MINDING THE GAP

Dylan Skurka on a film that suggests it’s possible to choose to overcome your upbringing.

- Dylan Skurka

Do we have free will, or are our lives just an amalgamation of forces beyond our control, push-ing us around like billiard balls? The question seems straightforward enough, but if you spend enough time with it you’ll soon find that you’ve opened up a Pandora’s box of philosophical questions, especially since each side of the debate has a peculiar way of seeming both perfectly plausible and implausible. It certainly feels like I’ve gotten where I am through choices that I’ve freely made; but how can I be so sure? Is freedom just an illusion – something I can tell myself I possess to avoid the terrifying fact that the events of my life are completely beyond my control? I can just as easily embrace my lack of control and situate myself on the determinist side of things; but would this just be a sly way of evading any responsibility for all the mistakes I’ve made? How could we possibly praise or blame anyone for anything if no one really has the ability to freely choose what they do? And so the vicious circle of thinking begins.

Getting nowhere and feeling frustrated as hell about it, I found myself restlessly looking for answers – from having lengthy conversations with some of the smartest people I know, to reading the most eloquently defended positions from the world’s leading thinkers on the topic. All to no avail, of course.

Bouncing between the two sides of the free will vs determinism debate ad nauseam, I eventually became too jaded to think about it any further, and figured the debate itself was either meaningless, unanswerable, or a combination of both. But when I came across the 2018 documentary film