The idea of free will seems quite personal, as though it is something that comes only out of the person. Having said that, this book tells us that our knowledge of free will has been strongly influenced by the cultural, religious, and social structures we have been brought up in. These are external forces that serve as the glasses which distort our thoughts regarding choice, responsibility, destiny and moral accountability.
Culture, to begin with is at the center of determining our interpretation of free will. All cultures have narratives of human agency either in the form of myths, stories or moral lessons. In certain cultures, it is the personal responsibility and individualism that is encouraged and it is embedded in the belief that it is the personal effort that leads to success or failure. Other groups are community-oriented, harmonious, interdependent, and personal choice is considered indivisible with the collective wellbeing. These cultural orientations, as argued in Dual Realities, shape the manner in which people interpret their own choices albeit subtly. In individualistic cultures, free will is commonly expected and believed to be boundless whereas in collectivist cultures choice is regarded as something related to duty, family demands and social needs.
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Throughout time, the world has had great explanations given concerning destiny, divine will, and the freedom of humans, as given by major religious traditions. One example is Christianity that has been debating over predestination and moral responsibility. Islam also stresses on the co-existence of the will of God and the responsibility of the human being, offering a subtle compromise between fate and decision. Hinduism and Buddhism bring about the idea of karma, whereby the past deeds affect the current situation, yet human beings still have the ability to affect the future.
The fact that these teachings are not simply a spiritual guidance, as the Dual Realities point to, is what determines the way the followers see their everyday choices. The illusion of some kind of driving power, whether it is God, fate, or the laws of nature, can produce the impression of decisions being governed by some greater order that diminishes the importance of experience of personal autonomy. On the other hand, the conviction of deliberate choice can be enhanced with the help of religious traditions that focus on moral agency.
The society, laws, norm and expectation are also critical in building our definition of the free will. The contemporary legal systems presuppose the ability of people to make a correct choice between good and evil and this assumption becomes the cornerstone of the responsibility assignment and the system of justice. However, as the book tells us, this assumption frequently overlooks the significant role of upbringing, social surroundings, traumas, and social economic factors. The society is more likely to evaluate the behavior that all persons have equal access to their freedom of choice despite the fact that neuroscience and psychology indicate otherwise. Social pressures and cultural stereotypes also influence decision making by promoting conformity or preventing nonconformity to accepted norms.
Furthermore, the discourse of success and failure practiced in the society supports the existence of particular understandings of free will. In most contemporary societies, success is depicted as something that comes as a direct consequence of personal effort, and failure is described as a consequence of the lack of discipline or motivation. Dual Realities disputes this point of view by demonstrating how the behavior is predisposed by invisible forces which are family background, social conditioning, emotional experiences, and cognitive biases well before individuals make conscious decisions. The cultural propensity of society to reduce the concept of success to a simple case of willpower ignores the fact that the reasons behind all decisions are embedded in cultural and psychological conditioning.
It is also important how the tension between determinism and the free will is given meaning through culture and religion. Cultural narratives or spiritual teachings are used frequently by people in trying to make sense of what they feel they cannot change, loss, trauma, something they did not anticipate. These frameworks may provide reassurance by indicating that things happen as they do and more so as there is some kind of ultimate design that leads to the way people act despite neuroscience and social science indicating the complexity of the behavioral patterns.
Culture, religion, and society after all do not merely determine the way we understand the free will, but the way we understand ourselves. With the sincerity and candor that pervades the book, such an analysis allows the reader to discover the depths of the force that informs human behavior.