The Reach of Destiny

While I am undecided about whether I believe in Destiny or not, I still feel that a valuable discussion on the topic can take place. Most of us have, at one time or another, questioned whether our experiences are random or follow a predetermined formula. Although there is no way to be certain, there is no harm in exploring the various possibilities out there.

What I am interested in is determining whether other members feel Destiny is open or restrictive.

Open Destiny would refer to a basic set of predetermined factors that influence one's life. Factors such as place of birth and place of death might be the only predetermined circumstances. The start (birth) and end (death) are determined, but the decisions you make and actions you take along the way (the middle) are fully optional - as long as they do not interfere with the start nor end.

Restrictive Destiny would refer to a complex set of predetermined factors that influence one's life. The fixed nature of this type of destiny would be astounding. Every single feature of your existence would be predetermined - from the most advanced to the most minute detail. There is no freedom for choice and nothing is optional.

So how far-reaching do you believe the Hand of Destiny extends?

I had to smile when I read this thread because two days ago my son had tattooed on his arm "No plans that can't be undone by fate" eg. destiny. We had been discussing this for a while before he settled on his tattoo due to ciurcumstances in his life.

I agree with Restrictive Destiny up to the point in that everything is planned or, at least the circumstances that one cannot ignore are somehow factored into our lives so we cannot avoid facing them. However, that's where my agreement ends because of how I believe we individually should operate our Free Will .

I don't go along with the idea that free will is determined by eg the everyday and personal choices I made every day in my life. I think our will-power is something we have been deliberately deceived about, through hundreds of years of religious teachings instructing us to trust in God and let him deal with everything. By this, we have disempowered ourselves mentally and spiritually. Its by believing in something else other than our own personal divinity that we have become strangers to our free will and how to operate it. IMHO.

Even believing in destiny would imply that people are important enough on the cosmological scale to rate a concern from the "what ever being or system you chose to believe in"

Things like Karma (actions affecting indirectly or predestination of events for or against you based on previous acts) Suggest an importance of "humans" than I think most even consider.

Even your "Open" Destiny implies that your start and end date are predetermined by the actions of others not your own, so where your start may be set, it is set by human hands and interactions.

Ive seen people by their own choices and actions turn their lives around, Focusing on "Destiny" can be detrimental to the human experience as a whole.

Try to make your lives and those around you better, destiny be damned.

One of those questions that will always be open to debate, not because of a lack of evidence but, more intriguingly, because there is apparently strong evidence to support both points of view.

Observation of events as they occur suggests a deterministic universe – what you call 'restrictive destiny' – for, as people often say, nothing happens without a reason. And when we observe other people's behaviour, it seems all too clear that they act from deep, compelling motives and impulses over which they themselves have little or no control.

As for free will, many have pointed out that our actions, if rational, must be determined by some combination of three factors: history (both personal and universal), genetics and the demands of the prevailing situation. None of these are under our personal control, so how can our actions be freely willed? Moreover, experiments have shown that the physiological preparations for performing any action – changes in cellular action potentials, etc. – commence before we become conscious of any decision to act. These are important strikes against any theory of independent, willed action.

On the other hand, our own internal experience tells us we act freely, and have control – some control, at any rate – over ourselves and our circumstances. We are conscious of thinking our way through problems, of weighing the pros and cons, of making decisions and acting upon them. We are conscious of changing our minds, of having doubts, of feeling our way through a difficult situation and much else that convinces us we are willing agents. Could we even feel frustration at our failures unless we possessed free will?

The case from personal experience is admittedly not supported by the empirical evidence, but that scarcely diminishes its power – especially since we all share it.

I feel the answer to this riddle has something to do with time. Time is not really as we perceive it; it does not 'pass' in the way we feel it seem to do. This has been known to physicists for over a century, yet so powerful is our biological sense of time that we are unable even to visualise, let alone experience, time's reality. Many of the troubles people have with relativity, quantum mechanics, etc., originate from these theories' incompatibility with the way we perceive and intuitively understand time. Perhaps the true explanation of many so-called paranormal phenomena also lies in the inability of our brains and bodies to properly comprehend time.

I had this very thought the other day...

How can I have a Destiny and have Free Will?

I then in my thoughts was taken back to a "Choose your own Adventure" book I read in my Youth. It gave me the basis of a personal philosophy.

Science is showing us there may be multiple dimensions or universes on the order of possibly an infinite number. If these infinite universes contain an infinite number of possibilities and paths for me to take, then I could choose any number of outcomes for any choices or decisions I am presented with. Within the realm of my reality so I couldn't choose say fly away for example or turn invisible unless that was possible in the chain of events leading to my decision.

In other words I may not be president but I have a bazillion other things I will and could do with my life.

Sort of like a Infinite Blu-ray disc with different possibilities for an outcome of the movie. Therefor my life is completely written but I have the opportunity for choice and free-will.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I really want to respond to these:

reply to post by benrl

Even believing in destiny would imply that people are important enough on the cosmological scale to rate a concern from the "what ever being or system you chose to believe in"

We need not assume that destiny is made for us by some conscious Power. Say the universe came about by accident; its disposition at any subsequent instant is still determined by the laws of physics applied to its initial conditions over time. All actions, including the actions of conscious beings living in it, are completely predetermined – predestined – yet there is no need to bring a Great Disposer into the picture.

I cannot think of anything less flattering to the human sense of self-importance than the thought that we are not just slaves to circumstance, but slaves to blind, dead, utterly material circumstance.

*

reply to post by abeverage

Science is showing us there may be multiple dimensions or universes on the order of possibly an infinite number.

Correct; this is one way in which the paradoxes of quantum theory can be resolved. We don't know – can probably never know – whether the Many Worlds Hypothesis is true, but there's nothing in physics to say it isn't.

If these infinite universes contain an infinite number of possibilities and paths for me to take, then I could choose any number of outcomes for any choices or decisions I am presented with.

What is the mechanism of choice? 'When you come to a fork in the road, take it,' as Yogi Berra said?

That's not how the MWH works. The many worlds are generated at an impossibly prodigal rate, new ones appearing every time a photon changes its spin state, but no-one and nothing has any control over the process. And each of these worlds has its own version of you living in it, all equally conscious, and it makes absolutely no sense to imagine the individual, personal viewpoint switching tracks like a train crossing points.

If we accept the MWH, then the correct analogy is not an infinite Blu-Ray disc containing different versions of the same story, but an infinite multiplex cinema in which all those different versions are being screened simultaneously. And – here's the disappointing part – every one of those theatres already has its own version of you sitting in the audience, fully conscious and enjoying (or at least enduring) the show. You can't move from one theatre to another, because there cannot be a reality in which two versions of you can exist simultaneously.

If free will does exist, then our willed actions have the power to change our own universe. But they do not transfer us from one universe to another.

I can't seem to bring myself to believe in pre-destination, or Karma, or any of those things. My thoughts stem exclusively from Cause and Effect.

Does the "universe' want you to suffer and die from lung cancer in order to learn a life lesson? Or do you die from lung cancer because you smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for 30 years?

Why are some folks killed in car wrecks, while others survive the same crash?

Everything is random. Order in chaos.

Interesting what you said about the way we perceive time, Astyanax. I wish you'd expound on those thoughts a little. If you want. : )

reply to post by Dark Ghost


I am on a microscopic (personal) roller coaster that I don't control, and it's on a bigger roller coaster that is taking mankind for a ride into the future.

When I was three I had no idea what I was doing. I just took in scenes and experiences as they came to me.

When I was ten I had no idea what I was doing. I just took in scenes and experiences as they came to me.

When I got married I had no idea what I was doing. I just took in scenes and experiences as they came to me.

When I became a parent I had no idea what I was doing. I just took in scenes and experiences as they came to me.

Many are arrogant enough to think they know what they're doing, but they don't.

It's the same with mankind. Each time we stumble onto a piece of knowledge it takes us further and further away from our savage beginnings, but we don't control it. And, we really don't see where it's taking us (but I don't think it's any place good).

Destiny is what you call it when someone else has achieved great heights. Fate is what you call it when you've realized that you'll never achieve those heights yourself. Both terms absolve you of the responsibility for your own relative failure to successfully compete with a specific other, and each is assigned in retrospect.

Neither exists in the wild.

reply to post by BellaSabre

Interesting what you said about the way we perceive time, Astyanax. I wish you'd expound on those thoughts a little. If you want. : )

I'll try, Bella. First, watch this – it's only two minutes long.

Okay. What you saw there was a series of two-dimensional snapshots of a human body, taken at successive points along its third dimension.

But bodies – animate or inanimate – are not just three-dimensional objects. They are four-dimensional objects. The third dimension along which they extend is something we call time.

With relation to time, human perception is like the frame of that MRI scanner. It scans objects – bricks, human bodies, the entire universe – serially. We see things in a series of three-dimensional snapshots we call 'moments'. Moments are 3D images of objects taken at successive points along their fourth dimension of extension – that is, along the dimension of time.

Some things, such as rocks, don't change much from moment to moment. Their 3D image looks pretty much the same in snapshot after snapshot. Other things – such as people – change radically from moment to moment. Egg to embryo to fetus to baby to child to teenager to adult and finally to corpse, changing all the time.

Now what I want you to imagine is that, just as the whole 3D human body exists in space even though the MRI scan can only show successive 2D snapshots of it, so the whole 4D human body is present in spacetime even though human temporal perception can only view successive 3D snapshots of it.

And this is true not just for human bodies but for everything. The whole universe.

This idea we have of time 'passing' is just an illusion. Everything is always there, just spread out along the dimension of time. Time does not pass, any more than distance moves; we pass along time, just as we move across distances. If not for the evolved limitation of our senses, we would perceive this as readily as we perceive the simultaneous presence of all points in space.

But perhaps – just perhaps – there are certain circumstances or conditions under which this common, brutal limitation of human temporal perception can be transcended, enabling us to see the future or have precognitive dreams, communicate with the dead, transport objects from one temporal location to another (i.e. perform miracles), and so on. Just perhaps.

If you want to read more about the nature of time, I recommend The End of Time, a very mind-expanding book written a few years ago by the physicist Julian Barbour. If you're interested in exploring the possibility that such a view of time may explain paranormal phenomena, try An Experiment with Time by J.W. Dunne, an aeronautical engineer and philosopher of the early 1900s who was familiar with the theory of relativity. Both books ultimately fail to convince, or even in the end to explain quite clearly the subjects they set out to cover; they are also both very heavy going. However, they are both fascinating, and if you are interested in this kind of thing, they're the books to read.

I really have no belief on this subject, but I often wonder.

I sometimes wonder if certain thigns coul dhave been pre-determined before birth (if we have a soul that chooses things and make plans with other souls and soul mates?)

Or if there is a certain bit of destiny that gets created by our own mind as we go along?

I often ponder this because certain things in my own past seem to indicate a "view" into my own future, as do some things in my husbands past (artwork, written work..) We both drew pictures and wrote thigns very young that seem to have described our future mates and lives together.

Did we have it predestined, or were we both dreaming, creating, and then were drawn together by our synchronized visions?
I am not sure, but I sure find the subject fascinating!

reply to post by Bluesma

I often ponder this because certain things in my own past seem to indicate a "view" into my own future, as do some things in my husbands past (artwork, written work..) We both drew pictures and wrote thigns very young that seem to have described our future mates and lives together.

Did we have it predestined, or were we both dreaming, creating, and then were drawn together by our synchronized visions?

See my post above yours for a possible non-metaphysical explanation.

reply to post by Astyanax


Thank you for your interesting response. I'm way out of my element here, as I'm sure you can readily see.
The vid was educational... and at the end, the life diminishes and falls away, to simply cease to exist, or pass on to "elsewhere".

We move through time like we move through distance. That grabbed my attention. If the two are comparable, it seems as though it might be possible to have freedom of movement along the time continuum, as we do with distance. ( Oh, but wouldn't that open up new ideas for vacations? I would be giddy with excitement planning where I would go first.)

Traveling distance is something I actively do, while time is something that 'happens to me'.


Time may be on a continuum, but the future could remain a blank slate, waiting to be filled to become the present, and then change quickly to the past. Like writing a book; the pages are filled as go along. Otherwise, if the future exists simultaneously with the past and present, it does imply predestination, which implies we are simply puppets acting out a script, and makes life much less interesting. Makes you want to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.

Isn't there debate as to whether time is the "4th dimension"? It seems the vid you posted makes a good case, that it is, or is it readily accepted that it is?

Thanks again, A. I always take care to read your posts because you are a vast warehouse of information.