The Essence of Free Will

1) We live in body's AND AS bodies. We cannot escape this fact.

2) Body's are made of biochemistry, and thus, follow the rules of biochemistry as well as the laws of physics

3) So what? We are limited, that's what. The terms of our existence are rounded and paradoxical. We experience both and opening and a closing.

4) The closing is the fact of the effects environmental cues have on our biology. The nervous system is not some 'given', but something that has been worked into existence. Body's are the collective memory of a species interactions with it's environment.

5) With ants and other social creatures, the body cannot be separated from the surround. A member of the society is as basic - and formal - to the structure of the physical organism to force us to consider the reality of being an individual.

6) The polyvagal theory of mammalian, particularly, human, nervous system organization has transformed both how we understand human beings and how we understand human experience

7) Our nervous system is built from the ground up, from the physiology of individual nerve tracts to the experiences that unfold within our subjectivity, there is a one on one correspondence, yielding FACTS about human cognition that can no longer be debated or doubted.

8) We are built to attend to the world around us. We are built to CARE that we are CARED about by others. The Nervous system can only tolerate so much arousal. Only so much emotional activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. The Hippocampus is built with only so many gluco-corticoid receptors, so that, when the conscious mind is overwhelmed by anxiety, cortisol breaks down protein structures that maintain neuronal processes in hippocampal cells.

9) Every mind develops in unison with its brain. The breakdown instigated by means words held by another mind elicits processes in the brain that trigger psychological adaptations along neurobiological constraints. HPA axis activity will eventually be interrupted when apoptosis becomes a problem the viability of the organism, thus, the biological fail-safe of an over-stressed nervous system: dissociation.

10) The dorsal vagal branch of the human nervous system in conjunction with an area called the periaquaductal grey dial down anxiety - and worry, fear, anticipation - felt by the conscious mind through the release of opiates. Opiates dull attention, leading to a less interested concern in the precipitating factor from the environment.

11) We are held and thrown from place to place by unconscious processes held-in-perpetuity by the fact of our humanness. We inherited body's from other humans, who evolved strategies to deal with the world around them over millions of years. We've inherited these strategies and we live by them, or more truly, are lived BY them, in almost all that we do.

12) An animal that suffers from PTSD is doomed. A human that suffers from PTSD can discover the wherewithal to take over the systems that control it's life.

13) The Essence of Free-Will is nothing more than the stop and go function of consciousness. Take a rat pup forced by fate to experience the pain of not being licked and cared for by its mother. There is no 'internal interruption', and there CANT be. There is no allocentricity, no possible 'other' for the rat cognition to ponder. Dynamics freeze in place as protein receptors. There's no end to it. It's the vicious cycle.

Human Free will, however, truly boggles our imagination. How can the brain, forced by intrauterine events to reduce production of nerve-growth factor (NGF) gene activity which leads to a reduced production of glucocorticoid receptor genes, resulting in a nervous system with a lower-tolerance for stress, turn things around?

The mind can contain it's experiences. The mind is a container - and the brain is the contained. A mind overwhelmed can become aware of it's overwhelmedness, and so, remind itself gently, and compassionately 'just breath, relax, observe'.

Its not yet (yet will no doubt soon be discovered) what concoction of neurochemistry allows PTSD sufferers to escape their diagnositc category, but no doubt the subjective experience of being able to 'contain', 'think' and 'tolerate' overwhelming affect has a neurobiological cognate in the hippocampus (the part of the brain where 'working memory' happens), where NGF production increases and permits reexpression of gluco-corticoid receptor cells and hippocampal cellular growth.

The mind decides these events. I truly wonder whether any psychological illness can be truly said to exist on a biological or genetic level, with no say or input from a reflective, knowing, and LEARNING awareness.

The mystery of creation, the creation of proteins and the expression of genes long held back by overly methylated DNA and histones, is the influence of compassionate awareness on our body's - and our societies - processes.

a reply to: Astrocyte

There is a difference between freedom and free will. Two sides of the same coin. Most nations have a Freedom Charter and/or Act but not a "Free Will Act"...

Two thirds of our waking existence is attributed to unconscious programming, yet freedom remains. Two thirds of our waking existence is attributed to sleep...

We do indeed have free will but many do not exercise their free will due to ignorance of what it entails. They squander those precious moments before they lay themselves down to sleep. It's magical to work the night shift.

Human Free will, however, truly boggles our imagination.

That is a very poetic statement indeed...yet, the answer to free will is within your very own wording.


"Imagination rules the world, the human race is governed by its imagination"- Napolean Bonaparte

...and those who are ignorant of this fundamental fact are usually governed by the world instead.

Again: What is the difference between Freedom Vs Free Will?

As long as there are choices, free will exist.