Book of Daze: Free Will Is for Real Day

Free Will Is for Real Day honors ordinary people who have somehow managed to choose spouses, careers, houses, dogs, religions, hairstyles, pizza toppings, and whether to click ‘Accept All Cookies’ without first consulting a philosopher.

If this day did not exist, somebody would have to invent it. Somebody who decided freely, on his or her own, that philosophers have been getting away with too much.

“Determinists have been telling us for ages that human beings do not really make choices,” said Walter Blevins, 61, a retired appliance salesman who once drove forty miles for a particular brand of potato chips.

“They claim that every decision is governed by genetics, environment, brain chemistry, previous events, or whatever somebody ate before wandering into a graduate seminar.”

Determinists, for their part, claim that the brain begins preparing certain actions before a person becomes consciously aware of deciding. This claim becomes less convincing when a person is standing in a supermarket aisle for eleven minutes trying to choose between two nearly identical jars of pickles.

The late Daniel Wegner, the Harvard social psychologist who became famous for demonstrating how difficult it is not to think about a white bear, would have called the pickle delay a case of the mind taking credit for a decision already underway, but he was not standing behind the guy in the pickle aisle.

Some celebrants observe Free Will Is for Real Day by making unnecessary decisions simply because they can. They order pancakes for dinner. They take a different route home. They buy the expensive mustard. Some deliberately leave one sock unfolded, though experts warn this can lead to nihilism.

Others celebrate by doing absolutely nothing. They could do something. They just choose not to.

The full library of cosmic misfires and zodiac malpractice is yours just by clicking here—a link the Surgeon General has not yet condemned.