Don’t blame me…

As we go about our daily lives we sometimes get so caught up with the mundane aspects of life that we tend to loose focus of who we really are. According to Existentialism, who we are depends upon the decisions we make. In reality, it works quite the opposite. Who we are as people depends upon all of the events that we have experienced. These events, or significant moments, all add up and amount to our personalities and the way our minds process information. Many people, including myself, sometimes think that people do have control over all of these experiences, leading us to occasionally blame and criticize others for the ways they act. However, if we examine the details we can conclude that people, on the contrary of what they may believe, do not have real control over the events they experience, how they are affected by them, or even who they are today.

The first crucial question that needs to be answered is whether or not we have control over the different situations we are exposed to. Although people may have some awareness and anticipation of upcoming events, they have no initial intentions of controlling them the way they come about. A nice and simple example of this is my moving experience from St. Louis to Cleveland. This was not an experience that I could just refuse to partake in. Because of employment opportunities they wanted to take, my parents gave me no choice. I had to leave my friends and endure the various emotions caused by this. I had to experience going to a new school and making new friends. I had to become mentally stronger as a result, and get over my losses. This demonstrates that I really had no options as to which significant moment I would be exposed to, and how I would change from it. Another good example that can be used for the purpose of this essay involves Mersault, from Albert Camus’ The Stranger. Did he really have control over what happened at the beach? We can begin with the simple fact that if the Arabs did not follow Mersault and Raymond to the beach, then he wouldn’t have shot and killed one of them. One might argue that Mersault did have an effect on the tensions between Raymond and the Arabs, and somehow did influence them to appear at the beach. If we trace the reasons for their presence at the beach all the way back to when Mersault befriended Raymond, we can become convinced that Mersault did not have any intentions related to the significant incident at the beach much later, and it would be very absurd if he actually did.

Once having reasoned out that people have no real control over the life-changing moments that they experience, we have to prove that people, out of personal instinct, react and learn from every incident in a distinctive way. Because there are no multiple persons who have experienced identical pasts, no two people share the same intuition of how to react to the virtually infinite amount of significant moments that they undergo. Anything that you see, feel, hear, or smell discharges thoughts throughout your brain. They can sometimes be vivid memories that display some kind of resemblance, or just a thought about how pleasant or unpleasant the scene is. This means that people’s minds are accustomed to interpret the information from every happening in a discrete manner. These moments take place so often that we continuously experience very small and unnoticeable changes. This then allows us to believe that every person will react and become affected from every experience in an individual way, which solely depends upon each moment that the person has been exposed to since birth.

Since we have confirmed that the way in which a person’s mind reacts to and processes events, which are uncontrollable, is unique, we can begin to conclude that people have no real choice of becoming the person they are. When a person is presented with a “choice,” they may believe that they do have some options as to which route to pick. But why would they pick one over the other? There must be a reason. Perhaps they have learned from a previous similar experience which decision is the most beneficial. Or maybe they were given advice from a friend beforehand. Maybe they happened to think the options through and proceed with the one that they found had the least disadvantages. One could argue that these circumstances are controllable, such that you “choose” your friends who are there to give you advice and so on. If we trace the reasons for which you “chose” those friends back as far enough as necessary, it is evident that the roots which those reasons came from were nowhere near your control, unless you wanted to argue that as a just-born baby you had remarkable skills with which you intentionally chose your path to this day. Theoretically, these reasons do not have a limit as to how far back they originate. This is because they depend on all of history.

Many widespread beliefs are held regarding the freedom of humans to make choices. People may become misguided by the amount of pressure caused from their concern to make “the right choice.” Since every person on the planet has a different past, individuals have learned a distinguishing mixture of lessons from their own. Everybody’s brain processes this information in a unique method, allowing everyone to make distinct decisions the way they do. So in the world that we live in, the “choices” people make are justified by the experiences they have accumulated in their past.