I'm going to talk about a very difficult subject.
It's called "free will".
Most people believe that they have free will.
Strange thing about it... In the mechanical world
when they say the machine turned off
machines don't turn off. Either there's a short
or something wrong with the circuit.
Even automobile mechanics look for
the factors that change the behavior of the automobile.
Either the tires are not equally inflated
they look for that, if your car veers to the right or left.
Sometimes the tire pressure isn't even in your car.
Sometimes a lawn mower doesn't cut the grass:
The blades aren't sharp enough
or the RPM isn't great enough, the rotational speed.
So they always look for events
that are responsible for the behavior of all mechanical systems.
In fact, if you made a blade of a fan and had no pitch
it would turn, but it wouldn't blow wind.
So it's the pitch that blows the wind.
And of course, the pitch moves the air rather than blows the wind.
So, we all look for... Even a wind turbine
is turned by the pitch, but wind has to act on it to do that.
Now, moisture rises off the earth.
We say the moisture is rising. Actually, the sun evaporates it.
The sun lifts these little drops by heating them
and they move up and back rapidly and they rise.
Actually, they're caused to rise
by the sun acting on the drops of water.
We equate everything in nature. We never see...
Well some of us do. We say "The tree fell over."
The tree doesn't fall over, unless it happens that branches
grow and change the center of gravity of the tree
so it can no longer... The roots
do not grasp enough surface to keep the tree upright.
So the wind acting on the tree
makes it fall to the ground.
It isn't just the wind; it's gravity
and asymmetry of balance which causes that.
But human beings feel that
they themselves have free will. They make choices.
Free will means that all choices are made without cause.
If something is caused by something else, it's not free will.
In other words, hunger, when you get hungry
the organism has used up a lot of energy
and so you have different feelings.
You have thirst. You have hunger. It's thirst
that tends to make you want a glass of water.
If you never had a feeling of thirst, you'd dry up; you would die.
If you didn't have a sensor.
If a fly landed on you, if you didn't feel the itch
it would sting you continuously; so would a bee.
But the fact that you have sensory things
meaning responding mechanisms
you'll whack the fly.
So if all things in nature
are subject to natural force
including the orbit of the moon around the earth
there's a gravitational field that keeps the moon within the orbit.
The same [happens] with the earth.
The same [happens] with the earth rotation
[which] is done by physical force.
[There is] something in nature that does that.
A magnet really does not attract other material
but there's some mechanism in the magnet
that acts in a certain way.
In other words, they found out years ago
that if you suspend a ball with a string
and you're in a precipice, it moves toward the precipice.
Mass seems to attract mass, certain kinds of mass.
So if you suspend a ball near a cliff
it moves a little bit toward the cliff.
Now, what that mechanism is
I can go into theories about that, but I don't want to do that now
because it won't serve any useful purpose.
If an airplane is about to take off
and there's a certain gust of wind, it'll take off faster.
If it's about to come in for a landing and the wind moves
at the speed the airplane is going, it'll drop to the ground:
It needs wind coming at it to sustain it.
Also, man does not see with his eyes.
He needs light.
If a man says "Well, at least I can see."
If you bring him into a dark closet and tell him to see
he cannot, unless there's light.
So he does not see with his eyes. He sees with a combination
of the retina, the brain, the eyes, and light
and many other factors which I needn't go into.
If all things are acted upon by nature
if a moth has a tendency to fly into light
and the moth has what we call an antenna.
It's a heat sensor
and when he gets near the flame, the heat sensor lets him know
gives him a reaction away for the flame.
So a moth without an antenna would fly into fire.
It's the antenna that caused him to back off.
If you put sensors on a machine
meaning if they can sense the environment, they can react to it.
Without sensors, a blind man needs a cane
to see if there's objects in front of him
because he doesn't have visual sensors.
They say he tripped over the object.
No, he had no sensors to tell him there was an object
on the floor that he could not sense.
So if a doctor knows that you have damaged sensors
they recommend eyeglasses or eye surgery
or retinal damage replacement or hearing aids.
If you lose your hearing, you can't hear a Mack truck
coming down the street. You'd have to step in front.
If you can hear, at least you've got another sensor
that tells you there's a vehicle coming.
So people that are deaf, have a higher chance of being hit by a car
not because they're deaf, but because they can't sense the car
coming down the street.
So, when we talk, they used to in the old days say we have six senses
like we had six.
We have an internal sense of how full you are.
You have a pain sense of the depth of your body.
You have an itch sense; you have a burn sense.
You have many different senses, not six.
You can say, we have six senses that I'm aware of
but you can't say we have six senses.
You have a sense of fullness, sometimes, a sense of fatigue
which they don't talk about.
So, don't try to [assess] numerically...
unless you do a study of everything you react to
and you say this a list of everything
that I find, that man can react to.
Some people, some, very few
can sense magnetic fields.
Some birds can't, if you put a magnet
connect a magnet to their head, they lose sense of direction.
The same with fish
so fish have senses we don't have.
I'm not talking about good, bad, right or wrong.
I'm just talking about what you react with!
So if a light gets continuously brighter and brighter
your eyelids will come down.
And if it gets so bright, you'll put your hand in front
to diminish the light.
They say "I put my hand there to diminish the light."
Even if they couldn't speak, they'd do that. Do you know what I mean ?
You don't have to be able to speak.
So people think that they choose things.
The proofs that they don't choose things are many, but I'll give some.
If you're brought up in a tribe
that looks very different than we do, you fall in love
with that configuration.
That's why when I say there's no such thing as beauty
it's a condition thing.
You're conditioned to like girls that are blond or redhead
depending on the movies, books or people you've known.
So, we don't always know what it is
that makes us appear to choose.
But if you met a person with yellow spots on their face
and they always beat you up, every time you met a person
with yellow spots, then the next time you saw a person
with yellow spots you'd cross the street
and they say "I'm avoiding the person with the yellow spots."
No, that's called the conditioned reflex.
You're conditioned to react to yellow spots.
It doesn't mean that everybody with yellow spots will beat you up.
We project, and maybe some of that projection is useful for survival.
So if you eat a certain type of grass and you get a belly ache
the next time you see that pattern
you'll tell somebody else "Don't eat that"
because all your decision-making is based upon experience.
So if you touch a lot of poison oak, you get blisters on your hand
and you don't know what it is that you touched
you'd better make a record in the future of touching things
and then looking in your hand, and then later when you get a reaction...
Your decision-making system is affected by the rash you get.
If you meet a redhead and she's very temperamental
and you meet a second redhead and she's very temperamental
you might tell your friends "Stay away from redheads!"
They're temperamental." No, that's your reaction to particular redheads.
If you meet a gay person, and they reach for you
you push their hand and say "What is the matter with that person?"
They've been conditioned differently than you have.
It isn't that they're bad; nobody is bad.
That's why society does not believe in free will.
They say "Don't steal." When the kid steals you slap his hand
if you catch him stealing. If you don't catch him, he can get away with it.
So you tell kids... You give them a sense of morality
a sense of behavior by spanking or pulling a dog.
All dogs will try to do whatever they want to do
so you connect a leash to him.
When he tries to do his own thing you pull him away.
So he always has to obey you.
But if you let a dog alone, he'll take over.
A dog will always try to get you to do things
to satisfy it, unless you dominate the dog.
The same with people. If a guy says to a small guy:
"Go get me a glass of water," and the small guy doesn't, and he slaps him
the next time he says "Get me a glass of water", the small guy will.
But if he's a big guy, he picks him up and throws him across the room.
He then says "I will get my own glass of water."
That's based on conditioning.
Free will is an arrogance on the part of man:
the assumption that he is the only object in the world
that does not react to certain stimuli.
All decisions are based upon whatever reaction you had.
If you like a young lady, you get married.
In the old days you just moved in together
but it was to difficult to manage.
That is, a ruling group of people could not manage people
unless they made a set of laws
and said "You don't take anything out of his hut.
You don't take anything out of her hut."
They had to invent some kind of structure
to keep that society working.
In other words, if everybody took things from your log cabin
and you went hunting and you got 5 rabbits and I stole 4 of them
the tribe wouldn't work.
So morality is an outgrowth
of the inability to manage systems. Do you understand that?
All moral laws come about
because we need to have...
especially if you get more than four people living together
you have to make laws.
The laws like "Don't take his bow and arrow. He made that bow and arrow."
You give them all kinds of words "It is wrong, this is..."
But if a guy doesn't have bow and arrow or a javelin
and a lion comes at him, and your javelin is nearby
he will borrow it.
He doesn't steal it. He borrows it and he throws it at the lion
because that's the only thing he knows that'll keep the lion off.
He says "I decided to take your javelin
although I know it's yours
but there was nothing else I could do at the time."
So the judge might be lenient.
A lenient judge is a broad judge with broader experience.
A judge is brought up to believe in right, wrong, good, bad
black and white. His decisions are rigid as hell.
But if you go to another country that has a different set of values
and he learns to live there
he can understand when you say:
"Different cultures impose different values on people."
They don't care if you were to take one grape
from your grape collection, if you had a lot of grapes on the table.
But if you only have one grape
the law becomes severe.
In scarcity there are more laws. Can you understand that?
The scarcer the object: the more laws.
Now if a man is incapacitated
he has scarcity.
So he looks at you, who can walk up and down and jump.
He envies you
because you have a wider range of behavior.
But if he can be given a shot in the same range of behavior
he no longer envies you.
So envy is a by-product of behavior
sometimes, that you cannot perform.