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To what extent do you shape your own destiny, and how much is down to fate?
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HisKittyKat
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Personally I think it all comes down to fate. We don't have a lot of say in what happens in life, everything happens for a reason and we all are given good and bad days, good and bad relationships etc.
People with good intentions have horrible luck, people with good intentions have good luck, people with bad intentions have horrible luck, people with good intentions have horrible luck.
Then we have those who are born into their lives. Some go on to do great things, others go on to do horrible things. Sure, when you are born into privilege you have a better chance at making your way through life that is a fact. Yet often these are the same people who say if you work hard enough you can be as successful , incorrect. There are plenty of people who work hard all their lives and never get ahead. There are people who never work a day in life and get ahead.
On average, people who not not born into wealth, fate is in the cards. The percentage of those born into wealth, they will not have to go through what the average person does, but this doesn't make their lives untouchable. They can be given a lot of suffering like everyone else, only difference is they will be carried inside a coffin worth hundreds of thousands of $$ where the average person will be carried into something much cheaper. Both will be eaten and rotten away, so at the end of the day it comes down to everyone at death turns to dust and our bodies and lives are no better or worse than the other.
People with good intentions have horrible luck, people with good intentions have good luck, people with bad intentions have horrible luck, people with good intentions have horrible luck.
Then we have those who are born into their lives. Some go on to do great things, others go on to do horrible things. Sure, when you are born into privilege you have a better chance at making your way through life that is a fact. Yet often these are the same people who say if you work hard enough you can be as successful , incorrect. There are plenty of people who work hard all their lives and never get ahead. There are people who never work a day in life and get ahead.
On average, people who not not born into wealth, fate is in the cards. The percentage of those born into wealth, they will not have to go through what the average person does, but this doesn't make their lives untouchable. They can be given a lot of suffering like everyone else, only difference is they will be carried inside a coffin worth hundreds of thousands of $$ where the average person will be carried into something much cheaper. Both will be eaten and rotten away, so at the end of the day it comes down to everyone at death turns to dust and our bodies and lives are no better or worse than the other.
Zeego
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I believe that "fate" is an illusion, and most of it is due to sheer coincidence that with enough effort can be changed. In my opinion, the idea that "everything happens for a reason" leads to an egocentric view of life in which everything revolves around either the human race in general, or you in particular. It's important to remember that, theistic arguments aside, the universe does not favor anyone. It does not favor a human being any more than it favors an ant, and ants live and die doing work for the colony. I believe that if you want things to turn out in your favor, you have to take conscious action to achieve that goal. Free will is a gift, use it.
Flâneuse
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I think where you end up in life is a combination of your own actions and willpower, and external forces that are beyond your control. I see life as being like steering a ship on a turbulent ocean - you can choose which direction to try to steer in, but you can't control the wind or waves, or exactly where you end up landing.
To complicate matters, though, your will and those external forces aren't really completely separate, but instead intertwined because everything you're driven to do is somehow shaped by experiences you've had, and what you choose to do can change the trajectory of where things outside you are heading. There's also the chance that free will doesn't really exist at all and that even if you can appear to "fight fate" by pushing against the current external trajectory, that your "choices" themselves aren't free and therefore in a sense you're fated to choose a certain way in accordance with your inborn tendencies and acquired experiences, in reaction to what happens to you.
To complicate matters, though, your will and those external forces aren't really completely separate, but instead intertwined because everything you're driven to do is somehow shaped by experiences you've had, and what you choose to do can change the trajectory of where things outside you are heading. There's also the chance that free will doesn't really exist at all and that even if you can appear to "fight fate" by pushing against the current external trajectory, that your "choices" themselves aren't free and therefore in a sense you're fated to choose a certain way in accordance with your inborn tendencies and acquired experiences, in reaction to what happens to you.
Bush
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Fate hopefully provides good opportunities (perhaps opportunities to create more opportunities), then shaping your own destiny means seizing them and running forth with them as well as you can.
The reality is more complicated than that, but that level of abstraction is a good one to roll with when it comes to self-improvement and all. "You control everything" is too simple to work with IMO.
The reality is more complicated than that, but that level of abstraction is a good one to roll with when it comes to self-improvement and all. "You control everything" is too simple to work with IMO.
Gunboat Diplomat
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I think that the question is incomplete.
Free will is an illusion. Many philosophers consider the whole idea incoherent.
So what is fate?
Consider what it means that you are making a decision.
You are making a decision based on your life history. Your experiences. Your knowledge. Your brain wiring. What you had for breakfast. Or maybe it was decided for you by the old lame women, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. In either case, it's predetermined. Then it's fate.
Or maybe it's not the case. Maybe the universe is non-deterministic. You make your decision based on whether one of your neurons fired or not, which in turn is dependent in some way on quantum mechanics indeterminacy or a similar concept. But this means that your decision is random. in a sense, also fate, but harder to predict
If you claim that neither of these options is true, than you have to explain what your decision is based on, that is neither predetermined nor random. Good luck with that.
Free will is an illusion. Many philosophers consider the whole idea incoherent.
So what is fate?
Consider what it means that you are making a decision.
You are making a decision based on your life history. Your experiences. Your knowledge. Your brain wiring. What you had for breakfast. Or maybe it was decided for you by the old lame women, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. In either case, it's predetermined. Then it's fate.
Or maybe it's not the case. Maybe the universe is non-deterministic. You make your decision based on whether one of your neurons fired or not, which in turn is dependent in some way on quantum mechanics indeterminacy or a similar concept. But this means that your decision is random. in a sense, also fate, but harder to predict
If you claim that neither of these options is true, than you have to explain what your decision is based on, that is neither predetermined nor random. Good luck with that.
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