The Four Factors Shaping Human Nature: Where Does Our Free Will Really Lie?

Yesterday evening the youth community had a very powerful lesson about free will.

Here are the highlights -

Most of us navigate life under the deep-seated assumption that we are the absolute masters of our destiny. We naturally take pride in our beliefs, career paths, aesthetic tastes, and core values, treating them as products of our independent thinking and self-determination.

However, examining human nature through the lens of Kabbalistic wisdom - specifically Baal HaSulam’s seminal essay, The Freedom - reveals this internal narrative to be largely an illusion. Human beings do not begin life as a blank slate, nor do we exist in a vacuum. Every thought, habit, and desire that arises within us is forged by four precise factors operating beyond our direct control, shaping us much like clay in the hands of a potter.

The first fundamental factor is The Substrate (HaMatzeh) - our inherited raw material. Just as a grain of wheat planted in the soil must decay and shed its previous form to produce a new stalk, the initial genetic and spiritual seed from which we are formed sheds the conscious intellect of our ancestors and transmutes it into hidden forces within us.

What functioned as calculated intellectual conclusions for previous generations becomes innate tendencies, subconscious traits, and emotional inclinations in the next. This heritage is not just physical; it encompasses our spiritual blueprint - our natural predispositions toward generosity or stinginess, skepticism or faith, modesty or audacity. Because of this process of shedding form, a trait in a child may even manifest as the exact opposite of the parent's trait.

The humbling reality is that what we customarily defend as our "authentic self" is primarily an inherited baseline we received ready-made.

The second and third factors govern how this baseline grows and transforms through The Environment and Habit. As raw material, a person is in constant, dynamic interaction with society. The environment functions as a furnace, gradually pouring concrete content into our dormant tendencies. It feeds us opinions, values, and rationalizations until we become thoroughly convinced we arrived at these conclusions independently.

Furthermore, society acts as a selective filter: it can suppress dominant inherited traits into near total obscurity while amplifying minor tendencies into defining features of our personality. Overlaid upon this is the transformative power of repetition.

Unlike the plant kingdom, human beings possess the unique capacity to form a "second nature." By consistently engaging in deliberate actions - even those initially counter to our inclinations - we forge entirely new behavioral pathways that eventually feel completely natural.

Finally, the fourth factor consists of External Factors completely alien to our internal trajectory - such as economic shifts, global crises, and the subtle invisible forces of the world around us. We inhabit a dense field of influences that constantly exerts pressure on our consciousness, shaping our choices in ways we rarely perceive.

If our starting point is pre-determined by heritage, our thoughts steered by environment, and our actions nudged by external pressures, where does human freedom actually exist?

Baal HaSulam’s answer fundamentally reshapes our understanding of autonomy. True freedom does not lie in attempting to alter our foundational genetics, nor does it exist in passively following whatever desire happens to pop into our heads. Our sole point of free choice narrows down to a single decision: choosing the environment where we plant ourselves.

Just as a farmer cannot alter the intrinsic nature of a seed but holds total power over the quality of the soil, sunlight, and fertilizer provided to it, our only real freedom is deciding which influences, communities, and values we allow to shape our future nature. We may not choose our starting line, but we hold absolute responsibility for selecting who gets to direct our growth.