Free will and its limits are entirely shaped by the society that formed us—which, in the end, isn’t freedom at all. Animals have just as much free will as humans, yet we call them “animals” and ourselves “human”, separating the two as if their actions are nothing more than instinct while ours come from some superior level of choice. Their consciousness is denied, ours glorified. But who’s to say a cat and a dog can’t get along?

Perhaps the real difference lies not in capacity but in narrative. We write stories about our choices, clothe them in meaning, and call that freedom. Animals, on the other hand, simply act. Their choices are stripped of story, labeled instinct, dismissed as automatic. Yet the distinction is thin: hunger drives the wolf as much as desire drives the man. Both act within constraints, both move within patterns shaped by forces larger than themselves.

If anything, what we call “free will” may be nothing more than the privilege of self-deception—the ability to mask necessity as choice. Animals are bound by nature, while humans are bound by both nature and the societies they’ve built. The boundaries we draw between instinct and freedom reveal less about truth than about our desire for superiority—something we have clearly lost, and in losing it, became human.