Are clouds free? At first glance, yes: their strange and shifting shapes are the result of external forces so varied and complex that they prevent us from predicting their form, to the point of making us believe they possess a will of their own, as if they were sails harnessing the wind to move to the places in the sky they prefer. And yet, we know this is not the case.
And what about us—are we clouds or sails? After all, we too are subject to currents of thought, physiological pressures, and emotional winds, to accidental mechanical forces over which we have little control. And yet, something tells us that a portion of our actions lies in our own hands. Something tells us that we are free. But is it true?
It is a question that has crossed the ages, engaging philosophers, scientists, and religious thinkers, giving rise to three main hypotheses.
The Trivium
The deception of complexity
The first tells us that we are just like the clouds—that this freedom is in fact a property emerging from the complexity of our neural network. To give only an idea, setting aside its extraordinary qualitative characteristics, which make it even more complex, our brain’s network of connections contains about five hundred trillion synapses.
In this case, our brain would be similar to that of one of the latest artificial intelligence models, which can simulate being self-aware in an extremely convincing way and are capable of making decisions by choosing between different options, thus appearing to us as free and sentient beings.
In the same way, like one of these models, we too could be an incredibly intricate biological clock telling itself that it is free. But it would only be a mechanical freedom, in which we would be objects rather than subjects. And the very perception of this freedom would itself be part of the mechanism.
The pinnacle of evolution
The second hypothesis is in continuity with the first: here too, freedom would arise from biological complexity, but with an additional step. According to this view, evolution would have led us to develop mental algorithms capable of generating metacognition—that is, self-awareness—and freedom would be the result of this reflective capacity. It is therefore a more advanced version of the first hypothesis, in which the same complexity gives rise not only to the simulation of self-awareness, but to its authentic form, namely a real subjective experience.
Divine soul
The third hypothesis is the religious one, in which our freedom would be the result of the soul, born from a divine seed, waiting to return to its creator after having been united with all the others.
Homo Amans
Whatever the origin of our freedom, we always have the possibility to divide things or to unite them; to observe them as separate parts competing for primacy, or to harmonize them into a unity. And I feel a strong pull toward this latter choice, as it seems to break the patterns, to step outside itself, and to bring me closer to the truth. It is entirely arbitrary, I know, but it resembles so much—too much—the harmonization of dissonant notes, which open up vistas onto new musical horizons. It is the nature of my artistic quest, and it seems to me that the whole lies in that direction.
Credo quindi che queste tre ipotesi confluiscano in un’unica visione e che la libertà sia un’unica sfumatura evolutiva che ci ha portati dalla libertà puramente meccanica di un batterio alla vera autocoscienza di un essere umano. E credo che la nostra evoluzione non sia ancora finita, che da homo sapiens sapiens dovremo evolverci in homo amans e che alcuni sparuti esemplari della nostra specie vi siano già arrivati e riposino nell’abbraccio materno di Dio.
The opening of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is the perfect description of this pinnacle:
"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them."
The Other Half
God—and therefore Destiny—would also fall under the same three hypotheses: it could be nothing more than an illusion arising from the complexity of the universe, or an efficient and rational algorithmic engine, or, finally, the Other Half, the one that causes our destiny to interact with our freedom, awaiting and fostering the fulfillment of the evolution of our souls.
It will be up to me to find a way to set this Dialogue to music.
To listen to and learn about the first two parts of my composition, you can watch the related videos on YouTube:
01 - The game of music: winning or playing?
02 – The Game of Music: I created a palindromic composition
Or listen to it directly on Spotify: