Question: How will the current pandemic affect our development? Does it promote human freewill? We see that it, on the contrary, kind of takes away our freedom of choice because we behave in accordance with the external circumstances in which we exist. Where is freedom here?

Answer: Actually, we have not had any freedom of choice. We never have been guided by it; we acted only in the name of our egoism.

Taking into account all kinds of restrictions that the environment imposes on us, we have acted only under the influence of one single factor—our egoism—in order to fill and satisfy it every instant.

Comment: In the past, at least there was an illusion of freedom of choice.

My Response: You are right, the illusion has disappeared. But precisely due to the fact that it does not exist anymore, we have the opportunity to achieve real freedom of choice.

It is to rise above our egoism, which fetters us hand and foot and does not allow us to be free in any way. That is, freedom of choice is, first of all, freedom from one’s egoistic nature, which is imposed on us from above.

Question: Why is it written in many sources that freewill is in choosing the correct environment?

Answer: This is already a means. If I believe that I am obliged to get out of the power of egoism that dominates me, then I am looking for a means to achieve this. And it turns out that this can be done only by building an appropriate environment that would correctly influence me.

Question: In any egoistic society, receiving from it brings me pleasure, and giving back to society causes suffering. I do not want to give to it, or I do want to, but to the extent that I receive from it.

But suddenly values in society begin to change and they tell me that giving is good. And I begin to work, as it were, against my egoism. Is this the freedom of choice that you are talking about?

Answer: Freedom of choice is to expose oneself to the influence of the correct environment in which the property of bestowing is considered the highest and prevails over the property of receiving.

Then by including myself in this society, like a small child with closed eyes, surrendering to it, I can change these two levels in me so that the property of bestowal would be more important, better, and greater to me compared with the property of receiving.

Question: So, on one hand, I am going against my natural property to receive. On the other hand, society provides me with certain values that tell me that it is worth giving back to it. And this conflict evokes a certain spectrum of actions in me in which I am free?

Answer: Absolutely right.
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From KabTV’s “The Post-Coronavirus Era” 4/30/20

Related Material:
Why Don’t We Feel Interdependence?
Freewill In Rising Above Egoism
Freedom Of Choice, Part 3

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