This is a tremendously unsatisfying book and I found myself disagreeing with the author’s arguments on nearly every page. So, I’ll summarize what I believe are the author’s viewpoints, in 3 sentences
- All of our actions are predetermined and we have no way to change them.
- Even if we think we can change them, the motive of change is unknown to us and thus has a predetermined cause
- By recognizing that we don’t have free will, we now have more control over the trajectory of our own life (don’t ask me what this means. This is almost a direct quote. )
In philosophy this line of thinking is called determinism. A problem with determinism is that it really doesn’t agree with our life experiences. A hard determinist would believe that all of your actions, decisions, things that happen to you, and so on are determined and unchangeable from the time you are born. By extrapolation, even your birth would have been preordained by other forces, and by extension to when the universe was created everything else would be predetermined.
I’m done with this book. I read it twice. At least it’s short (only 66 pages)