So my friend and I were talking on the bus today about fate and I wanted to know what you guys think about it. Does it exist? If it does, what causes it? Can it change? Can you predict it with any degree of accuracy?
My answer: Fate is something that can happen in the future that may or may not be avoidable. I believe that every choice plays a role in a person’s fate no matter if it's your choice or someone else's. With every choice your fate changes accordingly. I also think it is possible to predict someone's fate by studying their past choices and current state. Example: A perfectly fine person who lives with his wife would live 70 years if he didn't change his life style. He starts to smoke. Now he would only live 55 years. Not only his fate would change but so would his wife's. She would inhale the second hand smoke and her lifespan would decrease as well.

Well, i kinda agree when you talk about choices that plays a role (in my mind, it's kinda like parallel reality.). Though i don't agree on the part about being able to predict it. I mean, i'm ok there's factors that can influence your future. Let's reconsider your example about smoking: I generally agree what you said about it. Though, my grand-mother smokes a lot (really really lot), and she is actually 83 years old and is really fine (she makes a lot of sports, she does many activities, etc.). On the other hand, the mother of a friend died recently: she was 48 years old, never smoked, wasn't alcoholic, well she had what we could call a "normal life". She just walked down the stairs and her foot slipped on a stair. That's why i think future is unpredictable. (I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, i faced some vocabulary issues :s)

You guys are talking about one kind of fate, which is "when you work hard, you can change your future." Well I'm here to point out there is mother kind of fate (which can be right or wrong), which is "future is set in stone." For example, what if the man mentioned was supposed (destined) to smoke because he was supposed to live 55 years of life in the end?

This doesn't belong on the main board, it should go into personal or random. *sigh* we have different sections for a reason; use them.

>>4 "Important topics, overarching Dollars issues, and actual topics of discussion belong here."

Fate seems like a topic of discussion. It seems like you're not reading the board description, dumbass.

>>2 You raise a good point there. I guess I should have added "with varying levels of accuracy" after the predicting part. There are always those weird exceptions to the rule. A doctor my say "you have 6 months to live" and you live 5 more years. Or they say "you have two years to live" and you live a week. Maybe predict wasn't the right word. Now that I think about it, maybe I should have said something like making educated guesses instead.

>>6 to be honnest, i knew you were implicitly speaking of variating degress of "predictions", i just took the opportunity to bring that out x) In my mind, fate is repsresentated like a giantic tree. Everytime you have the possibility to make a choice, there's a branch. And you make your path through those branches. It might be a bit "naive" (i'm not sure it's the appropriate word), but it's my easy way to understand that.

>>7 I completely agree with Xyou, the whole idea of each choice redirecting a person to a different fate. What really interests me if sometimes those "branches" are designed to sometimes end in the same result, or if it's just coincidence. Thoughts?

>>7 Like a road maybe? Every time you make a choice you make a turn? I don't understand the tree branch idea (sorry).

>>8 I think there could be different levels of the effect. Minor choices could have minor effects and then bigger choices could have bigger effects. So the little things wouldn't change the outcome. But there are always those small exceptions like winning the lottery or something like that.

And what about Karma or other things like that? Do you think those things play a role in fate?

>>9 Well yeah the idea of road is kinda the same that the one i was desperatly tryung to explain xD (i'm sorry since i lack of vocabulary i have some difficulties making myself understandable :s ^^')

I was thinking about this myself a while ago, and what everyone is saying here could very well be absolutely correct. Although, I personally think "fate" is simply an idea forged at the dawn of time to make everyone question the meaning of their life.

I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and his whole ghost theory at the beginning, I believe, somewhat applies to this. The idea of "fate" existing has been taught to us, beat into us, showed to us, or whatever manner, so many times that we are to just believe it exists. Like his example Newton's theory of gravity and how it didn't exist before Newton before he told everyone it did. A "ghost" he called it; and not many people believe in those.... But I must admit, the Theory has more scientific base than fate.

The tree and the branches statement would be my go if I didn't think fate was such an abstract idea. A big tree would be a very appropriate way to group it all together, life could be a long or short thing, either way a person makes a lot of decisions and each goes a different way and can even make a different person.

I guess it's just my thought, that something put it all together and thought through all of our possible choices before we did is a little outrageous. As I said earlier, unlike Newton's law, there's just no hard evidence that it's there. Maybe it's just imagination, or everyone saying the word, religion, there's millions of factors that could contribute to fate and it's workings. Real or not, it's about as deep a concept as love, and as impossible to set it's workings down in stone or science

>>13 The fact that it's not set in stone makes it fun to debate and interesting to talk about. It means almost anything is possible.

There's no fate but what we make for ourselves

>>13 If we take in consideration the definition of fate we are thought of or rather the one that is "beat into us" as you said, then fate is not something changeable, since the changes in life ,like reducing the length of it by smoking, are the part of it. It may be also said that the upcoming future, including all of its obstacles, changes and varieties, is engraved as to happen.

I think fate is unpredictable. But I believe that it is only us that are making our own fate. Whatever your fate is depends on your own choice.

But fate is defined as something set in stone, predetermined and unavoidable. If you say it's unpredictable and can be changed according to choice, that it's not exactly fate anymore.

But a way of thinking that I like when it comes to fate is this:

If our lives are set in stone and what is written to happen will happen then we can do anything we want on the principle that that's what was always going to happen anyway. On the other hand, if destiny doesn't exist and our lives are in our hands that we can do anything we want because it's our choice and we have the freedom to shape our own existence.

So in conclusion, from a more pragmatic point of view you can do whatever and fate is ultimately irrelevant.

I feel that we are ruled by fate but on the other hand, it doesn't really matter because we don't know what's going to happen so just because it's set in stone doesn't mean we can't do whatever we want. I feel some people can tell the future through things like dreams and such. I, myself have had dreams of the future but I don't expect anyone to believe me since I have no proof, I never knew what was going to happen all day though, when it happened I remembered I had a dream about it. I've also experienced dejavu (hope that's how you spell it) so I know the difference between the two. So, on the whole, I think we are ruled by fate but it is irrelevant to know that since we don't actually know what's going to happen.

>>18 I agree with you completely.

FUCK FATE! I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want to because I can and live my fuckin' life because it's mine. Divine intervention can suck it!

>>21 I agree with you!

I believe in Determinism. So I think that "fate" is somehow predestined TO A CERTAIN POINT due to the way our minds work, although it's hard to explain exactly how. So I don't believe we can conscientiously change fate, but I think that the reason it can only be predestined to a certain point is due to chance. You can't predict chance, and you can't avoid it without knowing it, and I believe chance is the reason that I believe that it is impossible predict the future.

I believe that fate is a predetermined future that is unique to each human when they are born but making our own decisions we stray from fate and back again and our fate goes on with or without us whether we are "in line" with it or not

The future is unknown until it becomes present and/or past.
I win.

>>16 I agree. I personally find the idea of fate to be morbid. If it's all set in stone then everything loses it's meaning. The idea that all our actions could be neutralized by a mystical force controlling the universe is far fetched even without the laws of physics. I mean, if such a force existed, what would be the point? Millions of years of evolution and a developed cortex just so we could have the illusion of control? I just see it all as a series of events, cause and effect.

>>26 You could say that I have a somewhat similar vision of it. Being said that it’s a morbid and unchangeable engravation of upholding events. And if everything is static, unmovable, than everything is as a circle…or I see it as that. Without a defined start or end, always spinning and repeating itself ….no meaning really. If there is a fate, than everything that was done up until now, achievements, evolution, is pointless….it only accompanies it to the demolization or to nothingness….or a circle again. And if so, than it is a world of sameness, equal distances... and the human kind keeps hitting its head into the walls of the unavoidable and breaks up on the periphery of that center to which he is slave.

You make your own fate :]

Who cares if its going to happen its going to happen just do what fills right

Bump (: