Danny ChaiI’ll continue later, but to quickly address some comments… I’m intentionally not talking about the Christian view with free will for now. I guess one of my life philosophies is that the Christian world view is no more inconsistent or difficult than the secular one. The Christian concept of predestination is difficult to reconcile with free will. One point I’m making is that this difficulty exists in secular thought also. But yeah, I’ll save the Christian stuff for later.
Also, again, whether we feel free or not is completely irrelevant to whether we actually are free. We *obviously* feel free. We can *obviously* do whatever we “want”. But both Christianity and modern secular science tell us that what we do is more determined than we feel. Therefore, “feeling” free clearly has nothing to do with whether we actually are free, whether we actually have choice, rather than the perception of choice.
Until I reached college, I was super picky about food. I’m still somewhat picky, but in general, I’m more willing to try new and different things food wise. This was actually a conscious decision on my part and was kind of related to things going on in my life at the time. But my feeling then was, I could choose to just do the same things I’ve always been doing, not experience anything new, limit myself to what’s always been, and likely drive myself crazy. I was near that point at the end of high school. If I didn’t experience something new, I may have gone insane. Truth be told, I was a little wary of going to Stanford, just because I had spent my entire life in the Bay Area and thought I needed to get out. But I felt my family moving to Houston might be change enough.
Or, I could choose to embrace new things and experiment with stuff I haven’t seen before. It might be bad, but it might be good. Given how tired I was with how life was, I decided to go with this mindset. And I applied it to food. So like, before college, I never had sushi, disliked most seafood, didn’t eat shellfish, didn’t eat (mostly because I just didn’t want to try anything new) French, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and most other cuisines. During college, I decided to give everything a try, and I’m glad I did, because I discovered a whole bunch of delicious foods.
Like I said, I’m still somewhat picky, but mindset-wise, I’m always willing to try something new. Even with kimchee, which I rightly hate, I still try it once a year to make sure I really hate it. You can ask Jieun.
Whoa, random.