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In our society is free will a protected right, a religious ideology, or a conceptual illusion? That depends on who's defining the answers.

The most powerful elements of a civilized society - religion and law - define both the collective and individual free will by instituting societal and legal parameters. Without going off on a tangent of religion-bashing or politicizing about our government(s), it's nonetheless prudent to make this point about the illusion of free will in our society: It is simply that - an illusion. We do have the right to expand this illusion of free will to limitless boundaries, but, according to our social institutions, only if we make the right or coerced choices. What we have is the free will to choose life from a list of multiple choices.

Most religions, particularly western religions, will tell you that God made us with a free will to choose life as we see fit. But they also tell you that if you make the wrong choice, then you'd better figure out a way to slather your soul with a fire protectant because you'll be needing it in the hereafter. So there we have the free will to make a choice, but aren't the consequences stacked a little to one side? Are those who don't ascribe to organized religion as a spiritual base, but choose to believe in a creator who gives every human the choice to live and love without tagging an "or else" onto it, going to be sent straight to a burning hell for choosing outside the religious, church-based box?

Our political system gives us a choice between two candidates. Now sure, we can argue that we, as a society, select those two people, but is that really accurate? How do we get to know the candidates? Our capitalistic ratings-driven news journalists decide who's the most newsworthy, then give unprecedented time to the most arguable of the candidates, thereby bombarding us with their stalwart opinions. We go to vote and for whom do we vote? The one the media tells us is the best, the one whose name has been bandied about most regularly, the one with name recognition. Again, we have the free will to make the "coerced" choice.

Our society, with its many institutions, has evolved as a cleaver manipulator of the masses, and in all fairness to our great democratic, capitalistic, God-fearing society, it's inherent manipulation is, in part, needed as a means of control-after all, a society out of control is not a society at all, but instead, a mass chaos. We are given, within the parameters of society, a series

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