Dear Sibichen,
Wishing you a very happy
birthday!
Congratulations for your journey
through the road less travelled. I read ‘Tomorrow is my birthday’ which you wrote two years back and ‘Today is my birthday’, you wrote last year. But already a few days have passed since
your birthday, and still you have not posted anything like that this year. Don’t
lose your way! You are on the right track. Follow the calling.
You are now confused! Whom you
should listen: the freewill or conscience?
Freewill and conscience need not
necessarily be in two distant realms where there is no mutual reproach or
approach. I know your question: Whether
freewill should be subjected to the dictates of the conscience? Can the
conscience issue prescriptions and proscriptions subject to the cultural and
structural predispositions, if not biological and emotional predispositions?
Freewill cannot be assumed to be a licence to act in response to the cathectic interests.
Similarly, even when the inclination to act in a particular manner is guided by
cognitive stimulants, it would not be necessarily justified. Thus there is an
inherent dissonance between freewill triggered action and reaction and
conscience triggered response.
Human, being the superior
creation, has been given the power
to act according to his freewill, of course within the parameters and
boundaries set by immediate kith and kin, social networking circles, and the
state. But it is a fact that there are enough areas in one’s life where none of
these boundaries put up any restrictions or obstructions. Your thought
processes are totally out of bounds for any external regulation, convention,
norms, mores, or proscriptions. May be you would argue that ultimately action
and behaviour would definitely be characterized by the above thought process and
there could be restrictions at that level. It may also be argued that the
thought processes triggered by freewill rather than conscience, very subtly
influences the outward actions, though the true nature and dimensions of such
action may not be very apparent to others. But the truth is that, the intention
and character can be very obvious to others, may be almost immediately to those
who are more intimate and to others if they are exposed to the person for a
fairly long time. I don’t say that this situation is always an embarrassment.
It can be an embarrassment only when the freewill and the conscience are
positioned at rigidly and mutually exclusive realms without being complementary
and supplementary to each other.
By this, I don’t mean that
conscience is superior to freewill or vice versa. This depends on
