Free will.

There is a lot written about the responsibility of people for there actions. On the one side there is the wish to teach us how to live a fuller and happier life by changing our thoughts. On the other side the basis of the judicial system is this responsibility for our actions. The truth is that there is NO free will or responsibility.

Here are three arguments to support this:

1. We are the product of only our genes and our memory. There is an ongoing discussion as to which of these is more important, but there is nothing else. (There are those that wish to include a god as a factor, but this doesn't change the lack of our own free will.) These two determine not only our behaviour , and our character, but also our thoughts and our preferences. It's true that we can choose whatever we prefer, but we can't choose our preferences. They are decided by our genes and environment.

2. The function of the "ego" (or soul or spirit on the true "i") is supposedly to decide how to react to stimuli. The commonly accepted script is that the ego witnesses an event (a sight, a sound, a smell, a touch). It then relays the information to the memory to interpret the event. Then this interpretation is relayed back to the ego to decide what to do about it. If the memory doesn't know what the event is (because it is something completely new), then we do not see (or hear, etc.) it.

But it was discovered that there is NO ego at all. There is a time difference between the event and our awareness of it. For example between the event being able to be seen and our awareness. That means that what we experience is from the past, i.e. from our memory.

Our memory not only sends the interpretation of the event to our awareness, but it also sends how we are going to react. There is NO function for an ego. Actually the ego is a false fiction created by our minds to explain ourselves to us. It was Freud that invented the ego.
Again our memory and unconscious mind are in control and there is no place for an ego. We cannot correct an ego, only our thoughts and our behaviour.

3. It is now widely accpted by scientists that we are living in a hologram. A description of this idea is too long for me to try to include it here. You can see the series here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMBt_yfGKpU
It is in 4 parts.

When I concluded that there is no free will I did another thought experiment in order to figure out how we are supposed to act. The problem is - if we have no free will and can't control our thoughts or our actions then why try to do anything ? Why should we get out of bed ?

I came upon an idea, and I was happy to hear in a lecture about free will that a professor in the Haifa University came to the same idea. It is this - that we should treat others as if they don't have free will, and we should act ourselves as if we can freely choose what to do :

1. it is clear from the arguments above that no one is responsible for his actions, since they clearly are controlled by their memory and unconscious mind. If we want to understand why people act in a certain way we should study their genes and their environment in order to try to prevent these actions by others if they are negative and to encourage whatever causes actions that are positive.
When we are dealing with an individual we should replace the idea of punishment with the idea of rehabilitation

2. It might be possible when we want to decide something to remember our preferences, but we usually don't have the time to go very deeply. Maybe it will be worthwhile to try to remember this fully after we decide, but not before.
Therefore my suggestion is that we act as if, and only as if, we are responsible and do have free will.