If it was possible to know your future what would you prefer: to know everything, in spite of the fact, that you can’t change anything or don’t know? (Ira A. topic 3)
I should say that Ira raised a very complicated philosophic question in this topic. I think there's a paradox about all this future prediction stuff.
If you know something you behave in a different way than if you didn't know the future. Therefore, what you see in the future is the future which is a part of reality based on the fact that you know the future. If so, it means that people don't have any freedom because everything is destined. This idea is called fatalism. There's a famous russian ballad called "The song of Wise Oleg" by Pushkin in wihch Varagian prince Oleg founds out that he's destined to die by because of his hourse. After he knew it he dicedes to kill the horse. Then he sits near the skeleton of the horse and dies because a snake that lived near this skeleton stings Oleg and he eventually dies because of his horse, as it was predicted. The theme of this ballad is that you can't change your destiny and the future will reamin the same, no matter how you try to avoid it.
On the other hand, not all the people are agree to accept the idea of doom. There's an opinion that we're all absolutely free and can choose our destiny ourselves. In my opinon, film "Matrix" conveys this idea remarkably. I'd say that I take this view, not fatalistic one. If everything was in the way fatalists think it is, there wouldn't be any sense in everything; the whole reality would be a sequence of senseless events. A human is a powerfull creature indeed and he can influence the world.
Still, this second view seems incomplete to me. I agree with fatalist that there's something above us people, and people are helpless in some way. I believe there's God who rules everything and who know everything, even the future. Still, I think that a human is a free creature. It sounds very paradoxically, I know. But this is the way I think.
Tim, your thoughts are very close to mine. On the one hand everything is predetermined, on the other we can build our life ourselves. It is enough hard to say which "hand" is more realistic. I think it depends on various situations. Sometimes it is more convenient to think in the one way; sometimes we prefer to explain our, for instance, falls as a cause of destiny.
ОтветитьУдалитьI think a very related topic is our personalities. If you think about it, even when we feel free to act, we act based on our personalities and behavior patterns - which are largely genetically inherited, meaning we didn't choose them. And even the parts of our personalities that aren't the direct result of our genetic inheritance are often the result of our upbringing and environment - neither of which we really chose! So even our free decisions aren't always as free (in the purest sense) as we'd like to believe.
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