Topic 1-2  Freedom Of Choice
Scientific Determinism studies the actions and reactions of the chain of events leading up to human action. An attempt is made to trace the action back to preceding events. But if a human being really acts according to his own will, deciding his own course of action, then preceding circumstances alone do not fully explain the course chosen.

Free will holds that our choices are ultimately up to ourselves. This is confirmed by our own direct, first-person, introspective experience of self-initiated action. Out of the diversity of heredity and learned experience flowers creative activity. A modern science whose attention is turned to physical phenomena finds it difficult to make room for human creativity, even though it may be self-evident to inner observation.

We can make choices that influence and direct ourselves as well as our environment. Regardless of how many factors lead up to a choice, what matters is that for the choice to be free it ultimately is up to me. In other words, determinism does not matter; what matters is that our choices are the results of our own intentions, desires and preferences. Free will is therefore the creative expression of our own unique individual spirit.

Freedom of Choice
Free choice is the creative expression of my own self, my own unique desires and preferences.

Free will is the capacity unique to the human being that allows them to control their actions. If we want to be free, we must work through our own inner activity to overcome unconscious urges and habitual thinking. Then the individual can be the ultimate source or origin of action. A choice is not uncaused. It is caused by the person who chooses.

Self-Determinism
Self-determinism is the view that we have control over our own destiny. A human beings action is caused by oneself.

Compelled By Desire
Scientific Determinism argues we cannot control our actions, that the causes operating in us and on us compel us to act in one and only one way. You say you choose what to eat? For a determinist, you can't help yourself.

How many times do you think you could have made a better choice if it were not for the pull of strong desires you were feeling in the moment? Are we sometimes compelled by desire to want what we would prefer not to want or that we later regret?

In a strong sense, we do not control our desires. The desires are what force us to react. I cannot choose to desire what I simply don’t desire based on past experience, therefore, my desire/will is not free. I want chocolate because chocolate has given me pleasure in the past. I don’t want to touch the hot car engine because hot things have given me pain in the past.

All intellectually-driven choices have desire driving them at a higher level.

Consumer Manipulation
Modern corporate marketing has applied behavioral research to sell products. Surveys are conducted to learn the desires and needs of the consumer, and products are developed to meet those requirements. Isn’t this just business giving the consumers what they want? Motivational research identifies our hidden primitive desires for security, power, sexual dominance, or adventure and ads are designed that depict the product as fulfilling these subterranean needs.

In purchasing a car we may think we are free. When in fact our act may be completely controlled by subliminal marketing associations between the product and our base desires. We see the car driven by beautiful and successful people in pleasant and glamorous places with a phallic symbol on the hood. It will fulfill our competitive drive with enough horsepower to pass other cars or be large and powerful enough to dominate nature off road. Corporations discovered that marketing goods doesn’t depend on an appeal to reason but to stimulation of desire. Tie the consumer up in fear, stir up a mild rage, or call out an affection or sex response.Today’s increased consumption of goods was achieved by manipulating consumer behavior with subconscious stimulation of desires for goods with which the public had previously had no desire for.

Voter Manipulation
These corporate consumer marketing techniques are now being applied to politics. Detailed information about the political and social beliefs is collected for each voter. This data is used to design personalized advertising aimed at individual voters that are very specific to their concerns. A key part of election microtargeting is figuring out the messages that would best appeal to a voter, and the best way to deliver those messages to the voter informing them that your candidate just happens to care most about whatever random issue that person is most likely to care about.

Microtargeting is very effective for getting out the vote. The goal is to identify likely voters and their "anger points." Anger is one of the best motivators for getting someone to go out and vote. Voters are targeted and receive mail and phone calls with a message intended to stimulate extreme emotions for or against candidates. Using this technique it is possible to get voters to even vote against their own interests.

Religious Manipulation
Applying consumer marketing to religion has led to the rapid growth of ‘megachurches’; large new congregations with 2000 to 20,000 members offering a vast menu of social, educational, recreational, and social-services activities. Megachurches try to meet the needs of religious consumers. Every time they identify another "felt need" among those they hope to attract to the church, they add a program to meet that need such as offering different styles of worship featuring Rock, Rap, or Country Music. People attending megachurches couldn't quote you the tenets of their denomination; they don't know and don't care. They like that sermon, that choir, those programs for the children, this recreation program, or the economic empowerment initiatives.

The megachurch assumes traditional religion needs to be supplemented with contemporary social and behavioral sciences if it is to grow. In practice this means changing the church—its worship, its self-understanding, and its confession—so that it conforms to the desires of the consumer.

Discover Reason For Action Through Introspection
Desire can be very consuming. It demands instant fulfillment even if it occurs while we are occupied with something else. It must be acted upon instantly. Objects of desire vary according to age, circumstances, surrounding environment, pressure and so on. It comes into being within all of us whether sophisticated, ordinary, educated or a monk. You may take a vow of celibacy, like the monks and saints do, but desire is burning in them also. Desire creates all kinds of complications. By identifying choice factors such as desire, we better enable ourselves to take account of them in making choices.

What is the reason for our action? Are we free or are our desires being manipulated by business marketing, political promises, or by a host of other internal and external things which would control us?

One way to answer this question is to look at the workings of our own inner life through looking within, a process also known as introspection. Why argue over the idea of freedom when consciousness itself is there waiting to be interrogated? We can observe the fact that we can consider different factors, evaluate different possibilities and come up with original choices and decisions. The evidence of our own ability to choose becomes apparent through introspection. If there is freedom of the will, this is a truth which can be known only as each person knows it first hand in oneself.

Introspection is a skill that needs careful development to be reliable. Consider how wine tasters learn to augment their gustatory discriminations by attending to their experiences more closely. It requires a focus of the attention that can be improved with practice and training with concentration exercises.

1.2 Self-Awareness Journal
You see a shirt, a suit, a dress, a car, or a beautiful woman, a man. Make a note whether you desire or not desire what you see.

Where does desire begin?

Example: You see a shirt, or a suit, or a dress, a car, or a beautiful woman, a man, whatever it is. There is the sensation of seeing and touching, then thought forms an image, you in that shirt, in that dress, or in the car, at that moment desire is born. Is it possible for thought not to create the image that triggers desire?

Does thought add any additional associations to the object you are looking at that arouse strong emotions?