1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | February 24, 2025
Will is the ability to choose for yourself. If your choices are made by social norms, then you are subordinating your will to the will of the mass, and thus it’s practically irrelevant whether you have a will or not.
I agree however you can have a will but also remembering your place in society, it isn't like some totalitarian world where you can't even have an opinion of anything
What we've to be clear is that as a human l've a will which implies agency but same time also acknowledging l fit in a broader social mass since l need my basic necessities-food,shelter,water taken care off therefore of my own choosing l make the decision to partake in society and it's rules which is wearing clothes and not causing any unlawful behaviour
Comment by challings at 25/02/2025 at 22:41 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I would say the ability to *not* participate in society is rapidly shrinking. Facebook has a profile for you ready to go, even if you’re not on it. Squatting in abandoned homes is criminalized. Land is almost entirely privately owned, you cannot build a house without permits, common space to grow plants is limited if it’s even available at all.
Yes, we “choose” to participate in society to a certain extent, but that is not a “free” choice in an ever-increasing portion of the world: we are penalized for not doing so. It’s not even that we simply lose the benefits of society if we try to leave, it’s that choosing to live outside of society, even nonviolently, is actively interfered with if not outright prevented.
The “decision” to live in society means that such an amount of other decisions (such as whether to wear clothes, what language you speak, how you interact with the natural world, and so on) are made *for* you by that initial choice, that you can hardly say you have free will in any meaningful sense.