Of free will, smart brain and other undignified lazy days.

Remember how I like to say “life just happens”? Good for you, because I tend to forget it, especially in times, when everything seems to tumble downwards in a slow-mo. On days like that, I like to stay curled up in bed with only one arm sticking out scrolling down on 9gag or Facebook and feeling a certain sense of accomplishment, if I “like” and “comment” the stuff others do. It is like I am doing a good selfless work by noticing their effort.

Actually, it is not that I forgot about it. More, I choose to ignore it. I seem to not being able to will myself out of bed. Not being able to will a different action my brain sees as a solution. No matter how strong the reasons might be, no matter how logic and to the ground they are, I just do not want to succumb to it. It feels as if I am having a smarter version of myself inside who, like on court, presents me with evidence that support the suggestion. What a fruitless job it has indeed, for I already know I will shush it and do as pleased, always supporting my reasons to continue to feel miserable. Ego needs that sometimes. Sometimes, I say!

My yogi master says: “It is the way it is. Accept it and go on!", but my father has way greater response to those occasional complaints about how much life sucks sometimes. He says: “Dejan, life is just what you make it!” And I hate it when he does that. It hurts because he is right.

It is true. Life is what we make it. Not the emotional connotations, but the factual description of a given situation. Life is our actions. We make our life, life does not make us. Of course, sometimes we are forced to act a certain way, because situations demand that from us. What is more, we are placed into a System in which certain behavioral ways are expected. We cannot always do what we want. But I am not talking about those situations. I am talking about situations we create with actions that are based exclusively on our own decision making. On our free will.

What we consider free will is our capability to will our own actions, but mostly it is treated as a right we have as a human being, as opposed to the predestined divine plan. My position on destiny has been made clear before, I do not believe in it. Statistical physics supports my disbelief.  So I am, in a way, Matrix´s Neo, who would refuse to accept it. Well, I think we all consider ourselves masters of our own life. But  are we really? Is there something like free will at all?

I have read a book lately. The one I mentioned in my last week´s blog entry. Author talks about quantum evolution. It was mostly biology and quantum physics behind what we consider a living cell. However, it ended with a short but tremendous chapter on quantum decision. He wrote voluntary actions, whether free willed or predestined, are initiated in brain. It is there where we think conscience lays. We all feel strongly that there is a mind inside our head with the power of volition over our actions. Benjamin Libet profoundly challenges this belief.

In his studies on the timing sensory perception and motor actions he carried out experiments with subjects who were asked to perform simple actions as moving a finger. He placed electrodes on their scalps to record brain´s electrical activity associated with that action. Subjects would also record when they thought they had initiated the action. Interestingly enough, subjects reported the awareness of making a conscious decision to move two hundred milliseconds before the action was recorded at their muscle. However, what was much more surprising was that Libet recorded neuronal activity three to four hundred milliseconds before the time a subject reported he or she had made a decision. These voluntary actions were initiated almost a half a second before the subjects knew they made a conscious decision to act.

What does that mean? Are we just slaves to our unconscious neuronal activity? Is therefore free will an illusion? What does that say about taking responsibility over our own actions? If we cannot help but to act a certain way, how can we be judged for that? We do what was computed for us to do. Brain knows best, doesn´t it! It looks like it takes all the parameters and computes the best action for us. How can then we condemn a wrongdoer? But then again, how can he condemn our actions upon him, when we cannot help but to act that way either? Is life really like that? Are we really like that?

No, of course not. Libet rather proposed that conscience acts to modify or veto actions that are initiated unconsciously. There is a window of two hundred milliseconds that acts as an entry for our conscience to execute free will. However, this does not erase the fact that some actions, mostly the ones we inhibit, are executed on an unconscious level. Actions like driving, playing music, dancing routines etc. So to say, we all sometimes find ourselves in a situation when we ask the question: “How did I get here?” Those actions work as a release of attention so we can focus on other stuff at the same time. Conscience works parallel and serial at the same time; parallel as being aware of many things at once and serial as having only one stream of consciousness.

So what does that say about predicament I stated in the beginning? Is a smarter me inside the pure neuronal activity I just got conscious of? Of course not. That is the battle of the Ego. In life we learn lessons we accept as a better way, just because it is evident the previous way did not work for us. Whether we practice them or not is dependent on Ego that likes the accustomed way better than the new one and shoves away the will to change the pattern. This is what all that guide of good living is about. It says to get rid of Ego, which does not mean to delete free will contaminated by bad behavioral patterns and to reach deeper into unconscious neuronal activity. It means following what we feel it is right and will a different action. It means to get purified of all the dirt we collected with experiences. To my predicament, it means getting out of bed and continuing to work is way smarter thing to do than feeling sorry for myself bathing in self pity. That is all there is. My Ego just put a veto on that. Because, let´s face it. Lazy does good sometimes. Sometimes, I say!

However, in a certain way, I like to think that by ignoring Ego´s needs we get closer to what our brain computes as right. In a very hippy dippy way, I like to think, we tune in to the frequency of Universe´s law of activity and consequence. And that, I believe, is a way one can reach happiness with ease.

And there is that.