Hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, many wearing pink clothing emblazoned with phrases such as “Believe,” “She Needed Help” and “Peace For Lindsay,” gathered Thursday outside the courthouse where she is on trial in the killings of her three children.
Several of the 300 women, and a few men, said Clancy’s story resonated with them and that they wanted to raise awareness about how the mental health system treats women. Clancy’s lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she was mentally ill.
I mean, the concept of “free will” could be very heavily debated…everything everybody does is influenced by everything everybody else has ever done.
We have the choice to say yes or no, that’s ultimately ours (assuming a sane), but it’s based upon a lifetime of experiences and knowledge. And if it’s not fairly obvious by now…knowledge is the product of facts…and facts are surprisingly subjective.
Even the response to a yes/no, itself, is often heavily tied to a power dynamic between two people. Is it free will if duress is involved?
Even the hobbies that we’ve chosen as individuals to pursue, we got into them, usually, because somebody influential in our lives exposed us to them, on some level. Had that not happened, you’d probably know nothing of those hobbies, and take up something entirely different, from a different influence. Is your passion for that hobby truly your own?
Say you’re a kid and your family moves from SoCal to like Minnesota or some other frozen tundra hellscape. Everybody skates, but you love surfing, and Minnesota isn’t really known for its beaches. So you learn to skate. You never chose to move to Minnesota, you never wanted to skate, but that’s what kids in the area do for fun and the options are fairly limited. Now that kid grows up and becomes a pro hockey player. Was that free will? Even if they end up enjoying it, even if they are good at it, they still kinda stumbled their way into it by circumstances outside of their control.