Human Will: An Evocation

The nature of human will is this: you awake into pitch dark, not knowing where you are. With some fumbling, you find a light. You are in a railway sleeper compartment, small, elegantly furnished. There is no door. Behind a blackout curtain, you find a window.

When you open the window, you find yourself on a long train, too long to see the beginning or the end, running over a causeway dividing an immense lake, too large to see the opposite shore. The train is going very fast, too fast to jump. You have no idea where it is bound, or any way to find out.

You pull your head back inside and shut the window. You can move about the compartment, but, as noted, there’s no door. And the train rolls on.

Awesome Ajivikas

I keep running into the Ajivikas

(In the books I’m reading. Not like, down to Stop&Shop or anything)

and I keep seeing the same response: they must not have been completely adamantly against free will, because how could you found a movement on that?

To which, speaking as a person who doesn’t believe in free will myself, I say two things:

-First: Have you met Reverend Calvin here?

-Second: Even if you think the idea of free will is utter birdshit, you still have to do something. And if that something turns out to be create an atheist ascetic religious movement, well: looks like that’s what you had no choice but to do.