People immediately jumping to the Marx quote is so sad and funny because literally no one is saying you can’t choose things, we’re saying free will has not and could not ever exist, it is a made up concept, you would have to be a supernatural being completely independent from all material context to exist with free will. You can certainly make your own history and decisions, but the decisions presented to you and the reasons you make those decisions are all shaped by other things! Without the influence of outside things, you would be nothing, a form without content making no decisions and with no purpose! Decision and control are intertwined- Both free will and determinism are nonsensical concepts!
You are given a hand of cards and it’s your choice what to do with them, but it’s important to keep in mind that what thoughts you have about choosing the cards is also part of your hand and so are the prompts for those thoughts or the skill you have in poker or… so it’s kind of recursive using this metaphor but hopefully you get the point, I’m not saying people are set to a specific path or can’t make choices
Also I am hardline against determinism too because it’s a meaningless concept without being able to actually predict the future Oracle style
I'm not reading through this whole thread to see where this might fit in, I'mma drop it right here.
I saw some chatter about free will being a historically religious driven ideology, essentially boiling it all down to a spirit or soul housed inside our bodies. And this invalidates it because it is not scientific or materialist.
There's points that I could argue about that, but that's a different rabbit hole. The thing I want to touch on is the fact that determinism has also been historically driven by religion, and in a very official capacity. The Christian reformation had a notable figure by the name of John Calvin, who preached the doctrine of predestination. In this view, God's elect will go to heaven and nerds go to hell. This wasn't some deviation from a lot of traditional Catholic teachings, but he had a weird fixation on it. It's also present in many other conservative interpretations of different faiths.
This belief has been used as an excuse to shit on marginalized people in the same way that the meme depicts, except it's framed in terms of 'God made you less than, and I will treat your as such because that is your lot. Don't you dare argue with it, it's ordained by God!'.
DECIDE, v.i. To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.
A leaf was riven from a tree,
"I mean to fall to earth," said he.The west wind, rising, made him veer.
"Eastward," said he, "I now shall steer."The east wind rose with greater force.
Said he: "'Twere wise to change my course."With equal power they contend.
He said: "My judgment I suspend. "Down died the winds; the leaf, elate,
Cried: "I've decided to fall straight.""First thoughts are best?" That's not the moral;
Just choose your own and we'll not quarrel.Howe'er your choice may chance to fall,
You'll have no hand in it at all. —G.J.Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Anyone seen that show Devs? Pretty fun
