interesting take, what made the most sense to me was a philosophy professor giving a lecture on determinism and bringing up the point that once everything gets moving (big bang, prime mover, whatever) everything (atoms) only react. If one knew which direction every atom in the universe was going, they could predict the future. Basically our brain just fools us into believing that we have free will, we think we make conscious choices but those are the only choices we could have made given the direction all the atoms are going.... or something like that.
The problem I have always had with fatalism is that its easy to just not care about anything. It is easy to say, well everything will happen the way its supposed to, so I will just hang out and see what happens. Its difficult to hold people responsible for their actions, if they really didn't have a choice in making them. But on the flip side, being a fatalist makes life easier to deal with. When something bad happens to you, thats the way it was supposed to be, nothing you could have done about it, so its easy to accept it and just move on. If things are going to 'work out the way they are supposed to' then there is no need to stress about the future. I can see why super religious people who believe in either fate, or that god has a 'plan' can lead very happy lives... that belief takes responsibility away from the people and it takes away the stress of the future.
I have always been pragmatic and never really put much faith into fatalism, but it is an attractive world view.  |