Mirror is the monkey. He uses a cute little monkey for his icon picture.

You're right. Each mirror that a human looks into shows him or her a monkey.
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As for defying or respecting authority I guess it comes in degrees.

That's exactly what I was trying to say. That it's not a matter of degrees; it's a matter of nuances. Big difference between degrees and nuances. Degrees are the same quality or the same mixture of qualities, in different strengths; nuances have the mixture of their component qualities vary from one to another.

We'll get there eventuall, don't hang up the ole' gloves yet.

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I goofed here in my haste. I am definitely going manic. The defying can and does come in degrees, you're right. You used authority as a concept in different roles of its accepted usages interchangeably.

My sorry. My make mistake left right and centre.

Unfortunately I have to agree with you. Accepting or rejecting the existence of free will as an absolute is ultimately a choice of your own will.

Therefore, having or possessing a free will, I have chosen to believe that free will does not exist.

No, seriously, I will look for that old post of mine, because it shows you that once you accept the absoluteness of free will (or its void), then you only have a choice of two outcomes, believing in complete free will, which boils down to the world being in a constant state of chaos with a LOT of coincidences in its phenomenon (which means that the regularities we see in the universe are happenstance only), or believing in the complete void of free will.

The chaos is further rejected because there are some fundamental rules for perception, such as the indestructability of matter and energy, which flies in the face of true chaos (which is governed by absolutely no rules -- and I mean absolutely). So for free will to exist in its absolute is impossible. Therefore only the complete void of the free will is the only possibility.

This is just one proof, and I just made it up. There are other made-up proofs of the complete absence of free will in our universe, or in any universe, which operates on a basis of causality.

Wow. A complete chaos is an indirect proof for causality and the void of free will. If a unit is in complete chaos, such as one universe, then its chaos is based on the absence of rules. But the absence of rules inherently means that IF there were rules, there would be no chaos. Which in turn means, that a chaos follows a rule, which is the absence of other rules. Which means that chaos is ruled, ultimately it cannot exist without one basic rule and without at least the conceptual presupposition that other rules must exist. It does not need to define what the other rules are, as long as it accepts -- which it does -- that other rules exist.

Therefore chaos is yet another form of things that eloquently speaks against the potential possibility of free will in a material world (a world based on existence of some sort).

The only way to counter this is to say that free will means that if you introduce a rule to chaos, then there will be organization in it, and that would be contrary to the existence to free will. Which means that if you introduce a rule to a chaotic world, and there is still no order, that is so because it has free will among its basic axiomatic players. After all, if you look at a complete chaos, how do you tell if there had been or had not been rules introduced into it? (Example of a true and properly used rhetorical question. For the attention of some.)

Some of my thoughts about the Will:

A human cell is a living organism and it can live quite well in a petri dish, under proper care and sometimes is does better in a petri dish than it does attached to our own bodies. The reason for this is that the cell has its own independent "brain" which is the membrane that surrounds it and receives signals from its host organism (the body.)

Does this cell have 'free will' (which is an incorrect term in my opinion.) I would say no -because it is not quite conscious enough to use it. It is not conscious enough to use its will, so it follows its programing.

Spirit (consciousness) inhabits and gives life to this cell and this cell has a degree of awareness, but not so much that it could use its own will to direct its life and make decisions. Therefore this cell depends upon its programing, which is the DNA inside of it. Its survival is dependent on this programing, just as our survival is dependent on our programming when we sleep and our heart beats automatically and we can breath without having to think about it.

Atoms, cells, and other forms of life and matter are the 'body' of spirit and spirit flows through them and uses them as building blocks for life and form and consciousness. These forms and organisms are simply playing their part in building the structure of the universe until such time that spirit leaves them and moves on to another form.

The forms that are manifested by spirit will become lifeless when spirit leaves them and when every ounce of consciousness is gone from them, only some sort of compressed memory remains.

Forms are environments for consciousness as are universes. They will comes into play when a form becomes awakened enough to be aware that it is alive and aware of itself. Self awareness is the beginning of the use of the will.

I don’t think the belief in free will necessitates coincidences. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that if free will is absolute, then there can’t be any coincidence simply because everything is “willed”.

The other side of that is the apparent coincidence that people will the same things. But I don’t see that as coincidence at all. I see it as a result of agreement.

Well the “indestructibility of matter/energy” is not really fundamental. Quantum Mechanics and Inflation Theroy both conflict with that old Newtonian concept of “Matter/Energy can neither be created nor destroyed”.

So that kinda puts the kibosh on chaos.

I have to disagree with the first sentence in the last paragraph.

If free will is absolute, then chaos itself would simply be a product of that free will, as would any rules introduced.

I think this is the major fallacy with all the arguments I have seen against free will – the assumption that free will must be depenedent upon something. That is, the assumption that there must be something for free will to interact with. But that’s not absolute free will by definition. Free will does not require somthing to interact with. Free will is what put the something there to interact with in the first place.

A good example of authority and responsibility that happens in your every day life is your job.

If you are responsible for certain things to do with your job and get blamed if they don't get done right, you must be given the authority to see that they do get done right. When you are working for an employer you need a job description and you need to know what your responsibilities are up front in order to do your job right.

I have been in jobs where my employer expected be to be responsible for something but did not give me the authority to actually do the job. This is very frustrating. If your job is to make sure the job gets done and it takes six people to do the job, then you must be the supervisor. The supervisor must have the power to fire someone or get the fired, or his/her power and authority does not exist.

On the other hand if you want to have authority over your life you have to accept responsibility for everything you manifest and accept responsibility for what happens in your life as a result of the decisions you make while under your own authority.

I keep hallucinating that some of my posts that I had left go Poof!. Can someone confirm the special case that I am not hallucinating(questionmark). I am not sure, but it seems to be that way, that someone out there has the power of removing my posts and that is exactly what happens.

Please confirm, somebody, if you can. Or else that I went completely bonkers.

Thanks.

I still can not type question marks and quotes. This is what happens when I press the appropriate keys:
Questinmark: É
Quote (single) è
Quote (double) È

I must have turned my keyboard into French somehow. I do not know how I did that and how I could turn it back to US English. I need help, guys.

I've had posts just go poof too. I asked a moderator about it and she didn't have an answer. It wasn't purposely deleted by any moderator. So I think it's sometimes just a "glitch".

On rare occasions I have lost a post also. I may have hit a wrong Key. I don't know what your problem is with your keyboard.

I try to ignore authority unless it has a gun in my face.