How Can Free Will and Fate Coexist? (You're unlikely to find the answer in this post)
@salmanrajz asks; do we have free will?
Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions for what philosophical question I should tackle today. I chose this one because I feel it is incredibly important. The moment one invests any faith in the "we have no free will" argument, it becomes far easier to justify the shitty things they have done, are doing, or will do in future. No free will means you are not truly responsible for your actions - the universe is, and thus you've little need to make an active effort to be more than your environment shaped you to be.
That is why I believe this issue is of the utmost importance. But I was looking for a challenge, and the question "do we have free will" on it's own is perhaps not as difficult as I had hoped. So I have decided to make it more difficult by explaining free will within the parameters of a universe where fate also exists. This is because, based on what I have seen, many who believe in fate have a hard time believing in free will. If I can provide a plausible explanation as to how the both can coexist together, then I will consider this challenge a success.
I will be honest. I just wrote a shitload of words and then deleted them. My initial approach to this task was to bring the concept of fate under the umbrella of free will. By making fate a choice, and a pull of sorts that we can decide to ignore, then it is not difficult to entertain the possibility of free will.
However, I had to remove all the text because it just occurred to me that many people will look at fate as something that is fulfilled throughout every second of your life. If every single thought, decision, or occurrence in the world is fated, then my initial explanation would no doubt fall embarrassingly short of convincing anyone.
I suppose it is convenient then that I also just had somewhat of an epiphany. Now, I feel I have an explanation to this that is not only plausible, but likely. I have the wording of google's definition of fate to thank for this serendipitous realisation. While the definition itself was not anything I could not have written myself, the terminology used in the sentence really sparked something in my brain. The definition offered by google is as follows;
the development of events outside a person's control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power.
You and I are both people, so we should both know what a person is. We only need to ask, who am I? If we are honest with ourselves, we will then learn that "I" is simply a story that we have told ourselves to make sense of our position in light of our environment. It then is no surprise that the word "person" comes from the word "persona" which referred to a character in a play.
This is important because we can then learn that a person is fundamentally bound to the present. The person you are now will be different from the person you are after you read this post. Depending on how much what you read here effects you, you may not change much at all. But there will be a change, even if it is simply that you leave this post thinking I am dumb. That change still makes you a new person, because your story about yourself is now richer.
Now that we have established a person is bound to the present tense, let us now take a small look at time. If you can imagine for a moment that there is a supreme creator who made this entire world. From their perspective, do you believe that time would appear the way it does to us? Or would it be more akin to our perception of location? I have felt for some time that for the Creator, time is location based as opposed to a restricting linear force. I received a couple of comments last week that got me thinking seriously about time as a circle, and for the purposes of this explanation, I would ask you to do that too.
If we consider time as a circle, then we can accept that there is no beginning of end of time. If time is a circle, then everything that has happened in the past is in fact happening right now, just at a different point on the circle of time. Just as everything that will happen in what we describe as the future, is also currently transpiring on a different point in the circle. "Now" then refers only to what point on that circle one's conscious mind as at, and can be equated to "here" in a geographic sense.
If we look again at googles definition with these two understandings, we may observe a third;
the development of events outside a person's control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power.
I do not believe there is a word in the English language for what I am about to attempt to explain, so you will forgive me if it isn't the easiest thing to follow. But, if a person is a human's current story, as dictated by which ever part of time they are consciously existing in, then what would one call the sum of all persons one would be throughout their life time?
In other words, if we envision a human life as a circular ring, and if we can point at any part of that ring and know that at this point of time on the circle, this is a person, then what to do we call the entire ring? Contained within that circle is every single event and every single decision made within a human's life time, and though that human has had to experience time in a linear fashion, we should not assume that when the world was Created, the entirety of that ring was not already there.
If this is the case, and if time is simply something we experience here. then whatever I am going to do, has already been decided. But it's been decided by me. If time is a circle then right now, at a different point in time, I am dying, and being born. So fate, within this context, doesn't have to be a plan that someone else has for you. It could simply be the choices you have already made when observing your life free from the confines of time.
Fuck. This is truly a difficult one to articulate. Let me try again a different way.
By observing the world around us we can see that everything physical is subject to time. This is why rocks erode away, why compounds break down, and why living beings grow old and die. But if we are not purely physical beings, then we must wonder whether a part of us, perhaps the part known as the higher self, is not at all physical, and therefore not subject to time at all.
*Note: I just realised that the word "spirit" is in fact the word I was looking for earlier. The spirit is the part of us that isn't subject to time and therefore is experiencing life not second by second, but in it's entirety.
So if we consider then that fate is merely a physical future - there is no past, present, or future beyond the physical - then we can see that fate is simply the life we've already lived, are currently living, and will live in future.
Seriously my head has started to hurt so much trying to grasp how my spirit can be free from the burden of time, and I just want to go think about this for a while.
This didn't turn out exactly as planned, but I feel that in a few hours or days I will have something very interesting to share.
To wrap this up in a few seconds so I can fuck off for a think, I am implying that that the supernatural force spoken of in google's definition of fate - is us. It would then read somewhat like this.
fate is the development of events outside a person's control, regarded as predetermined by the same person's actions at a different point in time.
I shall have to apologise for just posting this messiness, but I have spent enough time on it that I ought to be earning from it, so I am going to post this now and follow this up with a refined and hopefully far more coherent version; though the subject matter may not be free will in the next, for I feel I have found a unifying theory of sorts, but I haven't yet figured out what the fuck I have unified. Anyway, we can call this one a failure in terms of explaining things, but it was exceptionally useful for me as a thought exercise, so thanks-
I did not suggest such a topic, ... well, because it already has an answer, but most people do not want to hear it. They don't want to know. They don't want to accept that much power or authority over their lives. Things just happen to them is far more comfortable.
Time is not really in a circle, time is in a loop(s).
Let us say that your life is a train track that goes around the world. So, at some point in the past you ran over a water buffalo. Well, sometime in your future, you are going to run over that same stinking corpse. That would be termed karma. Until you get out and clean up this rotten mess, you will keep experiencing it in your life, over and over.
Now, who put this train track down in the first place? You did. The you (spirit as you have called it) that exists outside of time. So, fate is you, the greater you, having decided on certain happenings in your life. Like meeting that special someone, which college (or not) that you go to, and many other things.
The problem with this view comes from our linear thinking.
The universe does not think linearly. It plots ways of getting you to your goal. Say, that was to meet that special someone, then the universe will cause a meeting, and a remeeting, and a remeeting to occur. You will just happen to be there, and they, will just happen to be there. (Imagine meeting that person while waiting in a terminal for connecting flights. 5 minutes you would be waiting, what are the chances of that?)
The other problem comes from the idea that there is a specific "special person", while there are multiple "special persons". Because each have their life timings, and free will. And so, A and B might not be ready, but C is, so you will have a destiny of meeting with C.
And if you try to map this all out, it becomes a huge mesh of interconnected points. Really mind blowing.
Enjoy
This is a spectacular analogy.
I don't see anything outside of time, even creation has a period of rest, both the Buddha and Jmannuel spoke directly of this. The only difference is that the time is so vast at those levels that we can hardly comprehended such enormity, it's a nice thought that there's a timeless "dimension" but clearly nobody is in two places at once or in two different dimensions or times, as there's no dimension without space, there's no dimension without time.
space and time are both a construct of the aether, or physical vacuum.
The Buddhist talk about getting off of the wheel of time.
Time is a dimmension in this world, and you can get outside of it, because it only exists in this little bubble.
So, you are correct, there is no timeless dimension. There is no time, or dimension from where the universe has sprung.
Kinda off topic but I thought it cool was spotting A Wrinkle in Time at the end of the aisles at our grocery store, seems Disney made it into a movie. I don't know if it's a child's book or I'm easily captivated but I really liked the book, and that was before I even knew about Time Lords like Dr. Who.
Now look at it from a atheist's point of view. There's no god, no fate, no circle of times. There's just you and your actions and reactions.
Shit. Before I deleted the first post, I had spoken about how it needs to be viewed from two different contexts. One where there is an after life and one where there is not. As you can probably tell, I ended up on the second go just allowing my brain to take me where it was going, which was clearly not to there.
Good observation.
No, I'm good thanks. Not been farting as much today.
Me neither, but when I do they come in bangs.
Come in bangs? That's not a good idea, trust me. An ex of mine was very angry when I did that.
I live with a partner myself. It works out somehow.
It's good to have more than farts, in your defense.
I don't know if that comment of the circle to which he refers is mine, but after all, you came to the same conclusion as me. Maybe it's because we started from the same premises.
Time is a circle, because it is perfect, it has no beginning or end, unlike a line. Time is eternal, a line can not be eternal.
It is also cyclical as @builderofcastles said. Patterns and patterns that repeat themselves from the past, and that we continually drag.
Those who created us, the universe, god, creator, nature, divinity, or whatever, whatever you prefer to call it, or in what you prefer to believe, is eternal, that is, it is found both in the past, as in the present and in the future, so he can know with certainty each of the things you are going to do before they happen, without violating your free will.
Almost all ancient civilizations, whether from Europe, Africa, Asia or America, almost all, believed in a cyclic universe, which was destroyed at some point and was reborn, from the tree of life.
This has a lot of metaphoric content, which should not be taken literally, but as always, to a good listener, few words are enough.
Yes it was a comment from you and also one from builderofcastles on the same post. Thanks for that. Who would have known at the time it would come back to slap me in the face while writing this post.
Before then I had thought that for the Creator, time is to them very much like space is for us. But I am definitely thinking on this circle thing right now. One problem I have is that you say a line cannot be eternal but a circle can. When I picture time as a circle, I see it as a ring, which, I don't know if I am just being pedantic here, but it is a line. That's what a circle is to me, the only possible way to draw a never ending line.
I think I owe this another day's thought before I speak on it though, because it feels very likely that by tomorrow I will have a different understanding of this.
Exact.
So I followed that line of thinking and I am a little shocked at where I've stopped to look around.
Do you think it possible the movie the matrix is a very real depiction of how we as spiritual beings have been trapped within a never ending cycle or reincarnations in a material world with time as the shackle that binds us to our physical forms?
I have had meditative experiences where I have lost all sense of time and when I have came out of it, I did not have any clue if a moment or an hour had passed. I felt good upon rearriving back into time, but obviously, I have no actual memory of what transpired while I was in "the gap."
You seem to know your shit, so what would you suggest as a potential recovery method to retrieve and access - though then there will the problem of interpretation - the data which I know I must have collected during my time spent in the gap- though I realise now I didn't spend any time in the gap. Lol. I am going to bed. You will forgive the nakedness of my imagination today I hope.
Many see the movie Matrix, and it's about determinism and indeterminism, about destiny and free will, others see it and it's about materialism and immaterialism, about the visible and the invisible, others see it and it's about the oppressive system current and about liberation, others about capitalism and socialism, others about many other things. For some it's just an action movie. Do you know what this means? That the meaning of the film is not in the film itself, but in the mind of the one who sees it.
Things don't have a meaning, people give it to them. You and I may be having the same conversation now, and we may be interpreting things very differently.
The meaning of things, the answer to all the questions, are not found in a book, or in someone's mouth, they are in the interpretation of things, they are in ourselves. Sometimes I find answers in places where I was not looking for them. And that is because we are the ones who develop them.
Sometimes I read something and I think it's just nonsense. But years later I read the same again and it has a different meaning, and it becomes an answer. Because the answer is not in a text, but in us and it is what gives it meaning.
Socrates said that we are the ones who must develop our own ideas, and this is so because if we look for them in others, or in something external to us, we will lose that capacity of natural interpretation that enables us to get an answer to things.
The answers to those questions that you ask, are not in me, I don't have the answers, but I am sure that you will have one, because you have been developing your own answers.
It's great advice, though I don't feel I needed it. I understand this all very well, though I could never have put it as well as this;
It is through conversation that I best develop my own ideas though.
But in regards to the matrix, I understand that meaning is in the eye of the beholder, but so too must there have been an intended meaning by the author of the creation. I am more curious about that than what any random interpretation may be. Though I shall concede it's not anything I ever expect to know for sure. It's still good exercise to ponder.
Everyone shares the same fate since they were born, but I don't think that's the circumstance outside our free will that people think of when they say fate.