I started a job a couple months ago, I’ve been reading a lot of Russian literature lately, and I was watching some Squid Game this weekend. I suppose that’s what probably brought the following line of thinking on. (As well as the influence of covid on all of our lives and how we’ve had to adjust). Perhaps as a result of everything lately, it has never been clearer to me than right now that none of us really has a free will.
The notion that the average person in life (regardless of status) does not have a free will is something that keeps coming up thematically in the work of Gogol and in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, it’s a feeling one gets if they have to work a job during a pandemic, or if they don’t happen to be a rich person. In fact, even if you’re rich, I would still argue that you don’t really have a free will. Firstly, the fact that you were born at all against your will is already proof you aren’t free and never were to begin with. A guy and a girl decided to lay on top of each other and play wrestling for awhile without a referee and now you’re here and you gotta work on your cover letter.
Secondly, after your birth you’re then a slave to your inherited genes, which might affect your behaviour as an adult and what you can and cannot do. For example, maybe you dream of being the world’s greatest athlete….but you happened to be born a legless midget. You’re a slave to your genes right there, unfortunately. Thirdly, when you get older you learn of course there’s your financial situation and what economic status you happened to be born into, which can obviously be a major setback or a benefit. Maybe you’re a fan of Proust and French culture and dream of living in France someday so you can check out the Père Lachaise Cemetery, have breakfast at cafes everyday etc. Only one small problem: you were born to two janitors who make 3 dollars and 2 potatoes an hour, you have no skills that will earn you anywhere near the type of income you’ll need to live the lifestyle you want, and you’re too dumb to learn anything useful. And then fourth and a bit more broadly, we are all slaves by virtue of the fact that no one really has a complete say in how our lives will go. We are here sharing an experience we don’t fully own. You can try your best, but you’re still always at the mercy of whatever crazy, dumb shit might cross your path.
We like to kid ourselves and play a game of illusion in which we are the coolest, smartest person in every room we step in. Or that we can literally do whatever we want at any given time: go to Europe, go see a movie, go to a fancy restaurant, etc. Or that our hopes and dreams might one day come true and good things might happen to us if we stick around. I guess because the true nature of reality is too harsh to bear as it is, we all have to lie to ourselves on some level in order to survive life on a daily basis and how boring and oppressive it is.
The truth of it all is that none of us are free. Even if you happen to be cool and incredibly wealthy, you just aren’t. Let’s say you’re Kanye West-level cool and rich: you still have to die one day. Yes, your life is a whole lot more comfortable than the majority of people in this life. We don’t all get to fuck Kim Kardashian or have gigantic IMAX screens in our mansions. But at the same time: even Kanye West isn’t above death. His free will is still trapped within the prison walls of this life shit. Within life we all have a small amount of choices in which we can do certain things that make us happier to a certain extent, but at the end of the day they aren’t incredible history-shattering decisions. They all kind of amount to the same thing.
Regardless of how different they seem, all of humanity’s choices are basically the same, in my opinion. All of our choices are essentially all about convincing ourselves that we do, in fact, possess a free will. As long as you’re alive, I think you’re basically in jail. The earth is like Alcatraz, and you’re a prisoner here until it’s time for you to die. Watching dumb shit on Netflix, going out and getting some strange from time to time, reading books, etc…these are all basic choices you can make so you can have the illusion of freedom. We’re all really just a bunch of slaves given a few small luxuries to distract us from the fact that we are actually still slaves. We’re “owned” so to speak by the incredibly rich and powerful (who I would argue are still slaves themselves, to a certain degree, but they don’t know it yet).
Think about the average “free” person’s life: is it really that much different than a prisoner’s? They seem different, but if you think about it they’re really just the same. We have a similar life structure, just on a larger scale. They eat, sleep, and work out just as a “free person” would, except they have less illusion about how they go about doing those things. They’re caged prisoners, and to us that seems terrible, but our cage is earth itself.
A free person is just a prisoner in disguise; the free person is under the impression that they are making unique choices, they’re an individual, and they have an original personality, despite the underlying truth that we’re all just animals. The so-called free person’s life is just as limited as the prisoner’s when you boil it down to life and death. Sure, a prisoner cannot fly to Europe and chill. But no one is ultimately above dying: at the end you have to pay the bill and go home to meet your maker eventually.
We like to think that within our range of choices lies a secret code out of slavery, but it’s practically impossible. There are quotes that people still love to share, such as, “Fortune favours the bold.” Because presumably, quotes of this nature suggest that there’s a way out of the pain of being a human if we try hard enough. All we have to do is work hard enough or make enough money and we won’t be slaves anymore! As I’ve already mentioned, in actuality: even a successful slave is still just a slave at the end of the day. They just happen to be more of a comfortable slave, and even then that’s only momentarily true.
The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to not run or hide from the grim nature of life. One should never forget the fact that they are a slave in this existence. Do not run from this and face it head on, because most attempted alleviation is misguided, amounts to distraction, and might just make the problem worse. Don’t drink alcohol and become an alcoholic and kid yourself. Don’t do coke and feel some weird artificial high that makes you think you’re a god for 5 minutes. All of this does nothing to change the fact that you’re still a slave after the comedown.
Going back to the prisoner analogy above, in some ways, the real imprisoned folk among us might be smarter than the free people in this life. Because they do not possess any lies about what their situations are, like we tend to do on the outside. The more aware you are of how not free you are, and the more you realize you’re fucked as long as you’re part of this system, the better it is for you and your mental health and overall wellbeing. Acknowledge the fact that you’re a slave under this system, and your decisions moving forward will probably serve you better in the long run.
