Robert Sapolsky's Theory of Free Will & Self Friendship

It's up to you! Or is it? dundundndnnnnndun. It is.

A comment I received on one of my Instagram reels this week mentioned Robert Sapolsky’s theory of Free Will. I hadn’t heard of that yet so I looked into it briefly. On the surface, he says we don’t have free will, as his perspective is from the extreme objectivity of the blobs of energy humans are. Though I did not honestly do a ton of research on this (because I’m going to take the little tidbit and connect it to Self Friendship), it actually seems his theory is that despite our environment, genetic, and neurobiological factors, he believes humans do still have a sense of autonomy in decision making. As, something he has highlighted is that “[humans] feel as if our feelings are real”. As I see it, that type of consciousness alone tells me that there is a sense of free will. We are deciding that our feelings are real. A decision.

This is not to take away from his theory or positioning whatsoever. It’s to fuel my inspiration through my Self Friendship lens in relation to his theory.