To Be Or Not, No Longer A Question

"To be or not to be" might be the most famous philosophical pondering in English literature. It illustrates humans' eternal struggle with free will, but Shakespeare demonstrated how Hamlet really had no choice, that Hamlet's existence determined the shape of his destiny. He had to avenge his father's death to move forward. Some scholars have suggested that Hamlet contemplates suicide in his soliloquy from Act III, Scene i, but that seems unlikely. Hamlet was not antisocial, craven, or immoral. At no time, does Hamlet ever become a square peg trying to force himself through a round hole; he only ever considers delaying his path, never escaping it.

Actually, his ethical fortitude is what gives Hamlet pause; he knows he should not murder his uncle the king (regardless of its debatable justification), but he also knows he cannot disobey his father's wishes. What Hamlet is considering is whether being a murderer is better than being insane; Hamlet's madness only increases as long as he denies or resists his path created by his existence. Hamlet's only crime (apart from his misogyny and the murders) is perhaps his indulgence of the melodramatic, but no one is perfect.

Admittedly, Hamlet is a work of fiction, but applied to the real world, we can use Hamlet to illustrate determinism. My wife recently studied determinism in a business ethics class on leadership. The professor posed the following question from their textbook, Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Business Ethics and Society: "Can individual virtue survive corporate pressure?' At the heart of the class discussion was whether free will exists. Most people assume that free will exists; we have the ability to make conscious choices, right?

But… we don't make any decisions independently of any external factors. None of us live in vacuums, so the very suggestion that can make decisions purely of our own free will is somewhat ridiculous. I know that it can be a troubling concept to grasp at first, because we've told our entire lives that we have free will—but ignorance is the consequence of generations of folk psychology and religious dogma. Don't worry, eventually you'll get it, or your grand kids will… or theirs. Cultural evolution doesn't happen overnight.

Relax. Lacking free does not make us robots or zombies. Frankly, I feel vindicated knowing that I share both my triumphs and defeats with a seemingly endless network of causes and effects, in which each of us equal individual nodes of incalculable significance.

Feel free to share thoughts and feelings on the subject, and thanks for your time.