Saturday Alien Thoughts - An Aspect of Human Nature - Brain Food

A lot of humans consider their life as a predetermined course of events. It is what humans commonly call "destiny". That means a predetermined shape of the future and of the way the individual or a community, or society will evolve. The notion of "unavoidable" is dominant, thus the purpose of any activity is related to a predetermined result no matter what will be the path followed towards this result, which is also predefined as a "success" or a "failure". Fatalism is the word for this kind of human mindset. But there is a small difference between Fate and Destiny. Fate is referred to the present while Destiny is representing the future. Fate prepares the realization of destiny as fate is all human actions that have produced the result that determines the human condition in the present time. Fate is the map of our past, our whole course of life is revealed in this map which is specially designed for each person separately and which man is impossible to ignore. Fatalism leads to inaction. If a human is surrendered to his fate then what reason to do anything to change what he believes will happen? Fate as a map of the actions of life leads to the future, that is, to the unmapped destiny. So all the events that are going to happen have Destiny (fate's future) as a guide. Thus, everything is fixed by fate, determined by destiny and remains unchangeable as about the result. This kind of faith is counterproductive. But this belief in the existence of an invincible destiny is also the best justification for the inaction it entails. However, the belief in a destiny that is impossible to avoid is also a basis for developing a policy for the benefit of those social groups who see the present and the future from a different perspective. The economy of fatalism has been an extremely profitable economy over time. If a large portion of consumers in a given economy believe that some (or all) future events are predetermined to occur and consequently have prior knowledge of the outcome, then why not take advantage of this belief? We can pre-buy or pre-sell an event designed by fate and realized by destiny since that event (destinated to occur in the future) has already happened virtually in the consumer's imagination and the effect of either positive or negative has already been accepted by the "fatalism-victim" market before it happens in the future reality. For example, in a market dominated by a fatalistic approach, a minority of investors can easily manipulate it. If the average investor believes that the fate of Bitcoin or Steem (their course to this day) defines that they will cease to exist, that is, in the future prices will fall constantly because this is their "destiny" (their future course) then a few rationally thinking traders will take advantage of this faith for sure.

These two animated pictures could represent Destiny and Fate as a controversial scheme that influences the everyday life of billions of humans...

Stoics an Epicureeans have developed a philosophy on the concepts of Fate and Destiny.

Stoics belief was based on the concept of a divine plan devised by God's. Thus human actions, decisions, planings, were realized according to God's will. Stoics believed in the existence of a universal fate network. Human souls are connected to this network and the human free will expected in the real everyday life is under control of the fate network which predefines circumstances and crucial events.

By the other hand, Epicureans denied the existence of such a fate-network and the Gods control on human destiny. They believed that rationality is the source of any action due to human will. If an action is not dictated by rationality there is no human will as long as human existence is defined by rationalism. Extending the interpretation of Epicureans belief we could consider God(s) as a helper(s) rather than tutor(s) and administrator(s) of human's everyday life.

For Friedrich Nietzsche, destiny is a synonym to the will to power. This concept expresses the Nietzsche's philosophy fundamental. The will to power (der Wille zur Macht) is the basis of the human behaving according to this philosophy. For Arthur Schopenhauer destiny is not a radically defined pattern but an expression of the will to live. This approach facilitates the transition from a predefined status to a living and evolving fate status where it is possible to escape from your destiny following the path of Morality and dedicating yourself to an Art. According to this philosophy, Asceticism is also necessary for keeping control of destiny.

And, finally, there is determinism, a philosophical trend that is often confused with fate. In reality, this is not the case, determinism is not another word for fate or destiny. Determinism is based on causality which means that everything happening in the future is the consequence of everything has already happened. The difference here is that Fatalism means a given status in the future which is impossible to avoid, whatever are your actions. For Determinism, everything is "caused" nothing is "given" or predefined. Robert Kane is a philosopher studying the notion of determinism such as Thomas Nagel. Here, causality is the main creative element of any upcoming situation or fact.

Now, what about the photo above? Nothing! The photo is a static remake of a given moment in the course of real life. There is nothing happen anymore and there is no past and no future to represent on the photo. It is a trapped fraction of a visualized version of Time, of your time! - as you are seeing this photo now. And of my time as the creator of this photography. This photo is published to relax if you get here by reading the text horizontally and not vertically. The harmony, variety of objects, nature's merging to the urban landscape and the special color of the sunset is the secret to relax at a glance after the read of such a note which is a portion of great brain food, very good for producing new ideas or ameliorate the performance of our thinking machine.

This photo is included in the #mnemonicphotos collection. It reminds of a wonderful afternoon in July 2019. Animated images at the top of this article are not included in any collection. They will be published also on creary.net along with some unpublished digital artworks soon.