Life: A Perpetual Instruction In Cause And Effect

Writing a blog is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of my own life. My life is a constant sequence of events where one cause leads to an effect, which then leads to another cause, and to another effect. And so on. If this is true, then the will is not free. Free will is a phenomenon bound to cause and effect. According to Voltaire’s satirical tone employed, this is the best of all worlds. Since God created the world, and God himself is perfect, then, the world he created must be perfect. Therefore, we don’t have actual choice in this perfect world. We are bound to follow its perfection without changing its route. In this world, “there is no effect without a cause. All things are necessarily connected and arranged for the best. It was my fate to be driven from Lady Cunegonde’s presence (…) Things could not have happened otherwise” (26-27). By taking this though of cause and effect, we surmise that successions in the world are already written and cannot be contradicted.

We normally believe that something happens because it is meant to be. I am the happiest person right now because it is meant to be, I am writing about cause and effect because it is meant to be. But cause and effect cannot live harmoniously with free will. It has to be one or the other. If it is true that cause an effect is the preface to the story of the world, why should we consider free will? Candide doesn’t blame God for everything that happens to him. He blames cause and effect, by the way. We normally blame God for events that we suffer (death’s, loses, victories). Instead, we must think that God created the law of free will and the law of cause and effect, and he himself followed both. We were endowed by Him these laws and we shall choose which to follow. But since we are not perfect, we cannot follow both. We have to choose between free will or cause and effect. The curious thing is we can’t choose, because we already have a cause and effect: God provided the laws, and then we are condemned to follow the effect.

If things couldn’t have happened otherwise, free will is not an option in this world. For Candide, “it was useless to declare his belief in Free Will and say he wanted neither; he had to make his choice” (24). Here there is a big contradiction as he is rejecting the act of free will, but at the same time is making a decision. Candide recalls one of the natural rights Thomas Jefferson mentions in the Declaration of Independence by stating that humans “are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” If God has provided us with the right of life and the pursuit of happiness, we are simultaneously provided with the act of free will. So, did God create these laws for us to follow or for us to choose?