Desires
As a child, the idea of free will was not something I ever thought about. I took it for granted. At any given point in time, I could choose what I would do next. My powers were not unlimited but there were always choices.
Neither did I think much about why I liked certain things and disliked others. I had preferences, I had interests and I had desires. That was all part of who I was.
But at about age 13, this changed and these things were starkly brought to my attention. The things which I wanted to do and, more strikingly, the people I was attracted to and wanted to be with, changed dramatically and involuntarily.
At primary school, girls were people I had no desire to associate with and with whom I had nothing in common. During early teenage years that changed rapidly and profoundly. Girls became people whose company I desired and being with them aroused pleasant feelings.
I knew enough rudimentary biology to know that most of that was the result of a chemical switch being turned on by the release of specific hormones at puberty.
How could something so profound be suddenly, and comparatively simply, turned on?
Having the sort of mind which I had, I didn’t just go with the flow. It made me question who I was if my desires could change, or be changed, like that by processes which were not under my control.
Free will, which I believed I had and had taken for granted, could be subverted and if that was the case, what about other desires and interests which I had? Were they an essential part of who I was or were they, too, just the product of chemistry or environment?
Rather than making free choices, was I being steered by something external to myself without my knowing it? Was free will an illusion? Is the situation, as Arthur Schopenhauer said, that “Man is free to do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills”?
All of this very much fuelled my curiosity and my desire to find out what was behind it all. As well as this apparent malleability, there were other disturbing indications that we might not be as free as we would like to think.