FREE WILL VS. PREDESTINATION

I have the lecture for one of my online classes paused as I write this. Currently, we're covering the conflicting notions of free will vs. determination (AKA predestination in a religious sense). The professor is explaining that many scientists have suggested that free will is a false idea and our subconscious minds have made our choices for us before we ever think about them. However, he also notes that, regardless of what the science says, most people reject that notion.

Immediately as he said that, I thought, "Well, the notion of us being controlled by our subconscious is true unless we specifically will it otherwise." Then, the idea came that the natural man is nothing more than someone being controlled by his basic instincts and being a slave to his subconscious. When his mind tells him to be angry, he's angry. When it tells him to be selfish, he's selfish. It sometimes even tells him to be nice, and he's nice at that moment. Nevertheless, even though what he's doing is not wrong in that case, he's still a slave to it and cannot choose for himself how to act.

Only the individual who chooses to shape his or her subconscious through strenuous and consistent effort instead of being shaped by it is the only person who becomes free and able to act for him or herself. Only when we subject it to us rather that subject ourselves to it can we be completely able to act for ourselves instead of acting only in the space that it gives us before taking control.

Once again I find evidence that the guidance that our Heavenly Father gives us is specifically designed to make us free. It's always a reassuring thing to find. :)

TIME = MONEY

I've come to two conclusions:

One, if I'm going to bother to have this thing up, I might as well post on it once in a while. It's been almost half a year since my last update! Sad.

Two, I think way too much.

PHILOSOPHY ALERT! THOSE WHO HATE IT, DON'T READ BEYOND THIS POINT! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Case in point: This morning, while I was gettin' ready to read me some Old Testament (which really has little to nothing to do with the thought), I came to the conclusion that money would be nigh-worthless if time (or death, if you will) didn't exist, and almost all we're buying with money, after all is said and done, is just other peoples' time. So time does, in fact, equal money in a whole new way that I'd previously never thought.

Allow me to explain. If we never felt that there was an eventual end to our existence, we would likely not feel rushed to accomplish anything. Why would we? It's not like there would be anything to hurry up for. We would ALWAYS have time on our side.

Want a new car? Build one. Need a bridge to get across that chasm? Make it happen. Want to completely understand advanced thermodynamics? Spend a century or two studying it. The main reason we pay people to do these things now is because we either have more important things to do or just plain don't care to take the time from our limited lives to learn/build/obtain what's necessary to get what we want.

I acknowledge I might be completely wrong in what I suspect an immortal's mindset would be. Maybe he or she would be just as impatient as the rest of us, but I suspect otherwise. Death gives us a sense of urgency, at very least in the back of our minds. Without the thought of death in place, I think we'd see the world VERY differently.

Now, the exception to this idea is the things we can't do for ourselves. Say there's a plant that only grows in Michigan and one that only grows somewhere in India and for some reason couldn't be grown or transported anywhere else without being picked. Now say we want to cook a dish that requires both of them, but the shelf life of either would expire by the time we'd be able to go get the other. We'd have to overcome this obstacle by employing someone else to compensate for our inadequacy to be in two places at once and get one or the other and meet us somewhere in Europe or someplace like that so we could produce the desired meal. For that much work, I hope it would be worth it.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this thought, and I think it entirely possible that if anyone bothers to read this, you're probably thinking, "Yeah, this sounds a whole lot like X idea proposed by Y person/philosopher/raving lunatic." If you did indeed think or say that, you're probably now thinking, "And now that I think about it, that person was proven wrong already... so therefore you are too."

That, or maybe everyone else has always interpreted "time = money" this way and I'm just the last kid off the bus.

Either way, I'm OK with it, and honestly not too surprised.