In The Matrix, Neo goes to visit The Oracle. She tells him not to worry about the vase on the table and he replies, “what vase?”. The vase then falls onto the floor. Neo apologizes and asks her how she knew the vase was going to fall. The Oracle smiles and says, “What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?”
This bit from The Matrix poses the philosophical question of would the event have occurred if the subject did not know it would occur? Would Neo have broken the vase, had The Oracle remained quiet?
It all comes down to the question of whether or not when we are told something in advance (foreknowledge), do we lose the ability to have free will? For example, let’s look at Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. Macbeth learns about a prophecy from three witches that he will be King of Scotland. With this knowledge and the encouragement of his wife, Macbeth murders the current king and names himself king. In the process of all this, he becomes exceedingly paranoid, kills more people and eventually a civil war erupts to overthrow him. But had he not heard or known about the prophecy from the witches, would he have even killed the king? Is it possible that the witches made a random guess and had no foreknowledge of what was to be?
Determinism is the belief that all actions and events result from other actions, events, or situations, so people cannot really choose what to do. They do not have free will. And the plot in Macbeth is philosophically deterministic. But isn’t it also possible that Macbeth was destined to be king, but could have used free will to choose a less lethal path to the throne?
In the case of The Matrix, the plot is vague about whether or not it is really deterministic. And it begs an even bigger question. If Neo was never told he was The One, would he have actually been The One?
There are also elements that say that there is free will. Obviously, by taking the red pill you are unplugging yourself from the matrix. You are choosing to be free.
So going back to the vase. Does foreknowledge inhibit your ability to have free will? I don’t really know, to be honest.
Let’s think about manifesting the results we want in life. Free will allows us to determine what we want to manifest. And we are very specific when we try to manifest something. We choose a deterministic strategy to keep ourselves focused, yet we crowd out the idea of free will from our subsequent decisions. And I would argue that if we are 100% set one outcome, we close off other opportunities that might be better for us.
