u/anatta-m458

My experience in this community is that many people seem unhappy with life. Whether that’s due to nihilism, depression, difficult circumstances, or some combination of those, it’s often hard to tell.

Interestingly, many people who express discontent don’t describe an existential crisis so much as the challenges of everyday life.  Struggling to afford food, working long hours just to get by, or simply surviving.

Out of curiosity, for those of you who are unhappy with life: if everyone’s basic needs were guaranteed (food, clean water, shelter, clothing, sanitation, education, and healthcare), do you think you would feel differently about life? Or would your outlook remain essentially the same?

“We are all born without our consent.”

I’ve seen this sentiment many times in this group, and it always seemed perfectly logical to me. But here’s a thought experiment: what if we actually did consent, just not as the person who was born?

Imagine that our true consciousness exists before birth and voluntarily chooses to experience a human life on Earth as the ultimate immersive experience. To make it authentic, we agree to forget our true identity until it’s over.

EARTH EXPERIENCE PROGRAM

Duration: Approximately 70–90 Earth years (subject to variation)

Memory of prior existence: Removed during participation.

Possible experiences include: Love, grief, boredom, wonder, embarrassment, awe, illness, friendship, failure, achievement, heartbreak, sunsets, mosquitoes, music, taxes, and existential crises.

Warning: Participants may temporarily become convinced that this experience is the entirety of reality.

Consent: By signing below, you acknowledge that while participating, you may sincerely believe you never consented to participate.

One of the most positive consequences of determinism, in my view, is that it changes how we approach social problems.

Take poverty as an example.

Many people point to employers who pay low wages and conclude that the problem is greed. A determinist can agree that greed may be part of the causal chain (along with the usual market forces), but the investigation doesn’t stop there.

Why is the employer greedy?

What experiences, incentives, cultural values, economic pressures, fears, ambitions, and biological predispositions led to that greed?

The same question applies to every participant in the system. Why are workers willing to accept low wages? Why are consumers drawn to low prices? Why do investors reward profit maximization? Why do governments adopt certain policies?

Determinism encourages us to treat every behavior as something to be explained rather than simply condemned.

This doesn’t mean we stop holding people accountable. Employers still make decisions. Governments still make policies. Individuals still have effects on the world. But the focus shifts from blame to causes, and from punishment to solutions.

Instead of asking:

“Who is at fault?”

we begin asking:

“What conditions produced this outcome, and how can those conditions be changed?”

Ironically, I think determinism makes me more concerned about social problems, not less. If poverty, crime, addiction, and exploitation are products of causes, then they are not merely occasions for moral judgment. They are puzzles to be understood and, where possible, solved.

To me, that is one of the most compassionate and constructive implications of determinism.

“Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

This may be one of the most important observations ever made about human existence.

Most people focus only on the first layer: if we cannot choose our own will, then free will begins to look incoherent. But I think the implications go much deeper.

Will arises from thoughts.
Thoughts arise from the brain.
The brain is shaped by genetics interacting with experiences and environmental influences we did not create.

In other words, what we call “choice” emerges from prior causes.

But reality may not even be best understood as a linear chain of causes and effects. It may be more accurate to describe it as a fabric or web of interdependent processes, where every event is simultaneously shaped by and contributing to countless others.

What you are, at this moment, is the result of the entire universe unfolding exactly as it did before you arrived.

And if everything is inseparably connected through time and causation, then the idea of a completely separate self also begins to dissolve.

Alan Watts once compared this to watching a cat pass through a slit in a fence. First you see the head, then later the tail. If you only perceive fragments, they appear separate. But in reality they are aspects of the same organism.

Likewise, we perceive ourselves as isolated beings because we mentally divide reality into fragments and fail to account for the larger continuity from which we arise.

This is where philosophy begins to converge with spirituality.

Ideas such as “All is One,” “you are the universe experiencing itself,” or “God is within you” no longer sound merely mystical. They can also be understood as descriptions of radical interconnectedness and the absence of a truly separate self.

Ironically, following causation deeply enough does not merely challenge free will.

It challenges separation itself.