Free Will - Bjarke Ingels

I had a philosophy teacher in high school, Mr Ingalls, who had lost a leg in the Vietnam war and walked with a stiff legged gimp. I remember in discussing Heidegger, he spoke of his experiences in the hospital ward. As teenage kids growing up in the saccharine 1980’s, it was hard to relate to the horrors mr. ingalls faced… we just saw the gimp.

Ingalls recounted, those that had lost limbs with an optimistic outlook like him were able to bounce back. He then described seeing one young soldier who was wounded, who took on a fatalistic attitude and just lay in bed facing the wall grieving his situation. That man later wound up dying.

Heidegger wrote extensively about free will. He wrote about the two facts that man has to reconcile: man in each case is his possibilities, but the man’s possibilities are limited by ‘throwness.’

There are a lot of possibilities open to people. We make many choices on a daily basis: what to eat for lunch, what clothes to buy, and which friends to keep. On a higher level though we make important choices which have larger impacts on human existence: what we can truly become, how best to teach our children, what impact we can have on others.

Making higher level choices assumes a certain amount of free will. For example, in any given situation, i have the ability choose to go to work for a great architect or not, I have the ability to travel to different countries or not.

In reality, people aren’t completely free in regards to their possibilities. People could be drafted into wars they don’t believe in, injured in battles that they didn’t start. In my case, corona virus has stricken the economy and few architecture firms are hiring and most building construction has halted. For whatever reason, if I don’t find work, Heidegger believes it is at least partially because of my ‘throwness,’ or geworfenheit. Throwness is the forced fact of my existence. I am born into the world and do not have a choice in the matter. I find myself thrust into situations I have little to no control over like corona virus work stoppages. To add insult to injury, before too long, we all experience death. The end.

To Heidegger, however, compatibilism is the compromise between throwness and free will– the belief that man has the ability and resolution to overcome throwness.

When we confront our own death, we free ourselves from fear and discomfort. The minute we confront death and face it squarely, we can live in a manner that is fearless and possibility-driven. The moment one recognizes the bounds of impossibility, they are free to realize their possibilities.

In a business interview, Bjarke Ingels was asked, “What are you certain of?”

In his answer, Bjarke invoked fellow compatibilist philosopher, Schopenhauer.(minute 2:25 in the interview) “There’s a Schopenhauer quote I think it’s the fundamental fact of life of a human being. You can do you what you want. But you cannot want what you want. Which essentially means, if you want something, you can act on it or not. So you actually have the power to do what you want. But you cannot decide what you want. The truth is in you. You either want it or you don’t. You can analyze in your head. You can even put out options in your head. A lot of the misery and a lot of films are based on people who have somehow decided for a life they wanted but it wasn’t what they wanted because you cannot want what you want. You either want it or you don’t. it’s a bit like falling in love. you either love the girl or you don’t. and if you don’t, there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s never going to work. Think with your head decide with your heart.“

You can either make astounding shaped residential towers with incredible potential for social interactions or you don’t.