Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that outside (or inside) forces determine
the course of your life? Do you believe that supernatural powers direct your
actions and behaviors? Do you believe that your destiny is written in stone and
that it will play itself out, regardless of what you do?
Few will admit it but many people believe in fate. It seems
like an innocent enough belief, like believing in Santa Claus.
But, ask yourself this: how does your belief in fate influence
the way you conduct your life.
Researchers in Australia studied the question in relation to
people who were in serious need of weight reduction.All of the participants knew that the only way to lose weight, and
to save their lives, was to change their personal habits. They needed, as
everyone knows, to exercise more and to eat less.
The study wanted to find out why some people are perfectly capable of changing their conduct while others resist change. Why can some people become motivated to lose weight while others seem resigned to their obesity?
The study discovered that subjects who believed in fate
were less likely to undertake the necessary behavior changes. Fatalistic to a fault, they were less
likely to believe that they could change. Why try to make
significant changes in the way you conduct your life when you believe that
it will not make any difference anyway?
Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark led the study. She emphasized
that the difference between the two groups had nothing to do with whether or
not they were well-informed about the dangers of obesity and about what they needed
to do to help themselves.
In her words:
The
main policy response to the obesity epidemic has been the provision of better
information, but information alone is insufficient to change people’s eating
habits.
More and better information did not influence people who
believed in fate. Their belief system, their ideology made overrode their knowledge
of what needed to be done and stifled their will to change.
By their lights it was futile to change because they knew
that they could not fight destiny.
People who believe in fate or destiny, or who hold to
doctrines of predestination, tend to disparage the concept of free will. Those
who believe in free will accept that their choices and decisions can alter the
direction of their lives, so they are far more likely to work on changing the
way they conduct themselves.
Some reject free will on religious grounds. Some reject it
because they believe that science can disprove it. In either case
they will be leaving the course of their lives in the hands of powers they
cannot control, cannot even hope to control: God’s will or brain chemistry.
As you know, the argument about free will and predestination
goes back at least to the time of Augustine of Hippo. Since free will itself
dates to the story of Adam and Eve, it is fair to consider it the moral
cornerstone of Judeo-Christianity, thus of Western Civilization.
If free will is a metaphysical concept, it cannot be proved
or disproved by empirical research. Even if we imagine that brain scans can
highlight the temptations that influence our decision, this does not-- and did
not, even in the time of Adam and Eve-- eliminate anyone’s free will or
responsibility.
Many psychologists further undermine free will by insisting that your life is an
unfolding narrative. They tell us that it’s all about the story—as though
stories were scientific facts.
If life is a story we are all condemned to play out roles in
a script. If that is true—and even if it is not—believing it will drain your
initiative about changing the course or outcome of the narrative.
Strangely, sophisticate modern scientists are promoting an
idea that very closely resembles Freud’s. Keep in mind, Freud believed
that free will was an illusion. He had to. If we have free will we are not be
condemned to live out our lives according to this or that Greek tragedy… the
story of Oedipus or the story of Narcissus.
The alternative to the life-is-a-narrative theory is the
idea that life is like a game. Modern proponents of this idea include Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle.
True enough, games like football, baseball, chess and
solitaire have rules, but the course of any game and its outcome are not
predetermined. If your play can influence the outcome of a game decisively, you
have every incentive to improve. If you are losing more than winning,
you will not believe that fate has it in for you, but that you should work
harder.
If life is a game you will not only be more likely to follow
a healthy diet but you will be less likely to turn to the astrology charts to
find out what fate has in store for you today.
Since PET scans and brain chemistry cannot tell us whether
or not we have free will, we do better to ask, as the Australian researchers
did, what consequences befall those who believe in free will and what
consequences befall those who believe in fate.
Apparently, it is a better bet to believe in free will than
to believe in fate. It's healthier, to boot.
A good astrologer acknowledges free will. Astrology is used like a weather forecast. Finding the optimal time for events and activities is not fatalistic.
ReplyDeletePlanning is an exercise of free will.
Geneticists and sociologists are fatalistic. They say that the genes and or family you are born with determines all.
I think that they want an excuse to justify not taking the necessary steps for weight loss. I suppose that it is possible that they truly have a fatalistic world view and that it affects them in all sorts of ways ... but I think it is more likely that they need to justify not exercising and modifying how or what they eat.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Freud disbelieved in free will, but perhaps that's why I always liked Jung better?
ReplyDeleteI don't think recognizing a narrative nature to our life takes away free will, or at least not if you recognize there are many competing narratives going on, and recognize there are bifurcation points where change is easy, if you're paying attention, and keep an open mind that those stakes you couldn't pull out as a baby elephant might not always be so deep as they seemed.
For instance, I don't know which is worse, women who spend their wholes lives obsessed about fat and dieting, and deprive themselves and in their resentment against their bodies, they act out in other more destructive ways. While another who accepts she's overweight, but stays active, and does what makes her feel better.
You could imagine life is a river and fighting the current is the path to misery, while understanding the current means you can use it to your advantage, and not obsess that all rivers lead to the sea, and we're all going to die.
Don't tell the Calvinists this or they might get upset.
ReplyDeleteThe real question is why do some people believe they have no control over their lives, while others believe they have complete control? Of course, you have everyone else who falls somewhere between these two extremes.
ReplyDeleteThere is no generalized answer to that question. What we believe is part genetics and part life experience. And there are as many answers to the question above as there are people who are living and have lived.
I am not sure where I read this, but I believe it stated that all time exists at the same moment. The present, the past and the future. It is rather like a decision tree where your free will selects which path is now available with its attendant decision points. At each decision point one is using their free will to move on to the possibilities inherent on that path. This continues on until one cannot make decisions.
ReplyDeleteIt is somewhat like a chess game where each move has a path that will ultimately lead to checkmate.
I believe that Patricia K is correct that much of the argument against free will is a justification for not taking responsibility for the decisions one make. How nice is it that one can blame all their failures on fate.
That does not mean that I don't think "karma" has an affect. Though I have often wondered if this is one of the levels of Hell or purgatory where we either go up or done a level given how we live life.