There’s no freedom in having to do something but you’re also not free to choose your wants.
Maybe it’s better to just live and let life happen instead of thinking about what could’ve been. What ever happened is the only thing that could’ve happened.
The point was to illustrate a counter-example to your coffee example and that you can control (at least some) of your wants (which you previously said that one can’t do). I would be curious to hear your definition of want (and have to, for that matter). You seem to be using it as an umbrella term that covers everything from physical urges to something a person thinks would subjectively benefit them.
By have to I mean obligations. You’ve got a meeting at noon, you have to be there. You may not want to, but you have to.
By want I mean every other voluntary action. You’re thirsty and you open the fridge. There’s milk, water and orange juice. Say you grab the orange juice. You did that because you wanted it. To say that you could have chosen milk or water isn’t true. You didn’t want those, you wanted orange juice. If you rewind the clock and open the fridge again you’d still want the orange juice. In that moment you can’t do other than what you want. You can’t choose to not want it. It may be than in a few years you no longer like orange juice so in thay sense your wants may change but then and there in that moment you can’t act against it.
Even if you decide against your preferences to prove a point you’d still be acting according to your wants; you want to prove me wrong and thus you grab the water. That’s still doing what you wanted to do.
If by “want” you mean “everything you do that you don’t have to” then your post is kinda useless. Yeah, you do things you have to and things you don’t have to, that’s obvious, cause there is no other category of actions.
Well I can’t think of a voluntary action that people do for any other reason than either wanting to do it or having to do it. That’s the point of the post. Every example I have been given so far is either of those two. It feels like we’re free do to what ever, but in reality we’re only free to do what we want and nobody picked their wants.
Nobody is forcing me to reply to this message. I do it because I want to. If I didn’t want to I wouldn’t but I also don’t know why I enjoy having these debates. I didn’t choose to enjoy it, I just do.
Just give me an example of something you do or could do that you don’t have to but also don’t want to. I don’t think you can. You’re not free to do that.
