So anyone who challenges your thinking must disagrees with it

no, though why challenge such thinking ? what would be the point?

To learn and engage with others, to develop better arguments?

No one as you point out can fully understand another. If the criteria with engagement with another is that they must fully understand you  and where understanding means agreeing 100% with your life philosophy and never challenge you… I don’t think that’s makes for healthy relationship. One thing I am certain of is that relationships challenge everyone involved. Perhaps its one of their purposes as they create the crucible for growth and becoming. (I assume here that Life desires/demands growth) It’s perplexing or a wonder as a relationship may be experience as healthy or unhealthy, the possibility of growth is always present. More madding that it often takes a unhealthy relationship to create the growth.

If I understand your argument you believe that the accumulative past experiences will eventually become hardcoded and so determine a individual reaction to the present moment. That argument can’t be disproved as you can always say that anyone who questions it only questions it because of their past, their nature and nurture have conditioned them, its in the gens, at at some tipping point can’t be changed?

i asked you a simple question, if you really do have freewill, can you say NO to life? not only saying no, but having the same attitude and beliefs as someone saying no, its a hypothetical question i know, but tell me what do you have to do to end up saying No? cause you really can’t, you simply say yes, lucky i would say

Not really a simple question: My view on freewill is that we have it but that it is very difficult to exercise. Between stimulus and response, the time between the unconscious and conscious, measured to be about a half second, we react or respond. In that half second the present becomes the past (filtered by our past and future hopes).

A person may practice meditation and mindfulness to make the gap between the unconscious and conscious as small as possible. The do this by making the filters conscious. A skillful practice removes the unhelpful filters as well as any cognitive distortions we may have. This creates the possibility of influencing the experience of the present. It does not change the present only the experience of the present which then becomes memory, and then may or may not become part of a filter through which future stimulus will be processed.  A filter replacing a filter, the reflection of the present moment  always a reflection of the past, there is always a gap. (perhaps a Buddha might be able to remove the gap)

My personal experience has shown me that mindful reflection can change the experience of memory/past and that doing so has change the experience of the present. The painful experience of a relationship ending can be the worst experience of someone’s life, then latter discovering that experience lead to personal growth and strength. From one perspective that’s just messed up, from another amazing. Both experiences now in the past as memory combined, bitter sweet. Is their choice in how the present will be experienced with such a past, now memory?

I don’t know, your argument still stands, maybe its all determined by our gens or maybe its all an illusion. Yet even so, a Buddhist might say one approach to such a illusion may be more skillful then the other. A philosopher may say either way you are accountable. Was that an exercising of freewill? I can’t prove it.

With regards to the idea of answering Yes and No to Life. I grew up the the semiconscious notion that because of ‘sin’, man broke life, but could fix it, usually by following the rules and being ‘good’. This notion in hind sight was really saying No to Life but we can fix it!

In the first half of life this was very useful as it gave me meaning and purpose, Energy to engage with life. Not so much as it was but as I was trying to shape it. Some are able to maintain that view point but in my opinion, only if they refuse to look at life as it is. I could not and hit my head against the problem of , pain/evil – the problem of duality, the problem of opposites.  This turned to a time of depression, when my response to Life was a ‘No get me off this ride’.

That prove very unhelpful. After much search of how others dealt with this response/reaction to Life I explored a response of Yes. This response didn’t change the past or present however it did change my experience of my past and imagined future. Its difficult to describe as its a personal subjective experience. As a taste I would describe it as bitter sweet. (the teste of life?) There is a sense of peace, even contentment but also sorrow that comes with a Yes, which feels like a paradox but isn’t. A Yes does not look away from the reality of Life but flows with it

Today I move from No let me off this ride and a Yes, the challenge has been falling into a trap of indifference. Can a person remain still as they dance with life? To be contemplative and act, knowing their actions will end as all actions do?

Their is the practice of sand painting. The artist spend hours creating a masterpiece, takes a movement to ‘see’ it and then destroys it. Such is Life as it is. Can their be pleasure in the creating and a detachment of the inevitable end of all things, all moments? This is what I wonder… My own experience answers… maybe. I’m a work in progress , each moment a practice that starts anew.

When I find myself distraught. I take a breath and ask myself, how am I in this moment responding to Life. Most of the time its a reactive No, I don’t want to play. The dis-ease most often arising not from the moment but my reaction of No. Wishing to ‘fix’ Life, that it be other, and not wanting to play.  In the next breath I attempt to be more skillful with my answer and sometimes even succeed. This of course does not disprove your theory of Life.