OneOfMany – What you are saying is of course the ideal. We should be constantly seeking to renew our faith and make conscious decisions. But my (perhaps overly skeptical) observation is that most people are pretty complacent and don’t care to do so on a really conscious level. Furthermore, even among people who do constantly seek to renew their faith and make conscious decisions, it seems to me that a large portion of them only do so within the confines of the Matrix, so to speak, i.e. they allow their entire train of conscious thought to be controlled by preconceived notions which they never developed consciously at all. So even if there is conscious growth, it isn’t really the individual’s, but the system’s.
As for your second point: I’m not sure R’ Dessler would agree, and the questioner seems to be interested in his position. But leaving that aside, how does it really change things? Even if there isn’t no bechirah at all, wouldn’t you concede that the bechira of a conditioned person is negligible?