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The hypothesis underlying this study is that human beings act in strict accordance with an instinctive programme, which governs all of our actions, however unpredictable or freely chosen they may seem, and that our ‘cultural’ free will is consequently no more than a kindly illusion with which we dupe ourselves, as much a part of our innate heritage as the rest On the face of it, this proposal is extremely bold or outright preposterous: the idea that everything could be foreordained would seem to be refuted by the wild variety of human lives, beginning with the extravagant iridescence of thought, the unpredictability of our least reactions and the ideas that come to mind willy-nilly; and if it’s unconvincing in an individual case, how could it explain the incalculable differences between one human being and another, no matter how closely related they are? But this impression of difference is precisely the illusion that the hypothesis aims to dispel, and all one has to do (I’m not saying this is easy) is accept that it is an illusion for the variations to become irrelevant and the veil that hid our essential instinctive uniformity to fall away There’s no need to give up those variations, or sacrifice one’s ‘surface’ differences to a ‘deep’ essence, because, in fact, there’s no such essence; it’s all surface And what’s to stop all the countless minutiae of our acts, thoughts, desires, dreams and creations, everything that happens second by second between birth and death, being inscribed a priori in our genes, in the form of a programme that’s identical for every member of the species? Science has accustomed us, by now, to greater wonders of computing Humans have always been very sure that their actions are determined by a kind of causation that is free and superior, ‘cultural’ rather than natural… And the equally ancient hypothesis of instinctive programming has always been reserved for animals and applied to them with fanatical rigour   I don’t know if I’ll be able to persuade anyone The idea is too shocking and arbitrary; and in a way it’s self-defeating because if