3.4. The Fallacy of Losing Motivation

Often, those who initially hold tight to the proposition of free will imagine that to practice Causalism would lead to complete apathy; laying around all day in paralysis, completely unmotivated. This is entirely misguided. Motivation and free will only appear to be linked in this manner at first look. Under further investigation, they are not connected at all.

Do humans do what they do simply because they feel that they can? Because they have the free will to do so? This does not seem to be the case, or even a logical candidate to explain the actual impetus behind what humans do. Individuals do what they do because of who they are, their desires, their past causes, and their abilities — not crudely due to the happenstance that they believe they have the free will to do so and figure ‘why not?'

The idea of free will alone is almost never the starting reason for why people take action. Instead, free will is merely the lens with which they view and make sense of their lives which has nothing to do with their motivation or who they are.