Destiny

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When i was a kid, like 8-9, i remember one specific moment where i was wondering about destiny and more specifically, my destiny. I remember walking down the road and stopping to tie my lace and wondering where my life would be if i'd just tied my lace properly the first time. Like i know my life wouldn't be much different through stopping to tie my lace, but how much further down the road would i have been if i hadn't had to stop?

What if all those delays could accumulate? Where would i have been now if i'd not stopped so many times in my life and delayed things? Was the person that i am always going to have led me here? Were those delays inevitable because of the person i am?

I think destiny has always been a common theme in my mind, something ive always pondered.

Who here thinks about their destiny a lot?

Each of us, through our choices make the world what it is.

ruveyn

unfortunately.

in fact, scratch that. i disagree. the choices of the few far, far outweigh the choices of the many.

We write our own destiny.

Our destiny is not written for us.

Barack Obama

My sentiments exactly.

I do not believe in any pre-determined purpose or destiny that we all intrinsically have. Life is what we make it.

"Destiny" is just another term for "Luck" or "Fortune".

A person makes his or her own destiny, by being prepared for each opportunity as it presents itself.

This reminded me of some discussions related to free will, the philosophy of time and even the philosophy of time travel, which I read a while ago somewhere, such asking the following question:

1. In the present we see that the past cannot be changed.
2. The Past which cannot be changed, is the future of an earlier past.
3. The earlier past lacks knowledge of The Past (which is its future)

Given this we have:
From #3's perspective, #2 is uncertain.
However, from #1's perspective, #2 has already happened, so it knows what happened and what will happen mimicking #3's perspective.

So this leads to the question of wether, the future (which is the past of a far future, and given that the past cannot be changed) is really uncertain or an illusion from our perception. Well, for one, this example seems to be related to time travel given that it looks to portray time in a nonlinear way, however as time progresses the future becomes the past and the issue regarding free will.

Another example is watching a film:
A and B watch the same movie.
A has already watched the movie, so he knows what happens until the end.
B is watching it of the first time, so he doesn't know.
From B's perceptoin what is to come in the movie is uncertain, so for him, anything can happen.
B can wish for something to happen or for the characters to do something.

When the film ends, everything is done. Such as events we live through. And we can't change anything that happened on a movie, which is something A realized when he watched the movie with B, but B didn't have knowledge nor experienced the movie at the time.

Well destiny can be constricting or liberating.

Constricting: It doesn't matter what I do, whatever's going to happen is going to happen. So I might as well not even try.

Liberating: It doesn't matter what I do, whatever's going to happen is going to happen. So I might as well do whatever I want!

Destiny can make you feel small: I may as well accept my fate to be a lowly nobody.

Destiny can make you feel big: I don't care what anybody else says, I am destined for greatness!

The only nod I typically give to destiny is that I try not to tempt fate. I guess that means I believe that it exists in some form. Since fortune favors the bold I try to remember to this response to opportunities that probably couldn't hurt: "What the Hell? Might as well."

I think there is no worse bull than the concept that all you need to do is "be prepared". Your genes alone determine a lot of skills and dispositions. And that's not accounting the family (or lack thereof) in which you may fall.

Case in point, if you have a rapist father, you will go through the life of a traumatized rape victim, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Life is a lottery, and it is time to admit it and appreciate the moments in life in which you were lucky.

"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Just be careful with that line of thought - you could drive yourself utterly crazy weighing opportunity costs of things you decided not to do and all the imaginary possibilities of what could be better (typically without imagining what could be worse).

Just know this - you are you, as you've always been and always will be, and that's an active combination of genetics and environment that from the beginning of life until the end was a story written at and by the big bang. Worry perhaps about what suits you, which plans going forward seem feasible, and if you never decide to really 'live in the wild side' and throw all your habits out the window there's no point in regretting it, much for the first reason I stated; ie. the other universe where you did things different is a figment of your imagination.

Bullsnot.

I know of a position that requires a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in either cybernetics (robotics) or programming - preferably both. No one in that company is prepared to take that position, which would pay in excess of 100K$US. The job will go to one person who has prepared him- or her-self for the position, and not some random drone from off the street. If you are not prepared to meet the qualifications, then you will not get the job, and you will have blown the opportunity.

Those who are prepared to meet an opportunity are more likely to be successful than those who are not prepared.

... loser says, "Unfair" ...

Well, the only argument I'd make the other way is that preparation has to meet capacity; ie. if you have great booksmarts perhaps but have too bad of short-term/working memory or just bad executive functioning in general you'll be hard press to find many degrees that, while they look and sound great, will be worth much in your hands. Some people have the capacity and never apply themselves, or life so happens that tragedy hits them in one form or another at the wrong age, otherwise there are lots of people who'd be willing to do the work but simply - physically/neurologically, would never have it in them.

Its no reason to cry 'unfair', it would be unfair to such an employer to forced to fill that spot with someone who can't hack it. All the same though I wouldn't say that of the 99% percent of people who don't have the right kind of experience that most of them slacked somewhere. Random acts of evolution create us all different.

Predestination is absolute, very few are destined to know, most are destined for ignorance.

Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" is often held as a counter-example, but now, each
road leads to a cheap discount chain-store, so that debate is presently mute too.

http://www.famous-poems.biz/Robert_Fros ... Frost.html

Tadzio

Evidence, please?

Predestination implies a meta-authority that determines the actions of every particle of matter, every erg of energy, and every iota of thought throughout the universe from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch. Predestination implies that there can be no sin, since the meta-authority would have already dictated every theft, every murder, every idol-worship, and every other broken commandment, and in doing so, taken away any freedom for the "sinner" to do anything but commit the "sin".

If there is no sin, then there is no morality.

Without morality, there is no basis for secular law.

Predestination is nothing more than an excuse for self-righteous (and usually self-appointed) religious authorities to absolve themselves of the most heinous of crimes against those who look up to them and trust them - "It was God's will that I marry those underage girls and father their children!"