[Gem]

If the OP was unclear about how there is no choice about the way it is now, yet seemingly a choice about what shall be, presents a contradiction of choice and no choice, because the choice I make now has consequences which are not chosen, and past choices have already predetermined what is happening now.


The philosophical question is not 'is there choice?' because obviously we choose and decide all the time. The question is 'what is choice?. It comes down to saying, we know there is choice because we observe that decisions are made, but we are not so clear about the entity who makes up their mind.


For most of us choice means deciding what we prefer, want, or what is for the best, and there is a process of cementing one option in place by making other options impossible. If we are someone alone in all deciding, without a God, or some basis of universal guidance, then there's no natural grounds for morality other than consequence. Just doing what you want now might have unwanted consequences, so we form a bigger picture than immediate gratification because have lives moving from past to future: stuff that happened, 'this', and the stuff that's about to happen. That's why you'd love to stay at the party, but you go home anyway because you have an early start in the morning. Discerning between preference and what is for the best, the less preferable is often the best.


The necessity of taking less preferable routes for the sake of responsibility, commitment and/or promise forms a moral framework, so the choosing individual is not subject to any pre-existing, divinely determined universal morality, but a natural moral law arises with discernment because knowing consequence gives rise to responsibility. IOW morality isn't guided choice; choice causes morality.


Even if there is no choosing agent, there is an observable choice which determines next moments. It might be possible that if one ceased to choose, all of experience would entirely cease to exist...

... however, one can not choose to not choose.