Fate and Choice, continued

I have finally decided to revisit my earlier post about fate and choice. I won't lie and say I haven't had time because I have had plenty of that. Just been in a really aimless and lazy state of mind. Seems my mind is more active when I have more work.

To summarize my earlier post, I had expressed dissatisfaction with Fate and Choice as an explanation for the course a person's life takes. While the former dispels the concept of free agency, the latter does not comprehensively explain all events in our lives. Hence, I came up with my own theory. Its still not very clear to me but hopefully putting it in words will help me sort it out a little more.

The basic principle of the theory is that choices are made by multiple individuals which affect other individuals and their choices. I don't really have a name for it but I guess we could call it "The Theory of Interacting Choices". As a child in school I remember learning something in Physics about the superposition of waves. When two waves of sound or light or fluid travel through the same medium at the same time they interfere with each other or something of that sort. There were also two kinds of interferences from what I remember: constructive and destructive. I don't remember all the details but it seemed like a good analogy to my interacting choices theory.

Essentially, we are each affected not just by choices we make but also by choices made by others. Similarly, choices we make affect the lives of others, sometimes in unexpected ways. As a simple example I will try and trace what choices have brought me to this particular period of my life. I currently live in the United States, where I work for a large public accounting firm. I went to Virginia Tech where I got a bachelors degree and then a masters degree. In India I went to a boarding school from the 3rd grade to the 10th grade and then to a school 2 minutes away from my home for the 11th and 12th grades. Each one of these events resulted from choices I made or my parents made.

For example, I went to boarding school because my parents made the choice to enroll me there. My impact on the circumstance was limited by my lack of experience and voice in the decision. In other words, my choices were inhibited at that time; however, the choice was made on my behalf by my parents. For 11th and 12th grades, I went to a school close to home because I did not want to commute long distances in a crowded city, and the school was offering a course in electronics. In either case my circumstances were affected not just by choices I made but by choices that others have made. My current place of employment was determined by multiple managers' choices to recommend me and my choice to accept the offer.

I have attempted to extend this hypothesis to various situations and circumstances and found that all of them can be explained by tracing the choices made by the parties involved or by an external party, that expectedly or unexpectedly contributed to the current situation. I want to stress here that tracing the "choice path" is not the same thing as laying the blame. Choices can sometimes have negative consequences that none of the involved parties expected. Often times a negative event cannot directly be ascribed to a bad choice made by any one individual. In such cases it is a common reaction to invoke "fate" or seek to lay the blame on anyone. To relate to my Physics analogy, sometimes choices made by others can have positive influences (constructive interference) and sometimes they can have negative influences (destructive interference).

There are strong indications to me at this point that the impact another party's choice has is directly proportional to their distance from you, either geographically or in terms of their personal relationship with you. In religious or political autocracies we have a situation where an entire population's choices are inhibited. In these situations, the choices of a few can disproportionately impact large number of people both inside and outside the regime, as evidenced by Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.

It is important to understand that natural phenomenon should not be considered events of fate. If a person is in a city at the time of an earthquake, the pivotal choice is the one the person makes to reside in the city, or to visit the city at that particular time. The earthquake is a purely natural event, dictated not by fate, but by tectonic plates.

Fate and Choice

After many vain attempts to find a satisfactory explanation of why our lives are the way they are I have decided to try and find an explanation in the clutter of my own mind. The germ of this idea has been growing in my head for a few months now and it has become necessary to write it down before I confuse myself further. It is probable that the idea exists already, but not having yet encountered it outside my mind I am going to try and explain it to myself.

Fate has never satisfied me as an explanation for life's events. Fate, destiny, kismet, taqdeer, call it what you will, seems to be applied almost as a convenient afterthought once an event has occurred. My main issue with the fate theory is that it discourages analysis and is intrinsically bound to religious faith. Fate has been and is used to frequently explain away great misery. Whole groups of peoples have been held down, oppressed and slaughtered around the world, and for an explanation we get a shrug and "Fate". These events are not limited to dictatorships or autocracies either.

On the other hand there are many things that cannot be explained by the choice school of thought either. It is true that a large part of our day-to-day lives are determined by individual choice and we can shape our futures for the most part by conscious choices. However, in circumstances of "choice inhibition" (this concept is borrowed from Amartya Sen), individual choice is negligible and its outcome minuscule, and we once again lean back on kismet.