I'm writing this as a prelude to something that I will be posting later on (about Narrativism actually, hopefully that one will give you a good idea of my specific take on the world), but for now I want to talk to you about my thoughts on Free Will, Self Determination, and Fate. Now, Self Determination and Free Will might seem like the same thing, but for the purposes of this post, please think of them in the following ways:
Free Will is actually having choice, that is to say, you are not predestined to do anything.
Self Determination is the actual belief and assumption that you have such, and acting in such a manner, whether or not it is true.
This is a fine line, but an important one give how I spoke of Self Determination and Value previously. Self Determination is not invalidated by a lack of free will, it doesn't matter whether or not it is COSMICALLY or PHYSICALLY possible to make real choices, only that we perceive it as such. If, indeed, we are all predestined and we will make the same choices no matter what, then Self Determination can still exist given the definition above.
I will state here and now that I make my decisions based on Self Determination, I assume Free Will exists, and I try not to allow myself to blame Fate or a similarly nebulous source for my failures or successes. This is not to say I do not accept that predestination and Fate or similar mechanisms might exist on a cosmic level, making Free Will an illusion that we perceive only through our belief in Self Determination, but I do not allow the possibility to be used as a crutch.
Now that that is out of the way, let us look more deeply at how these things function. Fate and Free Will are things that greatly interest us in this day and age, and have been ever since Newton proposed the idea of a clockwork universe (for more on this, see the second paragraph and down of this work), where if one could see the starting positions and velocities of all things in the universe, one could perfectly predict the future with advanced enough mathematics. Now, the ideas of Fate and Free Will have taken a large place in our psychology for much longer, one can look at Descartes for an idea of this as well, his works on proving the existence of -anything- at all has significant implications on Free Will (after all, if we are merely a mind existing in a void, our perceptions controlled by a demon, then our choices are not truly our own by based on stimuli provided by the demon controlling our perceptions). But I choose Newtonian Determinism as a starting point because it was one of the first SCIENTIFIC theories to bring into question the existence of Free Will. After all, if one can predict the future, then one will know what choices are made. If Newton's theory of a clockwork universe is true, then all of our interactions, every firing of every synapse of every mind, is all plotted out and has been since the beginning of time. This theory is the basic outline of the first of several possibilities for the existence of Fate and Free Will. Newtonian Determinism is in the first camp, or the "Fated" camp. "Fated" means our universe runs on a tapestry of Fate, all choice is an illusion, we are predestined to run through our lives in the exact pattern defined at the beginning of time, and will continue to do so until the universe burns out.
Outside of the "Fated" camp, there is also the "Implied Fate" camp, in this set up, there are things that will happen no matter how we struggle against them or try to stop them. We have choice, but ultimately our choices are either to go with the flow of Fate, making it easier on ourselves and working within history to allow what will be to happen, or to struggle against Fate and suffer for it, as what is predetermined will happen no matter what. A webcomic named Erfworld actually runs through this idea fairly succinctly, and it appears to be a major element in the fictional religion of the Qun from the video game Dragon Age from Bioware.
The next possibility is one of "Fateless Ones", that is to say, MANY of us are fated, either by mechanisms of the "Fated" camp, or by the "Implied Fate" camp, but it doesn't matter which one, in any case, there are a select few who, by some means or another (whether they are born that way, they found the celestial cheat code to unbind them from Fate, or they just lucked out at some point in their lives), have true Free Will. Their decisions matter in ways ours do not, and they change the way the world works on a monumental scale. The rest of us only have Free Will, effectively when in reference to how we react to their decisions, as Fate has no hold on them or the way things react to them, only on the after effects, the ripples they leave in the world. This is actually the driving focus of the video game from 38 Studios: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, where you play the Fateless One who is cut loose from Fate after being raised from the dead (making the player character unique in all the world and obviously primary protagonist material).
Finally, there is "True Free Will", and in this camp there is no difference between Self Determination and Free Will, there is no such thing as Fate at all, only probability. Nothing at all is certain or predetermined, only highly unlikely. When I kick a ball, it is only "highly probably" that the ball will go soaring in the opposite direction, rather than, for example, transforming into a pumpkin and splattering across my kicking foot. In such a world, Free Will, our choices, actually matter tremendously, and there is no one to blame but ourselves, and very occasionally more mechanistic forces of nature, when things go horribly wrong.
Of the three, I prefer to act as if our world lies in the "True Free Will" camp, not letting the idea of mechanistic forces of the cosmos forcing my hand into this or that act as an excuse for what I do, or what I fail to do. In actuality, I believe in the "Implied Fate" camp, since that is the one that actually makes the most sense to me. There are things in this world that are predetermined, past actions, or Newtonian Determinism, or Historical Imperative, or Narrative Causality, or some equally nebulous and cosmic force compels history and mankind to follow certain courses of actions, punishing us when we fail to do so, or outright oppose it. I try not to let this belief effect my actions, but it I find it interesting to think about all the same, and hope I've given my readers something to consider as well.
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