"Comparison is the thief of joy"
I wonder a lot about the true nature of human will. Is it free, or not? Do we have the ability to self determine, or not? Are the things that we perceive as conscious choices truly born of an independant deliberation? I have my doubts.
Stories about self-improvement and achievement often include some kind of resolution by the main character, who is determined to reach some goal. Through making some tough choice, they do a thing worthy of admiration - they've done something special, that they were uniquely capable of achieving and that is worthy of appreciation by others. And it was through their own virtue, according to a classical line of thinking. That is, the line of thinking which holds it to be true that every human being has the ability to freely pick their actions and reactions in and to the world around them. The alternative line of thought is that they have done nothing at all except "achieve" the inevitable - because their decisions and their ability to make good on those decisions were already determined before they even left the womb.
Dismissing the existance of free will effectively nixes the entire concept of personal achievement and glory. When ability is no longer created through an earned merit, it is no longer worth anything at all. So what I'm really trying to say is that it doesn't matter that I can't do a backflip and run a marathon and speak ten languages, because it wasn't up to me to be able to do those things. Thanks to Laplace's demon, I'm off the hook.
But... isn't it? It is up to me, no? I could go into my backyard right now and start learning the backflip. It's a choice I'm perfectly capable of making. At some scale, or on some level, it appears as if we really are capable of self-determining. I look inward, and see all of these things that I could do - endless possibilities and opportunities. I "choose" a select few - like the exact words that bubbled to the top of my head and made it onto the page here. But, the fact that it's those words that I chose and not some seemingly less perfect others, and the fact that I'm not leaving my desk for my backyard right now, are telling. The human will, if free at all, is barely free.
When I try to really understand the workings of my own head, I quickly realize that I'm looking into something more akin to a black box than an understandable machine. In the layer of my mind that I would really call conscious, thoughts appear in the form of cohesive english sentences if I'm intently thinking, and in more broken up strings if I'm not. And where do those words come from? Where do these words come from? They come from a void which I entirely lack the ability to peer into. My five senses send my brain information, and from the void, fitting words arise. It's as if my consciousness only has the ability to tell the void to "try again" or to "shut up". Are we all just fancy markov chains at the end of the day? Have I ever had a thought I could truly call my own? When everything I've ever written or said was handed to me through an abstracted process, what does that make me? A big flesh mannequin, that's what.
Even though I can't understand my own mind, I still want to believe in free will. Even if free will is simply an illusion - the conscious mind observing the actions of the unconscious one and believing itself to be in control - it is an illusion entirely sufficient. I won't give up on achievement and heroic choices. I'll never stop trying to beat my fellow man into underling status, because at the end of the day if you haven't made yourself better than everyone else, what are you even worth? My will is entirely within my own control - and that's why I've decided of my own volition to establish my life's goal as lording it over the entire world. This goal is clearly the result of a free mind and not the product of inherent desires and instincts.