from slumdog
the movie begins with this index card -
Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it?i hope you've seen the movie because i'm going to tell you that it is written. but now i ask, is it really written? a friend wrote me a thought-provoking email yesterday that made me wonder what it would be like to go through life believing that it was all written. does that give me liberty to think that i acted as i was predestined to act, and therefore, that i am not responsible for my mistakes of the past? that sounds dangerous, and therefore, can't be right :). i shall wait to be illumined.
A) He cheated,
B) He's lucky,
C) He's a genius,
D) It is written.
5 comments:
u had written at length about destiny and that which is 'meant to be' (also astrology) several posts back. how do those posts fit in with the 'it is written'?
nope, nope. that's not at all what i meant (if it's my email that you're referring to). you are responsible for your mistakes but you made them because you didn't know better. and you had to go through whatever you went through in order to get there.
to a large extent, i do believe that many things are in your circle of influence that stephen covey talks of. the point is, though, that you still don't know what's in your circle of influence and what's not. but i think that one should believe that what they're seeking is within in their circle of influence and really hope for it, and really work towards it. but it gradually may become clearer and clearer that that thing is beyond your control, and THAT is when you tell yourself that it was "not meant to be" (arrghh... i hate that phrase).
this is only applicable to things beyond your control - like some physical disaster that occured, another person's will, etc... these are not things in your control.
would love to hear other thoughts.
adu: i'm waiting for a certain person to post his thoughts :). i didn't want to offer any preconceived notions yet.
peevee: i know you didn't mean that we're not responsible :). i posed that as a question to understand better why that does not follow from destiny.
Haven't we talked about this notion of destiny before? Seems like we've had several discussions on this :)
Anyway, there was a lot to say, so I just decided to make it a separate post, instead of a loooooooooong comment :) you can find this here:
http://spiritualgleanings.blogspot.com/2009/03/free-will.html
Much of my thinking on the topic of free will has been greatly influenced by discussions I have had with others and essays I have read on the subject.
However, I remember one stream of thought from long ago, which I can identify as almost surely my own idea: If a universe is not deterministic, it does not automatically guarantee free will. For instance, we could live in a probabilistically evolving universe.
Anyway, this seems to me to be the right approach towards dealing with questions of free will, determinism etc.
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