On Freedom

Article 3 of a 10-part series dedicated to ontology.

Caption: Two people embracing in exhilaration as they slide down a water slide, an AI created visualization of 'freedom' as the joyful navigation of a bound path, courtesy of Nano Banana.

Introduction

We hold freedom as a foundational ideal, synonymous with autonomy, choice, and liberation from constraint. But what if this cherished concept is a profound misunderstanding of a deeper, more universal drive? The philosopher Baruch Spinoza argued that everything in nature 'endeavours to persist in its own being', a fundamental striving he called conatus.^[1] From the deterministic equations of Newtonian physics to the causal chains of modern neuroscience, empirical evidence reveals a universe where no being is truly 'unbound'. Yet, every being—from a photon avoiding capture to a human chafing under oppression—seems to want what we call 'freedom'.

This article will argue that this universal want is not for an unbound state, which is metaphysically impossible, but for something else entirely: the optimal condition for accumulating power: 'ability' by following the path of least resistance. The feeling we call 'freedom' is the experiential sense of moving toward this condition without friction. By tracing the philosophical evolution of the concept and contrasting it with this empirical reality, we can see that 'freedom' is a misnomer for a fundamental law of being. The universe is not a clockwork mechanism but a conference of difference, a deterministic process where beings navigate a landscape of constraints, not to achieve liberty, but to minimize friction and maximize their effective power. The future is not written, but it is writing itself according to this relentless, economical grammar.

Classical Positions

The philosophical struggle with freedom and determinism is ancient. Early Greek thinkers, particularly the Stoics, posited a universe governed by an unbreakable chain of cause and effect, which they called Logos or Fate.^[2] For them, human freedom was not about altering one’s destiny but about achieving harmony with it through reasoned acceptance. This was freedom as alignment with the inevitable.

A significant shift occurred with Medieval scholastics like Augustine and Aquinas, who wrestled with the tension between divine foreknowledge and human free will. They framed freedom as a God-given faculty for choosing between good and evil, a capacity that operated within a divinely ordained, and thus fundamentally bound, cosmic order.^[3] The Enlightenment then pivoted sharply toward the individual. Kant, for instance, located freedom not in alignment with an external order, but in the autonomous, rational will.^[4] For him, true freedom was the ability to act according to a self-given moral law, independent of deterministic natural inclinations. This created a powerful dualism: a phenomenal self (determined by physical laws) and a noumenal self (free and rational).

Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre later pushed this idea of autonomy to its radical extreme. Sartre declared that humans are 'condemned to be free', arguing that consciousness is a void of nothingness, and we are utterly free to create our essence through choices, unbound by a predetermined human nature or external morality.^[5] If this seems like an immense, even terrifying, burden, you have understood the existentialist position perfectly.

Running counter to these visions of autonomy is the formidable tradition of Scientific and Philosophical Materialism. The rise of modern science, from Newtonian mechanics to evolutionary biology, presented a stark picture: all phenomena, including human thought, are the determined products of prior physical causes. Neuroscience experiments, such as those by Benjamin Libet, which showed neural activity preceding conscious intention, seemed to leave no room for a non-physical 'will'.^[6] The materialist argument is simple and powerful: we are our brains, and our brains are physical systems obeying causal laws.

Current Flashpoints

The debate is far from settled and has crystallized around several modern flashpoints. The first is the stark conflict between Neuroscience and Phenomenology. How do we reconcile third-person data showing neural pre-determination with the undeniable first-person experience of making a free choice? What we feel and what we measure are in direct contradiction.^[7]

This tension fuels the central philosophical debate between Compatibilism and Incompatibilism. Compatibilists, like Daniel Dennett, argued that free will and determinism can be reconciled by redefining freedom as the ability to act according to one's own desires without external coercion.^[8] Incompatibilists retort that this is a hollowed-out version of freedom, and that genuine, contra-causal free will is fundamentally irreconcilable with a deterministic universe. ^[9]

Underpinning this entire discussion is the Hard Problem of Consciousness. If consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon—a byproduct of physical processes with no causal power of its own—then how can it be the seat of genuine choice? The unresolved nature of subjective experience remains a major obstacle. Finally, these abstract debates have profound practical consequences in the realm of Moral and Legal Responsibility. If free will is an illusion, what becomes of the foundations of moral blame, legal punishment, and personal accountability? This flashpoint is forcing a re-evaluation of the entire structure of human justice. ^[10]

How the Gospel of Being sees Freedom

The Gospel of Being offers a radical resolution to these debates by starting from a first principle:

All existence is a conference of difference, a 'condition of bearing together' transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'.

Thus, as per Exposition 30.1, existence is cast in 'binding, not freedom'. What we experience as 'freedom' is not an unbound state but the absence of friction in pursuing power: 'ability'. A well-oiled hinge swings freely, conserving its ability; but a rusty one grinds and wastes its potential though friction.

From gravitational and nuclear forces to DNA and social ecosystems, to be is to be bound. An unbound state is a stateless non-entity. This principle extends to the human will. The will is not a free agent but is, as per Exposition 30.4, 'attached to its own want'. Our desires and decisions are consequences of prior biological, psychological, and environmental causes, emerging from neural networks before we are cognitively aware of them. Strip away the metaphysics, and this is a story about information processing in a complex system.

Transformation, therefore, does not occur through a break into freedom but through a reconfiguration of existing bonds. All creativity in the universe—from star formation to the generation of new ideas—is a process of re-binding. ^[11] The movement of all matter and energy, including our choices, follows Exposition 30.6: it conforms to the path of least resistance, conserving and accumulating power: 'ability'. This is the universe's economy of being, not an expression of liberty. We are fundamentally interdependent beings who realize ourselves only in relation to others, woven into the "God spell" of a cosmic relational network. ^[12]

The central mechanism is the deterministic process of the conference of difference. The process itself—the 'recipe' of relational interaction—is unvarying and deterministic. However, the outcomes are probabilistic. The infinite variables and differences in each interaction mean that reality unfolds along a continuum from pure potential (possibility), through increasing likelihood (probability), to settled fact (actuality). This is not random chance, but a structured becoming guided by the teleological drive to accumulate power along the path of least resistance. ^[13] The future is not written, but it is writing itself according to a deterministic grammar of relational dynamics.

Convergence & Divergence

The CoD model of a bound existence—differential conference—creates clear points of convergence and divergence with other philosophies.

There is a strong convergence with Scientific Materialism on mechanism. The CoD model fully agrees that the universe operates on deterministic, cause-and-effect processes and that neural activity precedes cognitive choice. Both models dismiss the notion of a non-physical, uncaused will as incompatible with a lawful universe.

However, a fundamental divergence emerges. Materialism often implies a reductive, mechanistic determinism, like a pre-recorded film playing out. The conference of difference model, in contrast, posits a teleodynamic determinism. It is the difference between listening to a prerecorded jazz album and witnessing a live set in a club. The album is a fixed artifact, a single determined outcome. The live performance is the conference of difference itself: a fluid, collective process where the musicians listen, react, and build upon each other's ideas in real time. From the infinite melodic possibilities (possibility), a coherent musical idea emerges (probability), and is then played into existence as a definitive phrase (actuality), all driven by the shared goal of creating a transcendent, powerful groove. Where materialism sees physical laws as descriptive, the Gospel of Being sees the conference of difference as the constitutive, creative process itself.

This leads to a fundamental divergence from Existentialism and Voluntarism. The model is a direct refutation of Sartre's 'condemned to be free' and Kant's autonomous noumenal self. It argues there is no part of the self—not even consciousness—that stands outside the network of bindings. ^[14] For Existentialism, the self is a project of free creation. For the Gospel of Being, the self is a conference of differences (biological, social, historical) that transforms through re-binding.

Intriguingly, there is a deep convergence with Eastern Philosophy and Stoicism. The model's vision of a generative, conditioned reality resonates powerfully with Buddhist dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda), which also describes a deterministic process of conditioning that gives rise to an interdependent, unpredictable field of phenomena. The CoD model provides a metaphysical framework for how this happens. Both views see the self not as a static entity but as a transient, probabilistic outcome of a continual, conditioned process. The divergence lies in practice: the resolution is not necessarily meditative detachment, but an active understanding and skilled participation in the dance of difference 'bearing together'.

Take-away

The perennial philosophical problem of free will versus determinism is resolved not by choosing a side, but by recognizing that the very concept of 'freedom' as an unbound state is a category error. It does not and cannot exist within a reality defined by relation. Instead we must recognize that freedom as being unbound is not just an illusion, but a misdirection. It misnames a universal and fundamental want: the drive of all beings to accumulate power: 'ability' by conforming to the path of least resistance. No being, sentient or insentient, wants to be regulated; every being intends to pursue its power: 'ability' without restriction.

The quality we call freedom is the experiential sense of navigating toward this telos without friction. It is the signal of finding a path of reduced friction and increased power. We are not free from the deterministic recipe, but we are active, intentional ingredients within it, whose unique confluence genuinely influences the final flavor of reality.

This view offers a profound liberation from a burden. It reframes the human struggle not as a failed quest for metaphysical freedom, but as a participatory navigation within a bound cosmos. We are released from the existential anxiety of 'creating ourselves ex nihilo'.^[15] We are participants in a vast, interdependent network, not solitary captains, but skilled sailors reading the currents in the conference of difference. It invites a final, crucial shift: from seeking freedom from constraints to skillfully negotiating them. Our bonds are not a prison but the very medium through which we realize and amplify our power.^[16]

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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