You like to think you’re in control. That you “choose” your career, your partner, your morning coffee. You like to imagine that in this vast, indifferent universe, there is at least one little kingdom where you are sovereign—your own mind.
But let’s rip that fantasy apart.
You are nothing more than a biochemical puppet. Atoms and molecules vibrating, colliding, obeying laws they didn’t write. Every thought, every desire, every decision you claim as “yours” is simply the latest domino in a chain that started long before you were born.
Did you choose your parents? Your genes? The language you think in? The culture that programmed your values? Even the hunger that drives you to the fridge is not your choice—it’s biology’s way of keeping its machine alive.
Free will is a marketing trick the brain plays on itself. Neuroscience has already shown that the brain makes decisions milliseconds before “you” become aware of them. In other words, by the time you think you’ve chosen, the choice was already made. You’re just the spokesperson reading a script written by chemistry and circumstance.
Religion promised freedom of the soul. Democracy promised freedom of choice. Self-help books promise freedom of mindset. But beneath all these layers, the reality doesn’t budge: you are acted upon, not the actor.
Of course, this truth is unbearable. That’s why humans invented the myth of free will. It flatters the ego. It gives meaning to punishment, reward, morality, ambition. Without it, everything feels like machinery—cold, mechanical, inevitable.
And yet, that’s what it is. Machinery all the way down.
You don’t control existence. Existence controls you.
So the next time you congratulate yourself on a decision well made, remember: it wasn’t “you.” It was atoms, doing what atoms have always done—dancing to the rhythm of a universe that never asked your permission.