Freedom of Choice - Does It Exist?

I was asked to write something about the subject of "Freedom of Choice." I have taken rather a long time to get around to doing it, though, so I guess the original request is now forgotten, but here it is anyway.

This whole question of Free Will and Determinism has been discussed many times throughout the centuries since it was first debated and codified by the great philosophers of Ancient Greece. So I won't waste time rehearsing the different arguments pro and con. These can easily be found by googling Free Will Determinism. All I will say is that I believe the Ancient Greek thinkers were wrong since they based their argument on a false premise. No, I need to change that. The Ancient Greeks were not wrong, since they were talking about the appearance of things (how it seems to us that things are) but those who followed the ancients, who interpreted their thinking, are the ones who got it wrong, and distorted the sublime Greek view into the mundane "flat-earth" reduction that we have today as our basis for our viewpoint of reality. It is this distortion which causes the pathological problems which are all too often the accompaniment to any examination of the debate, and indeed many or even most of the ills of our society (wars, economic disasters etc) are the result of this wrong-headed thinking about free will.

In one sense, then, there is and can never be any free will. By the same token, there can never be any determinism either. It's like when you see a character in a play on stage or in a movie. The character appears to have free will, as he or she makes choices, but in reality the character's choices and words and actions are completely fixed and determined beforehand by the writer of the script. Every time the play or movie is run, the words are the same.

So there is no free will, only determinism? No, because the choices have been made by the writer. The character has their every move determined by the writer, and the character is in a sense, a projection of the writer. The writer is wearing a mask. This is the persona. The mask is assumed by the writer, who thus creates his/her own reality.

Thus, everything that we do or be or are, is the determined result of our own free choices. But it is only a cause of confusion when or if we ourselves absurdly to choose to confuse the ego self (the persona) with our real self (our inner being).