(because the following was too long to be a comment on LostTruant)

Choice. To what extent can we or do we make choices in our lives? I need to get something for the recipe I’m making (which was one of many options) and I can go to safeway or king soopers. I wake up in the morning and receive news that informs me of circumstances that will change the course of my life and I might feel cheated by life or I might feel blessed, both possible in the same exact circumstances. So I choose, right, and these choices affect the very background color of the canvas of my life. I can’t change the circumstances, often, but I can make the best of them and the best of me by choosing to live deliberately, by choosing to feed the good wolf inside of me so that he can conquer the bad one in the great battle.

OR.

We back into the concept of choice because in order to support a certain collection of truths we have no choice but to believe in choice. I was talking with someone about this recently and she told me about her grandfather, who grew up poor poor poor in hellville USA, blah blah blah, and now he’s a “self-made” millionaire. She puffs up with pride at this. We all puff with pride at this, and it has nothing to do with our god ($$). We puff with pride whenever the cards don’t look so good but we win the hand, whether it be financially, emotionally, etc. But we also believe in individuality, that each person is this unique unit. And we believe in a system of credit. All of this relies on a notion of choice because without it it all falls down. It’s not that impressive that grand-pappy did such and such if it was the result of myriad circumstantial and internal variables that are more complicated than we know. I’m on my way to the store. Safeway is closer that king soopers, so I’ll choose to go there. Is that a choice? Actually I “like” king soopers more so I’ll choose to drive the extra block. I like it more because I used to go with my mother on Saturdays there. Is that a choice? Voltaire and Locke argued that free will is an absurd concept, and that choice is just whatever the dominant idea in our brain is, which is created by many things beyond our control.

Get to the point. I’m not saying anything bad about choice, necessarily. I just think that we arrive at the concept not independently, I think we back into it with no choice, if you will. Without it our house of cards falls, but I don’t think it means we understand choice nor can it hold any real weight as a concept on it’s own. Frankly the only way to explain it is to say without it all the other cards fall, so it must be true.
- Lucky @ 7:57 AM