FATE

FATE

There is no such thing. Things happen without our control and we invent things about them. Asians call fate Kismet, meaning that when bad things happen the only thing to do is shrug and live your life. Fate implies that there is some mysterious force that operates in the universe that controls our destiny. It was Charlie's fate never to meet a decent woman is what people say about Charlie, meaning that it was somehow ordained by the universe.

Humans have huge egos. We easily develop the notion that the universe takes an interest in us or ignores us when it should not. So many things happen of which we do not approve and we bizarrely become upset, either bemoaning our fate (there's that word again) or becoming angry when things go wrong. We miss the obvious; there is no rational reason that the universe should pay attention to our desires. Or, as the late, great American psychologist, Albert Ellis said, “The universe doesn’t give a shit.” We do not exist as separate entities within the universe; we are part of it as much as the earth we walk on or the stars in the sky.

How did we get here? Religionists insist that there is a determining part of existence that created the universe, i.e. God that created us. The thought seems to make some people happy, but at the same time left many people uncertain. Instead of accepting received wisdom, they raised questions. That God created us did not and does not satisfy. Human beings just a few hundred years ago began to understand the process of how we became . . . us: Evolution. Paying attention to that process makes it evident our transformations over time were natural events, a function of the state of the universe's interaction with a part of it, protoplasm. No one knows how protoplasm got started. Something it was in primordial oceans hit by lightening that made things that lived. Others think that spores of life, floating through space, landed on earth and survived. Some think that aliens seeded earth with life for whatever purpose they had. Did God do it? The trouble with God explanations is that they stop inquiry and Godly institutions, jealous of their perquisites, sometimes killed people who wanted more knowledge.

Some religionists argue that everything in the universe is exquisitely balanced so as to make life possible. If the earth were too hot, or too cold, we could not survive. Too much or too little radiation, if Planck's constant was a fraction different it would have forestalled our existence. Thus, they argue, that the universe must have been created so we would have a place to live. Idiotic! They miss the point that however life started it would have gone no further if it could not adjust to its reality. There is no knowing how many times some form of life appeared but could not live in the environment as it was. Or, it could prosper until the environment changed; all sorts of changes happened to the protoplasm and most died out, but mammalia, ultimately us, survived. When the environment changed, we adapted. But, sometimes adaption was not possible and species died. The dinosaurs could not make it after the giant meteor hit the earth; our forebears did. Of course, they changed to meet the new conditions and over eons, we changed and changed and changed to meet new environments. Nothing about the universe was designed for us; adapt or disappear. The fossil record attests to that. So, we made it . . . at least until now.

We all face the problem of how to live an acceptable life in the face of an intractable universe. By far, the great bulk of humanity reacts with emotions that have no relation to the problem. A patient described how, once, he shook a fist at the sky in outrage for something or other that had gone wrong. What's the point? Yes, he said he felt better after doing so, but it had never occurred to him that he could feel better by accepting loss as part of life and continuing to strive to enjoy his life. “I can't be happy unless the universe does such and so,” is the lament. Humbug, sheer, unadulterated humbug. But prayers are made urging God to change the rules and most prefer not to notice when he, she or it doesn't pull it off. After all, at least there is somebody there listening and making decisions on a master plan that we cannot comprehend. Yeah, that’ll be the day.

As Omar Khayyam wrote:

           

The moving finger writes

And having writ, moves on

Nor all thy piety and wit can lure it back to cancel half a line

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.