Mankind and the Planet, past, present and future Philosophical Speculations

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Freedom is to be opposed less to causality than to compulsion.  We need to consider the contrast between the aim and the outcome of an action or event. We also need to take into account the indistinctness of what is desired in this context. An incapacity to target the aim, to focus on what is wanted, as e.g. in the case of a false belief about what it is that is wanted, is a major reason for a lack of freedom. Not knowing what one wants and believing that a given aim does represent  a true desire, while in fact it does not, is a kind of ignorance which leads to outcomes that are  almost always surprising. It constitutes un-freedom in all social and collective affairs. Freedom, therefore, is not in the main a fact, something 'given' in the social domain, but something to be achieved, an aim of evolution. The aim of biological and socio-biological evolution is an extension of voluntariness  with regard to the acquisition of what one wants and what that would look like in reality.

The dispute about freedom and causality is a diversion from the real issue, namely the extension  of freedom, that is the extension of man's power over what was not in his power in his own social domain and, hence, what was not in his power in the external world.

The lack of freedom in the social world is as desirable or undesirable as is the lack of man's freedom in the individual's biological organism, which is, in part, based on the involuntariness of many physiological functions and, in part, so organised as to be be used at the free will of the individual.

Life in itself is desirable. Increase, intensification and differentiation happen in life outside of conscious control. And the ultimate goals in the social sphere (in this respect seen as a biological phenomenon)  will, likewise, be realised in any case, just like growth once an organism is born; they cannot be prevented by reflections in the conscious sphere that accompany the process throughout.  Frequently, of course, that which is biologically necessary will, at the same time, be consciously wanted, although the field of consciousness may have a description for the phenomenon that differs from what is bound to happen  in terms of life.

That more and more can become voluntary once to be voluntary is what is wanted  is the aim of the evolution of life.