So free will gives me the opinion that nothing is set in stone in some universal architecture I am unaware of. Is there such a thing as fate? If so, why? If not, why do some things just fall into place they way they do? Is karma real? I think it is. I honestly feel that the positive energy I get from helping people, when it is not my job to do so, improves my life.
Karma, the belief that the universe bestows rewards for doing right and exacts punishments for doing wrong, is largely an Eastern philosophy, the notion of karma in Western culture is in line with Eastern thought in sayings like: "you reap what you sow" and "what goes around comes around."
The concept of fate & karma seem to be tied up with causality, that every effect has a cause. We assert that good or bad effects we experience are caused by something. The question then becomes are we complicit in our fate or is fate blind and I think the answer to both questions is yes, we are complicit in our own fate and fate is blind.
If you don't study for a difficult test then there is a good chance that you will not do well on the test, but the fact that your car broke down on the day of the test and you could no get there to take it, probably never entered your mind. We are consciously or unconsciously complicit with many effects we experience but the universe is ruled by chance, things that are may well have been otherwise.
Aristotle talked about luck in his Eudemian Ethics. How some people seem to have all the luck. He suggests that chance can have consistent results. Flipping a coin many times, it has a 50/50 chance of being heads or tails overall, but you can flip the coin multiple time and have it come up heads or tails so many times that it appears to question the laws of chance. Yet these partial results are consistent with chance. He thought some people's lives may work in a similar manner...there is no reason (in the universe) why not.
Karma, the belief that the universe bestows rewards for doing right and exacts punishments for doing wrong, is largely an Eastern philosophy, the notion of karma in Western culture is in line with Eastern thought in sayings like: "you reap what you sow" and "what goes around comes around."
Aristotle thought that some persons were born lucky and go through life
If you look before crossing a road you do not belive in fate
Fate can be an interesting thing. Many times I've felt a thing was fate. And in so thinking I ceased to continue with the action of choosing . Now feeling reassured that's it's correctly chosen for me and I've successfully followed the subtle cues of destiny. Now karma . At least as I have come to conclude seems to stem from a need to feel the terrible suffering in this life was in some way earned and justified. An order to think it's not just pure accident that I suffer every day of my life while I see or know of others who rule and live THEIR LIFE in complete luxury. If this was earned became an even better thought when they realized the unjust are earning their shit life as I suffer in mine. Because no one wants to think the mighty will do anything they please cause death pain sorrow torture genocide and there is never anything that's going to balance things. What's wrong in this life sometimes seems better much later by way of comparison and relativity. The damage and pain I caused myself over and over can seem somehow not as high of a price to pay for arrogance and stupidity if I can impart the knowledge gained to another and reduce the loos they may have had in learning the same thing. When feeling stupidity was my STRONGEST assent in learning life's lessons. I can rewrite my own history if I chalk it up to fate and my destiny to teach these lessons I've learned. I can even tell myself that the terrible stubborn ignorance of obvious things was custom crafted to perfectly relate to a future student in their foolish ways. Yes believing in fate has many advantages deflecting responsibility seems one of its central themes
Oh . I got an answer for this that took 20 years plus to finally formulate. I have strong evidence To suggest it works like this . Please evaluate it and point out flaws as you find them. To quote the overly cliche statement.. You cannot escape your destiny.
Free will is our current mindframe and we make a choice on everything every day our choice actually consist of. Stay with the way we usually do things. Or take a different stance/act/new opinion. In essence, we can say we are completely free to do anything so absolutely free. No controlling fate as an outside thing directing us ..but there is a framework inside. Many. Fight or flight. Desire to know what we don't or can't actually know. Our formative years where we imprinted information on what it. Is to be human. Our gender , us in our environment. Things and memories we have no clear memory of. Partly perhaps because we were inputting this critical data in before we had any working framework for structure or pattern or an understanding of relativity and how things can be usefully categorized and connected easily. But every experience is in there affecting things. Being the basis for what we think. What we evaluate to be . Such as a man is hairy or tall or mean. Mom is loving a female is kind. A female is not interested inherently in me. ECT.... Things imprint. Biases exist beyond what we know consciously . A boy who has never met his father will unconsciously attempt to walk his path walk in his imagined shoes. A yearning to know what he can't actually know can direct him to repeat things he's heard his father did to attempt to imagine he can actually know. . What can be called fate . I think is often unconscious intent to prove /disprove emulate/become the opposite of . ...find what someone was thinking/ see if we end up acting similarly given same circumstances. Unconscious drives Drive us on a long term path. We think each day I want to do this. I will actively decide I won't do that. But our impulses as desires are started because of plans of intent in our subconscious mind and we can decide anything we want in our day to day lives. But our unconscious hidden inner drives will have a chance to play out . The same as a truck with a hard pull to the right will surely win out one day when you forget to correct for the pull of it or just get tired and don't bother to turn against it so hard one day. You might even try letting it happen to find how fast it pulls your truck to the side but leave a pull in alignment long enough and it will impact your destination . You choose each day but your unconscious brain chooses the goals driven for whether directly or indirectly by letting you believe whatever gets you to go in the direction desired. Hasnt anyone ever had certainty that turned out untrue but we felt sure we were right and directed or choices based on this incorrect idea. Later to realize we had information inside to know were were wrong but failed to remember this during this span of time. Optimism is something like this. As is confidence. A certainty you are going thing to succeed or you can do this easily. We may realize we never had a chance and somehow fooled ourselves just long enough to takes some definitive actions. This happenstance of self delusion is just one of the tools the subconscious self uses to direct and control the general outcome of our life's actions. So whatever we may think we our doing and our reasons why at any time. Might be folly and false information we have given ourselves to help us get to where our true inner self refuses to live life without going and we get to be lied to or told the truth depending on our ability to properly learn to listen to our selves . To puck apart our reasons and thinking and see what we were really meaning when we were doing something we swear wasn't intentional but we've been proved to be doing it repeatedly. Looking closely at ourselves as if we were observing a stranger and looking for evidence we were complicit in things we originally thinking were events well beyond our personal control. Or terrible events happening to us by others that we can't seem to stop it happening over and over again like relationships and our partners
Does this make logical sense?