YES I WILL! (OH, NO YOU WON'T!)

Agency
 

I have been reading a lot about “Agency”, also called Free Will or Free Agency, that last one not to be confused with the special case of “free agency” for overpaid professional sports figures. As I understand Agency, it means that you can always decide what you will do, and the future is indeterminate, depending on both the actions of humans and the forces of nature.

Religious folks believe Agency is bestowed by God, in hopes that His people will opt for good, but eternally damning them if they do not choose wisely. Christians are even given a mulligan, through the intercession of Christ's Atonement. The forces of nature are directed by God, destructive instances of which are characterized as “Acts of God” or “God's Will”. They can thus be rationalized (especially the really bad stuff) by the fact that God's actions are beyond the understanding of humankind. Man may propose, but as humanity's inscrutable task master, God has no in-basket, and disposes directly into file 13.

Meanwhile, the secular folks, including agnostics (not sure), atheists (sure not) and others across the wide spectrum of doubt, question, take issue with, or outright reject the role of God in these matters. They wonder about and even repudiate the very existence of God. However, they are left with two big questions. If not created by God, whence the Universe? And is there a purpose to it all? More particularly, how did life arise from non-life? And why?

Predestination

I find it interesting that there are those, both religious and secular, who reject Agency altogether, and believe in some form of “Predestination”. All past, present, and future events were, are, and will be eternally extant (established by God or Nature), and humans have no power (agency) to change this foreordained cosmic pattern. We're just going through the motions.

Calvinists, and probably others of whom I am not aware, believe the future is written indelibly in the account of all things by the ineffably fickle finger of God. This includes the individual salvation or damnation of each person, quick, dead, or yet to be born.

[Saint] Paul clearly declares that it is only when the salvation of a remnant [arbitrary group of persons?] is ascribed to gratuitous election, we arrive at the knowledge that God saves whom he wills of his mere good pleasure, and does not pay a debt, a debt which never can be due. [i.e. in return for a righteous life of good works] – John Calvin (1509-1564), Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536.

Pretty bold of Calvin to describe God's good pleasure as “mere”. I have to say, I would be deeply devastated to lead my whole life, striving for righteousness, extending compassion to my fellow man, only to find at my day of reckoning, that all along I had been inexorably doomed. What would have been the point? However, if I knew my predetermined status from the outset, at least I could have had the freedom to sin profligately and indiscriminately. Oh, wait. I couldn't really “choose” to do that, could I? What a crock!

Seek not to know what must not be revealed,
For joy only flows where fate is most concealed.
A busy person would find their sorrows much more;
If future fortunes were known before!
– John Dryden (1631-1700), English Poet et al.

Here is an apropos observation, that captures the widely held distinction between the religious and secular flavors of Predestination, albeit dismissive of the skeptics and nonbelievers.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes,
is nothing else but fate and nature.
– Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English Poet

Fate

Some secular souls (wow, both alliteration and irony) believe in, or at least pay lip service to, mysterious, dispassionate, inescapable “Fate”. For them, life is as fully predetermined as for the sullen Calvinists, one exception being that an afterlife of either salvation or damnation isn't necessarily part of this predestination package.

A number of ancient mythologies include The Three Fates. The Greek incarnations thereof are Clotho (the spinner) who spins the thread of life, Lachesis (the drawer of lots) who measures the thread, and Atropos (the inevitable) who cuts the thread, determining the time and manner of a person's demise. I first heard the names of these Fates via Emerson, Lake & Palmer's debut album (1970), which includes an extended piece titled The Three Fates, three movements, each devoted to one of the Fates. My brother Chris owned the album. He was into the nihilism of rock music, while I was deeply immersed in the idealism of folk music. “If I had a hammer...”

In general usage, Fate can be a slippery term. It is not always clear whether a person's fate is considered preordained or not. More often,
I think, throughout history, people have believed Fate to be inevitable.

Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are;
the reason or formula by which the world goes on.
– Citium Zeno (c. 334 BC – c. 262 BC)
Greek Philosopher, Founder of Stoicism

Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
– Plutarch (c. 46 – 120 AD), Greek Historian & Essayist

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.
– William Shatner (b. 1931), Canadian Actor et al.
Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise (Star Trek)

Love cannot save you from your own fate.
– Jim Morrison (1943-1971), Lead Singer of "The Doors"

Some invocations of Fate are spoken in the wake of inexplicable tragedies, in order to lamely rationalize, and thus perhaps absolve, the “ill-fated” victims and survivors alike, from the pall of blame and guilt. Shit happens, even to the God-fearing.

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
– Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), Russian Writer

Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining Fate.
– Olympia Brown (1835-1926), American Suffragist
First female Ordained Minister in the US

When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil Fate.
– Knut Hamsun (1859-1952), Norwegian Author, Nobel Laureate

Fate & Destiny

The terms Fate and Destiny are often bandied about ambiguously, even synonymously, but in fact, they are the starkly opposed extrema of the scale upon which is weighed the value, the meaningfulness, of our lives. Fate bears the stigma of failure and despair, while Destiny embodies the very essence of fulfillment and joy.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice;
it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
– William Jennings Bryan, 1899

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
– Buddha

If you do not create your destiny,
you will have your fate inflicted upon you.
– William Irwin Thompson (b. 1938)
American Social Philosopher & Cultural Critic

Destiny is optional, and Fate is the default. A person must put forth the effort to fulfill his destiny, or at least avoid his fate. The ominous phrase “sealed his fate” suggests that your individual fate might initially be indeterminate, but some crucial, pivotal, decisive event, perhaps a “twist of fate”, renders the denouement of your life irrevocably fixed. Destiny lies along one of the infinite number of potential paths, which like Schrödinger's probability wave, all collapse at the end of your life into the single path actually taken. However, that path may not fulfill your destiny, rather, it may consign you to your fate.

The path to destiny fulfillment usually involves a quest of some sort, a long and arduous journey with many detours, requiring fortitude, determination, and perseverance. In some cases, people just don't have the right stuff. We hear or read all the time about individuals who don't quite manage to pull it off. Hence the hollow fate-as-excuse phrase “it wasn't meant to be”.

Is there a kind of limbo between Destiny and Fate? I suspect most would say no, it is a binary choice – succeed or fail. Unfulfilled Destiny is Fate. Nonetheless, there seem to be varying degrees of cruelty on the Fate side of the equation. In some cases, simple non-achievement is a sufficiently crushing defeat. Other fates are even more severe in terms of pain and suffering, both physical and psychological, up to and including a “fate worse than death”.

It is to be remarked that a good many people are born
curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.– Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish Author & Seaman

Collective Fate & Destiny

Is there a social obligation to assume individual responsibility for the fate/destiny of mankind? Furthermore, is our personal “life outcome” inextricably linked to the collective outcome for all humanity? I would answer yes to both questions, but a wider discussion will have to wait for another essay.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
– R. Buckminster Fuller, American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist

Where Do I Stand?

I'm glad you asked, I think. It makes me pin myself down, although that is not necessarily a comfortable position in which to be. I am a deeply despairing doubter. I doubt God's existence, but of course, I don't know for sure. I am strongly disinclined toward the many God-centric religions, especially the dogmatic fundamentalists and the aggressive evangelists. However, I do find the Unitarian Universalists and some of the “eastern” religions distinctly less unappealing. I no longer congregate, preferring to practice my agnosticism alone.

As far as Fate and Destiny, I believe the universe is non-deterministic. We all have agency, not subject to any form of predestination, neither sacred or secular. However, I think we all have potential, which can be realized or not. If you consider the former as an optional destiny, or the latter as a default fate, I will not argue too strenuously. I believe there is “meaning” to every life, but what that meaning might actually mean, depends on who (relatively) or what (absolutely) applies the semantics. This is another subject to be explored in a future essay.

What about an afterlife? I'd like to think I would exist forever in some form, but it would certainly be more attractive if I could still have an occasional cheeseburger, fries, and a shake. I'm not at all excited about walking around in a white robe with a halo, and sitting at the right hand of God. That would seem like grade school, where the teacher forces the problem students to sit in the front row, subject to closer scrutiny – no fun at all, and what would eternity be without some fun?