Mercy and Free Will

Log 2

ATTENTION!
Read Log 1 First!

Introduction

Offense. Sins. Violations. Crime. These are all words to describe actions that violate law, or offends someone. Other times, it is also actions that are just unacceptable. When someone is offended by another someone, the victim has 2 choices. To resent the perpetrator and hate them, curse them for eternity, or to spare the perpetrator, and forgive them, show mercy, show love and compassion, and to reaccept them as brothers and sisters of humanity. But of course, what is mercy? Some may misunderstand and say that if we give mercy, we excuse their actions. Or we are okay with having atrocities and genocides and stuff. But that's not what mercy means. To forgive means we keep loving our fellow humans no matter what offense they have done. But we don't tolerate their actions, say someone stole my money. I get him, talk him out, and got my money back, and I forgive him. But I don't tolerate his action of theft, and theft is still bad. For theists, or Christians, you may have heard of the saying "God loves sinners, but God hates the sins," it's more or less like that. I forgive the offender, I still love them, but I don't love what they had done, their actions are still unexcusable. Of course, for most people, this is incomprehensible, as I will explain later.

The Arguments

So, what is my thesis here actually? Well I'll tell you, my argument here is the ideology of Free Will is inhibiting people from being able to forgive others. As Free Will inhibits people from being motivated to understand others. Why is it important? Because to be able to forgive someone, you have to understand them. Of course you might say, "Why should I understand them if they don't understand me?" That is the challenge, you have to put others before yourself. So, now we know what is the main idea, let's recap.

In the previous factbook, I have explained why Free Will is false, no matter what. The primary argument is the argument of cause and effect. So basically, a person's choice is determined by the person's psychological identity. And that psychological identity is determined by every information the person has absorbed, along with that learning algorithm I said. For a complete and detailed explanation, go to this link. And you see, all of that information, comes from outside of that person. Let's use our good friend Bob. Others may say that Bob has power over how to react and process that new information, he doesn't have control over what information he gets, but he has control over how the information is processed. Wrong, because that is a part of Bob's psychological identity which in turn is determined by previous information and identity. That is in summary, all of our choices are determined by our past. And our past choices are determined by our even previous past. And our first choices are determined by our early environment, parents, parental treatment, and parental education. But if you recall, I said that Free Will still exists in one way. That is the awareness and consciousness that we can make a choice, that is what Free Will actually is. To prevent confusion, the Free Will ideology that says we have control is True Free Will. While the one that says we only have the awareness of control, not actual control, is Psychological Free Will.

Okay, so why does True Free Will inhibits our capabilities to forgive? Let's get Bob again. If Bob's group mates believes in True Free Will, from their perspective, Bob has control over his choices right? At this point, all that matters is Bob had the power to choose, and none of his past matters. Even if it did, they can use the argument of Bob had control on how to process new information. In True Free Will, all that matters is the present, the past is meaningless. That is how True Free Will inhibits people from trying to understand others, all they need to know is that others have the power of choice, regardless of past experiences. So if Bob made a bad decision because he had the power to, from his group mates perspective, isn't Bob already a bad person? He had control over his choices, he willingly chose the bad one. The choice of laziness and negligence of one's duties. Thus, from their perspective, Bob himself is a manifestation of laziness and negligence, which makes it even harder to sympathize with Bob, furthermore he is a power abuser. But isn't it common sense? Yes, of course, when you have power, or control, you can use it for the worse or for the better. Help out others or satisfy yourself. If you used it for the worse, then you abused your power, as you had control anyway, and people won't like you. You had the responsibility to use it wisely, but you didn't and ran away. But you see, we don't have power over our choices, and furthermore, I have disproved True Free Will in the last factbook.

Now, how does knowing that others and ourselves have no control over our choices, that it has been destined to be helps in forgiving? You see, once we have accepted that fact, what can we do? What can be fixed? The action has been done, the money has already been stolen, so what now? First of all, we want to ask questions, why did they do it? So, we want to look into their history. Let's take an example, an extreme example. One day, a person massacred my entire family, leaving me orphaned. Now since I don't believe in Free Will, I would try to get a hold of him, or search for information and look into his past. And if I am correct, we should find a history of abuse, mistreatment, and just a plain horrible past and childhood. And in fact, you don't have to actually research to prove it. Using our previous argument will still work. As I have repeated so many times, our psychological identity is shaped by our past right? So in one way, our psychological identity right now can tell a lot about out past. Meaning we are a reflection of our pasts. We are also a reflection of our parents, as the saying goes, "An apple falls not far from its tree." And what does that tell us? A good person had good parents and a good past. A bad person had bad parents and a bad past. This means one thing, the one who massacred my family must have had a horrible past, and thus, they are a broken person, with deep wounds and scars.

When one has such a horrible past, it manifests itself within them, and as the person enters society, that darkness within them, is released, manifesting as violations, dark desires, hatred, and so on. Their brokenness spreads to the world, creating crimes, offenses, sins, violations. And once we understand, we can only see a suffering and broken human. Once we see that, we can only feel a deep pity and sympathy for them. We have been hurt, but we and they who hurt us are just as hurt. And finally, what can we do to solve things? To fix things? Fix. Heal. Whom? Them. We have to try to fix and heal them, humble ourselves and show them love. You can't fight hatred with hatred, you will only make it worse. Yes, it won't reverse what had been done, but neither will resenting them right? Hating them will only tear them even further, which means they might do even worse atrocities in the future. And that is true mercy. A deep sympathy for those who have hurt us. No matter what they have done. In fact, we should work harder to save them the worse the crimes. People like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin. They all had horrible pasts, and they had seen hell themselves. Which is why they become full of hatred and bigotry, but it's because they are broken, full of wounds and scars, full of misery. They may realize it or not, but it doesn't matter.

Closing Statements

Psychological Free Will is a good force, and enables us to do good things. But True Free Will only causes misery and the prolonging of suffering. It fuels hatred and pride, all of it is unnecessary. It seems high time that we change our glasses yes? We could've save people like Hitler and such, but we didn't because we were too prideful, we believed we are all powerful, we neglect them and this is what happens. True Free Will has caused too much suffering, people shot in the hearts, when they don't realize their mistakes. People imprisoned, without being understood. This is all I can say for now. But this is why I consider that no one deserves to be tortured or have their basic rights deprived. Sure they may have killed millions of people, but they don't have the choice did they? Do they have control over their parents and environment? No, they commit such atrocities because they are broken, to torture them will just be inhumane and break them further, why don't you put yourself in their shoes?