The importance of believing in free will (and other things)
There are some things which we have to believe in to keep on living. These statements may not be true - but to have hope in life and to go on in the world, we have to believe in these statements. (This is particularly so if depressive realism is true.) These are statements likeĀ āeverything will work out in the end,āĀ āeveryone has a purpose in life,ā andĀ āwe have free will.ā Some thoughts on these:
Kurt Vonnegut in Catās Cradle:Ā
Live by the [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.
I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free willā"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"āneed be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the presentāuntil next yearāthat it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
At the end of the day, it's all within me. All an extension of my self. The people I want to meet. The things I want to be told. . . . As soon as I began to think that, in some part of me, I began wishing for it. Wishing that I'd live.
It happened one day that his landlady asked him whether he believed that she could be saved in the religion she professed: He answered, "Your Religion is a good one, you need not look for any other, nor doubt that you may be saved in it, provided, whilst you apply yourself to Piety, you live at the same time a peaceable and quiet life."
For more information, J. Thomas Cook has an article on that called, "Did Spinoza Lie to His Landlady?" Also see Hareās articleĀ āNothing Mattersā andĀ Stephen Caveās article on free will in the Atlantic.