Desperate for meaning, so desperate
Determinism states that things could not have been different to how they are now. This also means that the future cannot be any different to how it is 'planned' out to be. If we believe that we are just the end of a long chain of cause and effect outside of our control, then the future must also be equally discoverable.
I wish to concentrate on the oldest form of determinism, Fate. Great heroes throughout history have risen up to meet their destiny and do the bidding of Fate. Fate represents a certain form of order or balance that must be restored. With this destiny comes a sense of purpose; an end result that we have to strive for. I wish to demonstrate that, sadly, purpose is not simple, is not black and white, and that beyond humanity there is probably nothing but the slow march of nature.
Everything happens for a reason?
It does not take much imagination to think of a child being born mutated by radioactive waste - this happens every day in certain warzones. If we examine the misfortune of the child on an individual level we quite simply have to ask 'why is this particular child suffering this particular fate?' What could the child have done to deserve being born with such deformities, with a lifespan no greater than a few tortured breaths. There is quite simply no way the child could have deserved or earned this particular situation for some wrong doing. Evidently, if Fate does exist it is greatly unfair, and does not always reward or punish who it is supposed to.
Is the child then part of some greater scheme of things? If this is the case, then Fate is not accounting for us on an individual basis, but is considering some larger overall narrative - the horrors of war, for instance, could be part of some fateful plan to end a greater suffering by shocking us with its horrible nature. However if this is the case then why is one individual sacrificed over another? What possible explanation is there for my being born in a materially rich environment and someone else being born in the worst imaginable scenario? It seems random, without reason. Yet fate is not random and it cannot decide lightly who shall live and who shall die, or else it is no longer fate – a reason requires reasoning.
Now we have a greater question. Why is one part of the world suffering the worst imaginable fate (the death of children) when another isn't? This idea of deserving, reaping what one sows, is heavily undermined by the events happening in the world at this very moment. People are not getting what they deserve – the people we would call bad are not being punished, and the people we call good are not always rewarded. Does Fate have a reason to punish the greater percentage of humankind?
Fate is nothing more than a tradition from a more superstitious age. At one time it would have been used to justify the status of the powerful and placate the powerless by assuring them it could not have been any other way. When combined with power, this ability to look into the future with as much certainty as we can look into the past, is a dangerous thing. Clearly it is an idea which could only have survived in a world where knowledge of the world was incomplete. Fate could only exist in a world where progress was slow, or non-existent, with cultures imagining themselves to hold eternal answers to eternal questions; fate could only exist if the thinkers of a culture thought they had reached the end of their development on earth.
To prove that knowledge of the world decreases the credibility of fate, we need only look at the vast increase in the human population in the last century, the annihilation of diseases and the dramatic raising of our material conditions. If there is a reason for everything, and everything leads back to fate, then this cosmic force has chosen now of all times to populate the earth with humans. Ideas of reincarnation are massively threatened; for once being born human was the sign that your soul was rising up the ladder to nirvana. The simple conclusion from this is that there have been a lot of good tigers around recently. Can you see how absurd a chain of reincarnation (insects at the bottom, humans at the top) would be if it was proposed in our modern world of massive population growth and endless technological change?
So, where do we stand?
Those who claim they can see into the future should not be written off. How do we know that someone doesn't have visions of what may be, the creativity to combine elements in some incredible way, or some special sensitivity to human character in relation to unseen forces? We do not, and cannot write off people as not possessing these powers. However, the seer or the oracle, when they are so blatantly political, we should be very, very sceptical of; it certainly is not their task to order our societies or tell us what to think.
Is fate then a comfort to people in an age where god has fallen as a power? I cannot see how it can be a comfort to know that some cosmic power has given myself a well-functioning body and some other person severe mutations and a painfully brief life Suffering does not need to be explained away with fate, because suffering is not inevitable.
There is probably no purpose beyond humanity. It strikes me as odd why we would need to search for powers beyond the world, to explain the world, when there is so much on offer in good old human greed, ignorance, violence, apathy, and so on. Going back to the children being cursed to short and painful lives, we can explain it in purely human terms – that is, societies still going to war with one another without universal regard for human life. Human beings are more concerned with their own immediate experiences and not so much on distant people they consider different to them, or mere statistics. This is an earthly explanation for suffering that makes sense.
And take note. We do not need to wait for some afterlife to win what we would call justice. We could have it today if only we were empowered to do so (and if only we could philosophize until we came up with an adequate explanation for it!).
By Selim 'Selim' Talat
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open Topic' Issue 31
