What it is about is control. Who is really in control, or maybe even what is in control. I knew a chap at university and he used to say all the time of life, 'It's all predetermined' and to be honest I thought he was a fruit loop but what I hadn't been prepared for is that maybe, just maybe, I was the one that was wrong. I shouldn't neglect to say he was studying psychology and his influence awoke me to the idea, or has awakened me to the idea, that psychiatrists may know things about our minds that we don't know in the same way that a mechanic might know things about our cars that we don't know. It's not like, paranoia, it's just normal isn't it. If you are specialist in something, psychology, you are going to know things that a non specialist (me) doesn't know. So, it is that people who specialise in psychology have a window into the human mind and can see, for example, the repeated patterns of behaviour present in religions and so on whatever their ilk.
That was a huge jolt for me, some years later, the idea that I might actually be wrong and it taught me some humility. Now, I am not qualified to say whether life is all predetermined or not, I am not that clever, but, I can ask the question, what if it is? I have to say that having gone around in a circle for a while, based on the evidence I have seen, I am leaning that way, now, the idea that actually this is all, if not pre-determined, at the very least deterministic.
Some of the science guys seem to agree, for example, Einstein said the past as being behind us and the future as being in front of us is an illusion and they are both (past and future) here right now. He called day to day experience of time the arrow of time and said it was a perception deception. Now, that gets a bit beyond me, but, I the question I want to ask you - is all this pre-determined or at least deterministic and what does that mean for us.
The idea that not one of us has zero, ziltch, no, say in what happens to us is a very freaky thing I think for any of us. Evidence says that life is deterministic as just one example. If you take the word fatal, you could see it as fate-al. That might seem contrived, but, is it true that the day of our dyings is determined in advance and there is nothing we can do about it? The old soldiers had the concept that there either was or wasn't a bullet with their name on which is a fatalistic or deterministic way of seeing things
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So, the question I want to ask the Steemit crew is, what do you think, is all this deterministic, pre-determined, destined even. I think in our Western culture few believe that, but I think we might be a little backwards. I think in some of the other cultures of the world, the idea of destiny is a lot more prevalent. In the Western cultures, sometimes we are so concerned with the detail of things that we miss the blindingly obvious, perhaps.
I think that if it did turn out that there was some global revelation that this is entirely deterministic it would be both a blessing and a curse. It's not just me that thinks it. For example, if you believe this is all pre-determined, you can check out a lyric like Avril Lavigne's song 'complicated' - 'lay back, it's all been done before', so there's lots of people saying this. The blessing side of it would be that no person has ever done anything wrong, how could they, if they are completely lorded over in all ways, then they are powerless to resist. The curse side would be the freaky nature of our helplessness and impotence in all ways. Anyway, that's what I am thinking about on a Tuesday night.
