Do I Have Free Will or Am I Being Brainwashed?
The idea of Free Will is something that philosophers have ruminated on for centuries. Plato, Epicurus, Hegel and many others have put in their two cents in regards to free will. But the 21st century has introduced a game-changer the likes of them could never even fathom as they philosophized on papyrus and paper.
As the Age of Technology and technological advances become all-invading, it’s a question we must revisit with much earnestness.
Do I have free will?
MEDIA BRAINWASHING
Growing up in America (or really anywhere with internet) nowadays can be challenging. Yes, we’ve been lucky enough to move past most immediate physical threats, but there’s a constant threat on our emotional and mental wellbeing. Social media and streaming channels give us constant access to the lives of others and to never-ending fantasy. We see the filtered, curated, glamorized parts of other people’s lives on Instagram and Tik Tok, and contrarily, we see the most dramatic moments of a story through any television show or film we watch.
This article isn’t aimed at blaming the media—that’s a whole separate article—for only showing dramatic events, that’s just what we’ve been conditioned to want to watch. It’s the literary arc of a story: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. There is much merit to this arc and reflects human stories and the Hero’s Journey, the issue is that with so much media at our fingertips, we train our brains to expect this constant rise and fall. Due to time purposes, movies narrow in on highly charged climaxes and triggering actions, and dramatize everything around it. While television shows may span a wider length in time, each episode still holds this story arc; it is embedded into our understanding of stories and what we have come to expect.
What we don’t see and what can be a detriment to younger generations being born into to all of this “information” is that there are several behind-the-scenes events that happen that aren’t inherently understood. When we blindly accept what we see on our screens, we start to compare our own lives and wonder “Why isn’t my life like that?” How many boring mornings and nights did Noah and Allie go through before their love proved miraculous and took them away together? We don’t see the drama-lite mundanity of going to work, paying bills, sweeping the floor, doing laundry—basically all the chores we ourselves try to avoid. We don’t see them because they’re not interesting, they don’t hold the magic of Hollywood, of fantasy. Why would we pay money to watch someone do everyday chores that we ourselves don’t enjoy?
The inclination to only desire, and expect, to see the passionate parts of a love story have done a great disservice to society. We have been brainwashed to feel cheated if our lives don’t turn out how they look on the big screen. The brain doesn’t actually recognize what it sees on tv or film as a false reality, it believes what it sees and since more time is spent online, we’re starting to lose touch with reality. This makes it crucial to bring discernment into what we allow into our awareness.
We’ve losing our ability to critically analyze a situation. We’re being fed so much information that we believe it all to be true, not taking into account that there are billions of dollars spent on algorithms and tricks to create a dependency on what you see, not realizing that they’re feeding you what you want. This is the opposite of critical thinking because you’re not actually getting all the information out there, you’re getting very targeted ads, posts, and news.
Just because we have access to unlimited information doesn’t mean we are actually accessing the unlimited information. Through our own confirmation biases and non-stop behind-the-scenes algorithms, we aren’t as educated as we may like to believe. Similar to how scientists say we only access 5% of our brain at a time, we seem to only be accessing 5% of information. So while we state that our world is growing smaller through technology, allowing us to be more connected, our own individual realities are growing smaller too.
So what can we do about it?
VIBRATING AT A DIFFERENT FREQUENCY
If you’re like the majority of the population, you aren’t going to be able to escape the rampant effects of technology. It is embedded into our daily lives and we’ve become dependent on it—who remembers phone numbers anymore or has the need to memorize directions? So rather than try to fight a very steep uphill battle, we can bring awareness into our lives to combat it.
Have you ever heard of the collective consciousness? In case your news feed isn’t targeted to receiving information about it, I’ll tell you here. The Collective Consciousness is the thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs that are collectively accessible to all of us, and depending on your frequency you can tap into different wavelengths. If you are noticing a pattern in your life when it comes to your relationships, it means you’re tuned into a frequency that is attracting the same types of stories, thoughts, and people into your reality.
You can start to become aware of this when you analyze the various stereotypes in life. Why is it that we even know how to stereotype people? Because each group is tapping into the same wavelength, providing them with their “identity.” Just look at the hippies or the sports nuts or the Wall Street-ers. They each have a shared vocabulary to be able to communicate in their respective worlds, and they usually have a shared clothing style and shared food preferences. Biology drives us to group together and find connection in order to survive, so these inclinations to identify with a group is natural, however, when our choices are mindlessly dictated by these identifications, we lose our free will.
If you stop for a moment, you can probably think of a group that you feel connected to and another which you feel averse. Advertisers know exactly how to market to specific demographics because each group has identified with a collective set of beliefs, words, thought patterns, and behaviors.
You can see stereotypes play out in our understanding of the zodiac, as well. The zodiac signs and other systems use archetypes to understand human nature and individual personalities. While very useful, it also creates our stereotypes. Aquarians might resonate with what they just read, being familiar with recognizing these stereotypes and rebelling against them, because they’re the forever loner, right? Well, that’s another stereotype. That’s another identification.
Our zodiac signs provide us with different codes that we accept more readily about ourselves. There’s reason to why people are afraid of Scorpio or other water signs’ intense emotions or think Leos are egotistical. When we blindly accept these qualities of personality—because they’re most readily accessible to us—we live from the collective consciousness frequencies of that stereotype.
(To preemptively circumvent offense and upset comments, I should say my main three signs consist of Leo, Aquarius, and Scorpio, which I understand deeply and feel equipped to comment on.)
SO HOW DO I BREAK FREE?
First off, I don’t want to create an idea that there is something you need to break free from. Rather, awareness of the patterns and different frequencies give you the ability to make aligned choices. When we live our life on default, we’re not actually living our life from free will, we’re living from a set of patterns, and therefore, the outcome is predictable. It’s like a math equation:
If x + y = z and x and y are my beliefs and behaviors, then I will continuously keep getting z as my outcome. If I don’t like z, but rather want q, then I need to change either x or y.
A common example in life is when it comes to dating and relationships. Many people complain that they repeatedly get their hearts broken, and yet, they aren’t making any changes to either the type of person they date or their behavior patterns within their relationships, leaving them with z, aka, heartbreak.
By changing the type of person they date, for instance, creates the opportunity for a new outcome. Yet we’ll see that perhaps we need to change the person, as well as, our behaviors if our desired outcome is drastically different than anything we’ve experienced before.
Mathematics, Sacred Geometry, Astrology, Human Design, Gene Keys, these are all ways that we can understand reality around us. By accessing the knowledge these systems offer, we can bring more awareness into our lives, start to make different choices, and attract in a new outcome. But remember, that it’s about the journey, not the destination. Deepening your awareness automatically raises your frequency and creates more space for other possibilities in your life. That’s when we actually wake up and get to start to walk the walk towards the lives we’ve always dreamed of.
