Fate versus Free Will
You get Calvin’s point, of course.
Fate sounds like a great idea under two specific circumstances:
- When we hope for something good
- When we don’t want to held responsible for something bad
We use destiny as a carrot to the future and as an escape clause from the past. This good thing will happen because it’s destiny. This bad thing had to happen because it was destiny.
When we say that the demise of a regime or a species is destiny, we mean, as Hobbes says, “It’s not our fault. Too bad it was fated to happen.” And yet Calvin immediately recognizes the hypocrisy of the claim.
Because here’s the thing: fate and free will are not mutually exclusive.
How could they be? If there is such a thing as fate, then it is driven by our free will. The irony of Shakespeare is always that the protagonists attempt to escape their fate via their own free actions, which in turn drives the very fate they seek to avoid. Without the existence of free will, whether actual or perceived, nothing would happen.
Free will is the cornerstone of fate. My friend Neil has been telling me for ages about a book he read (the name escapes me) that studied luck, and which found that luck is highly predictable: namely, people who talk to strangers tend to be luckier.
This makes a lot of sense. If you don’t talk to strangers, how else could you possibly meet someone on the bus who turns out to be the ideal investor in your new business venture? The more you expand your options of discovery, the greater the likelihood that you come across something good—it’s like buying extra Lotto tickets.
Even though luck has, by definition, an element of chance (Merriam-Webster says that luck is ‘a force that brings good fortune or adversity’), this book shows that it is a direct result of certain behaviors and therefore can be orchestrated.
Create your own luck. Manifest the destiny you choose. Or say, “I can’t help it; it’s fate.”
Which one sounds more gratifying?
