it's insane to me that someone could understand the ramifications of trauma on neurobiology and conclude that free will doesn't exist

i feel like, without free will, no one would ever escape their trauma. without saying something shitty and uncompassionate like "you're only held back by your trauma because you're not strong willed enough"; that's not true at all

but i think, at it's core, healing from trauma requires two things: a person who you feel safe enough to trust, and the willingness to take the leap and trust again

if you don't have one or the other, you're going to really struggle

and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will? when everything about your past, your nerves, your biology is screaming at you to do otherwise?

i dunno. i don't think any of us would have grown past our trauma at all without free will

that said, i think there's also just too much going on in the brain to conclude there's no free will for sure. i guess that's not the same as saying it's deterministic, which you can't really say, because physics gets too fucking weird at low levels, right?

anyways, i guess we can never really definitively say whether free will exists or not. but i think you can still make very strong arguments for being compassionate to poor people / traumatized people / people with mental illness / etc without saying we all don't have free will. it feels a lot like saying we're all doomed to be what we were made to be and we can't make a better life for ourselves

it just starts with convincing people, and believing, that we all deserve that