply obey my orders to write. It is a world driven by meaningless forces, unstable and threatening to the ray of hope that is each little "myself" trapped in a human body. However, the further we go with this notion, the more we begin to see what a poor fallacy personal identity - purely symbolic to begin with - really is. How does a construction of character by the attributes rationalized by the mind, such as "I am intelligent because I scored high on the SAT", have any ability to make decisions? Moreover, why is this sense of personal identity so strong is our society? Our minds are disposed always to try to validate this sense of self. It does this by looking for ways to separate ourselves from those around us; the greater difference we have, through nationality, ethnicity, preferences, etc., the more tangible our sense of self. Is this sense of identity not real enough to accept though? As Locke points out in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, personal identity is based on memory (659) - the continuity of the plot of my life through images from my past. However, memories are subjective; memories are malleable, and people continually reinterpret their memories based on new understandings of past events. Therefore one could say that this identity is a fiction, and yet we continuously add more events to story, while reminding ourselves of the old ones. One could propose that we do this in order to decrease the anxiety of our inevitable death, like Achilles who seeks to be the best of all the Achaeans to make his name and identity, as such, immortal. It is as though as long as this symbolic construct of "who we are" is strong enough, we can survive the death of our physical bodies - we thus create our own "soul", or a substitute for it. But we know that we eventually will die, and so this need to validate our identity becomes a black hole, continuously sucking and contriving evidence out of natural phenomena to substantiate a fictional premise. We try to find ourselves in the surface of things - the car we drive, the clothes we wear - to tell us who we are. The problem with this is that we constantly need to compare and contrast ourselves with other people - constantly scanning our social environment in order to find our place in it, and thus further characterize ourselves in a progressively superficial way.

Just as Mill (1863) says, some people are severely limited due to factors such as poverty. Children born in the slums of Cape town, not exposed to the same ideas that privileged Western children are exposed to, do the best with what they have. The truth is, knowledge is power, and if one wants to experience better things in life, the best one can do is hope to be exposed to the resources that will point one's mind to conclusions that will help achieve that. When it comes down to it, the decisions I make, and consequently the life that I lead, are completely shaped by the people I've spent time around, the books I have read, ideas I've been exposed to, experiences I've had, and so forth. These experiences make my personality, and my life is but an expression of that. Those experiences themselves are made up of smaller patterns of social interaction, which in turn are made up of many less complex patterns of nature. Over time these patterns have accumulated to nature's magnum opus that is our consciousness of the world. It is our ability to witness and enjoy this work of art that gives life meaning. Thus, acceptance of the ways of the world, as the Stoics said, is an important and beautiful thing - but it also implies that we continue to express the creativity of the world through ourselves. Looking at our society, the need to to strengthen the image we hold of ourselves has us anxiously scrambling for a sense of identity, only looking at the surface of things and acting for the outcome, the 'A' at the end of the semester rather than the enjoyment of the class itself. We cling to our names as a shelter against the truth that these is no "I" that exists - that the form my personality is expressed through, as well as my projects, will not survive any significant period of time in comparison to the infinitely great canvas of reality. But the glory is in the overall picture, and we are fortunate enough to witness it in some way. Perhaps that picture is evolving into something more profound and the completed work is something like perfection, or else the evolution of this world is purely capricious - either way, it's already enough to marvel at.