I'm just gonna start with the recent part of your last post, but I'd like to talk about other stuff too.
This is the quote he chooses to summarize or represent his ideas about freewill. However, I have some problems with his interpretation of Nietzsche (or maybe I have problems with Nietzsche himself). How is Nietzsche's Ubermensch different from the "herd" if he is unable to make choices? If the herd's "slave morality" is distinct from the morality of the Overman, this is because the Overman chooses his values himself rather than have them handed down to him--thus his morality is a creative act. But this is a meanless choice if choice itself is an illusion.
I'll admit something which may crush my argument. I have not read Nietzsche yet. I'll def get around to it at some point. However, since I think I probably get the general idea of what you're talking about...I would say that with Kellhus, at least, it's rather that his cognizance of why others think and act and believe and love and hate as they do shapes his actions. It's not so much an absolute thing - "I have free will, you do not" - as it is a relative thing - "I understand how you work, and I act accordingly to get you and others to do this and that, which moves forward what I want, believe, hate, love, etc. In addition, what I believe, think, and ultimately do is based partially on what you think, want, etc because I have an encompassing plan which requires me to use you in certain ways, by satisfying you, withholding satisfaction, causing fear in you, etc."
Wow, that was a long monologue. Anyways, the comprehension of how others work doesn't shape free will - at best, your original idea has to be made different from what others' ideas are. Kellhus' personality was shaped by the Dunyain, and later his experiences of people in the outside world.
The one thing I don't get, or perhaps remember, for sure is why Kellhus is different from Moenghus. I suspect it's that Moenghus used the blind-people magic or whatever, which involved denial/ignoring certain stuff Kellhus indicates is vital to real understanding. Or perhaps additionally, Kellhus' knowledge that someone went before him, and his understanding of the ways in which Moenghus changed, in turn changed his actions and such.
Ultimately, understanding something completely, to the point where you can control what someone does, does not make you independent of them. In order to control them, you change yourself to change their life, and in that way you bend yourself to their will, belief, desire, etc.
I think Cnaiur and Mainthanet would both be examples of 'roughly unconditioned' people. They don't have the same...computational, really, ability to understand everyone and everything all the time, but one can spot skin spies. Cnaiur's a perfect example of someone who gets how others work w/out much free will.
I feel like Bakker points fingers at esmi as being similar in some regards, but I don't remember where or how right now, and I don't remember an explanation as to why either.
I'm open to transpersonal interpretations of consciousness, and I tend to stress its intersubjectivity myself. I'm definitely not a solipsist, nor do I ignore the grammatical origins of "I." Yet, I still have a problem with a thought (or a meme) "wanting" to occur. Surely this language is even more misleading than the illusion Bakker and Nietzsche are trying to tear down. Memes can only have propagational power (the power to move through humans and through history) because humans find them valuable in some way. Similar to their physical counterparts--genes--memes experience their own "natural selection" within the value systems of human need and desire. Clearly, the human is wanting the meme. The meme isn't wanting the human.
I
think what bakker means is that the thought is "destined" to occur. In that what goes on around you shapes those thoughts. And that many people are bound to stumble on the same general things. The best example I can think of, though obscure is Richard Wright, who has 'existentialist tendencies' for lack of a better term, even before he read them, though books like "the outsider", a later work, show both more conformity and yet more development in terms of his ideas (he's definitely got some arguably valid statements that aren't said, but I think there are times when he suffers, which is why I think of his works as roughly equivalent with the exception of American Hunger, his masterpiece).
