Not trying to tell you what you should think about your own free will, but here's what I think about mine:
What I consider as me, my consciousness, is getting fooled in so many ways to think it made decisions it pretty much just observered... that particles making up my grey matter can go this way or that way, randomly, without "me" actually taking any conscious influence on them, doesn't really make a difference to me. It's like the difference between a truly random random number generator, and one that just spits out a pre-determined list; "I" don't get to pick the numbers either way.
When I was younger, I tried to "see where my thoughts come from", and it always seems like they come around some corner, out of some blind spot. I never meditated but I, but I always liked the phrase "watching thoughts arise", because that's how it seems, they come into view of my inner eye so to speak, but the inner eye does not make them, not originally. I can add 2+2, but I can't make me get the idea to add 2+2. Well, actually, I can make myself get the idea to add 2+2, but I can't make myself get the idea to make myself get the idea to add 2+2... and so on. Is it possible to talk about these things without it sounding like esoteric gibberish?
Anyway, I kinda don't think we have free will, not to the degree we like to believe, anyway - but I can't help treating myself and others as if we did. I think life would seem kind of pointless otherwise, certainly anything beyond bacteria and plants, so it might be a necessary illusion for us "higher" life forms.
What I consider as me, my consciousness, is getting fooled in so many ways to think it made decisions it pretty much just observered... that particles making up my grey matter can go this way or that way, randomly, without "me" actually taking any conscious influence on them, doesn't really make a difference to me. It's like the difference between a truly random random number generator, and one that just spits out a pre-determined list; "I" don't get to pick the numbers either way.
When I was younger, I tried to "see where my thoughts come from", and it always seems like they come around some corner, out of some blind spot. I never meditated but I, but I always liked the phrase "watching thoughts arise", because that's how it seems, they come into view of my inner eye so to speak, but the inner eye does not make them, not originally. I can add 2+2, but I can't make me get the idea to add 2+2. Well, actually, I can make myself get the idea to add 2+2, but I can't make myself get the idea to make myself get the idea to add 2+2... and so on. Is it possible to talk about these things without it sounding like esoteric gibberish?
Anyway, I kinda don't think we have free will, not to the degree we like to believe, anyway - but I can't help treating myself and others as if we did. I think life would seem kind of pointless otherwise, certainly anything beyond bacteria and plants, so it might be a necessary illusion for us "higher" life forms.