Fractals and free will

This is something that’s been on my mind for quite a while and maybe this is too big a topic to tackle here but I’m going to try, if you guys will bear with me as I think this one through.

In my last semester of college, I somehow got into a discussion of religion with one of my classmates. We covered a wide gamut of topics but one of the things that particularly bothered him was the topic of freewill. To be honest I’m not even sure where his argument was going but one of the things he said was ‘How can we have free will? You can’t control your breathing’ and he made a couple of arguments in a similar vein. This kind of hung around my head all summer long, collecting a web of tangled thoughts.

I’m no theologian or expert in psychology. I don’t even have that much life experience but these are some of my thoughts. For me the concept of free will is both very empowering and frightening. Free will means that my decisions and actions have meaning-because of that I am accountable for those choices.

There are a lot of things that I do consciously and with awareness-it’s kind of obvious in those situations that some sort of decision making is going on there. But what about all those things I do unconsciously-whether it’s by force of habit or it's something like breathing?

I think we have the free will to have free will. I know that sounds kind of redundant but hear me out. While I can’t control my breathing and am doing it subconsciously, there are plenty of people that have that type of control. Whether they’re doing it for vocal training, or they’re pearl divers, or some Tibetan monk, they’ve taken the time and effort to train themselves to be conscious of their breathing and can now control it. When I was in middle school, I decided that being able to lift one eyebrow would be a really useful ability to have (I had great goals then). After about a month of standing in front of a mirror at random points and rearranging my eyebrows, I became aware of the muscles and now can look doubting or aloof and impress people at parties.

We decide what we care about and what we want to make decisions about.

I think free will is sort of like a fractal. Fractals are those really cool geometric shapes that are made of repeating patterns that grow smaller and smaller. 

At the beginning it's really easy to see what the initial shape is-that’s the decision to make a decision. But as you get further into life and make bigger and increasingly more complex decisions the original shape is nearly impossible to see.

The transformation from the original shape to the complex fractal can be so radical that it's almost frightening but it can also be incredibly beautiful.