[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 10:51:27 -0500
AA:
> Most of fate is very much in our hands.
If fate is defined as the inexorable operation of ineluctable laws, then fate
can't be in our hands whatsoever. If you're standing in the path of an
oncoming bullet, then the most loving parents in the world can't influence
that. I have no idea to what degree determinism 'determines' our lives. You
apparently give it a high priority otherwise you'd not proselytize for 'good
parenting' as the panacea for war and crime and human misery in general. You
cause and effect seems strictly binding to me. But if determinism does rule
the day as you seem to suggest, then you're just pissing in the wind with your
'good parenting' advocacy, because those who abuse their children must be fated
to do so. By the same token, so would you be fated to proselytize as you do.
So I guess you can't help it. Too much good parenting can be a tiresome thing.
But maybe we're not determined. Perhaps we are agents acting variously freely
in the world. Are we? I dunno, as JL might say. And what does it matter,
after all? We don't have any choice but to live our lives as though we are
creatures of free will. Decisions must be made, choices chosen -- whether
those decisions are pre-ordained by our history and genetic make-up and those
damn butterflies in Brazil, we'll never know, because there is no way to ever
know. And besides, who cares?
Mike Geary
Memphis
PS, Yes Stan, Rowan & Martin's "Fickle Finger of Fate Award" was what I first
named the thread, but then death seemed not so fickle as final so I changed it.
I should have called it Fate's Final Fingering.
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