This is one of many essays I have been writing to practice English as a second language. I encourage you to make corrections and help me to improve myself. I think this platform could be very useful to learn and feedback each other whenever is needed. Thank you for read it!
Destiny and Determinism
Most of the cultures I have heard about, have their own definition of destiny. The most popular definition, I think, was by the Greeks. According to history, the Greeks thought that the day you were born could impact the rest of your life, also, they thought it's not possible to avoid your destiny. Even more, everything you do could actually take you in the same direction. Nowadays, many people think the concept of destiny is just an old belief like chiromancy or astrology (in which, by the way, I don't believe in). What if this concept is real?, what if free will doesn't exist?
Determinism must be the key. Determinism basically means that events are predictable. For example, if you throw a ball from the third floor, it hits the ground, no matter how many times you repeat the experiment, that is a fact. Also, if you know the initial height, you can know the final velocity. Therefore, it is a determined event that is predictable too. Unfortunately, not everything in this Universe can be predicted.
When Quantum Physics was discovered, the physicist found that a very small scale, where an electron and other particles live, the behavior of a particle might change every time you repeat the experiment, which means we are not able to predict it. However, does this also mean it is not determinable? What if we just can not know all the variables we have to know to predict the result?
The follow opinion is just a hypothetical case. According to psychologists, the behavior of one person can not be predicted (they use statistics to predict peoples behavior). Even more, two people with a similar childhood will not make the same decisions even if they are supposed to (like twins, for example). If people believe in free will, the last case is not strange at all, but what happen if free will does not exist?
Let's try to see it from another perspective. If you don't study for a test you will fail it, this means cause and consequence, therefore is a predictable situation. The question is, if you are not allowed to know the cause, does it means this cause doesn't exist? ...and this is the argument to our new definition of destiny.
Destiny could actually exist. We must be determined by many causes and destiny is our final consequence. This also means that everything you like to do, every choice you made, had a cause. Then, our decisions, everyone of them, must have determined by our past and free will doesn't exist. However, if we want to know a consequence we must know all the causes and as there are many, we can not know all of them in time to predict the consequence. Maybe one day we could, and then we will be able to know our destiny. In that case the question would be, should we know our destiny?
Picture from http://www.ipb-abacus.com/program.html