Are We Masters of Our Own Destiny or Influencers?
Can we really control what happens to us in the future?
One of my students mentioned the phrase "We are masters of our own destiny" and while I do think there is some truth to this idea I really took a step back to think about it. I don't think we are masters of our destiny as much as I like to think that we are influencers of our own destiny. When you really ponder that phrase it really comes down to the things we can control/have influence over and the things we absolutely cannot control. Destiny is basically just a slurry of decisions we've made combined with things that happen which we cannot control.
Our decisions can have an impact on the outcome of something but there are still factors involved that we cannot control. Take for example a recent incident in this years NBA playoffs where the San Antonio Spurs were about to slaughter the Golden State Warriors. (At this point you have to excuse me as I am an avid fan of the San Antonio Spurs) Zaza Pa-cheapshot Pachulia took it upon himself to close out on Kawhi Leonard and ended up putting him not just out of the game but the whole series.
Now did Kawhi have anything to do with his ankle getting injured? Some may say well he was out on the court so he put himself at risk in the first place. I get that. But he could not control Zaza deciding to run towards him so clumsily and then placing his foot underneath him while shooting. This led to him being put out of the playoffs. Kawhi had no control over what happened to him. The only thing he could control was taking what would become his last shot of the playoffs. I just used this as an example to show that destiny tends to be a mixture of the decisions we make and events that we do not plan to happen.
You be the judge
The choices we decide to make have consequences. Good or bad. We can only control the work we put in but we can't control the outcome. Have you ever worked so hard at creating or doing something only for it to end up going the totally opposite direction than what you had anticipated? Trust me. Everyone has at some point. I get the idea of being a master of our own destiny but I just think that things don't always pan out the way we think due to the myriad of variables that exist in our lives.
Things we can control
- Our efforts
- Who we marry
- Living a meaningful life
- Our thoughts
- What we eat
Things we cannot control
- Who our parents are
- What country we are born in
- The weather
- The past
- The universe
We can influence and be responsible for our destiny but to say that we can control our destiny may be a bit of a stretch. I lean towards the way of being an influencer in how my life plays out. There are only so many choices I can make in my life and other than that, well that is called the will of God.
Do you think we are masters of our destiny? What things can we control? What things can we not control?
Thanks for your cool upvote mister!
Nice post humanearl, please follow me n upvote me to.
Regard @madcool
Wonder what John Calvin would have to say about this...?
Good question. What would he say?
it's rude to ask for upvotes and stuff, you should contribute something to the topic at hand and leave it at that, the same you would on other social media.
follow people that interest you, upvote things you like
Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
In our world, there will always be this part that we will not understand or can not control.Things we can not perceive and things happen by chance.
If there are things the we don't understand or cannot control how does that mean that it was by chance?
I mean there is something bigger than man. Something of which we will always learn from.
I am german thats why i used the word by chance ...in german its zufall what means something is like randomely coming to you.
Ahh I see. Du sprichst deutsch?
Ja und du auch :D Ich wohne in Deutschland.
...but i write in English to improve my grammar skills.
Cool stuff. I really need someone to converse in German with since there are not many German speakers where I live. I've been learning through duolingo but I feel like I can learn alot faster if I was actually being able to use the language everyday.
Sure you will learn much faster. Thats why i blog on english. Ad me on steem.chat my name is steemit.bronkong
https://steemit.chat/direct/bronkong
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Hello there! Nice article and indeed an interesting question that is hard to answer. I just wanted to note that weather control is done since the fifties, so weather control is definitely possible. Our effort seems to very much go into the direction of trying to control everything. Maybe it is just a question how long it will take to get more an more control of everything. Hard to say if we are ever going to reach the mastery of our own destiny .
Interesting point about man's attempt to control things and also the weather. I understand they have methods of doing this currently but they are still limited in what they can do. Mastering our own destiny in it's most truest sense requires us being in complete control. This won't happen. At least without the aid of supernatural forces.
I totally agree, it would require complete control. Imagine that everything is just particles which interact with each other. Everything is built from particles, animals, plants our earth, the universe and maybe what ever may contain the universe :-). If we could see and understand all those correlations we would understand what's going to happen next I think. But this is just theory and who knows what we figure out next that maybe proving all of our current knowledge is wrong :-) .
Nice post
I really appreciate it!
Psychologists say that people can control only about 40% of their thoughts and actions or less. And the rest is our genes, education and unconscious.
The genes can be alteres by our mindes, education can an must be transendes to be free, and the unconsion can be made conscious by diving deep (through meditation, and other things... flowstate activities)
Our environment does bring about certain thoughts and influence our actions. This is why I use the word influence instead of control when it comes to things on the outside changing our thoughts or behaviors.
I don't think we can control what will happen to us in the future. What we can control is how we choose to respond to the events that come into our lives.
We can make choices but can't control outcomes.
Control is not needed,...why would you.
If you dance, you have practiced, and enjoy the flow of it... can you control sex...art, a fun moment with friends... you live honest from your heart and share,.. create from your bliss
We can only do the best we can and hope for the best.
YES but.... there pricinples in the world and the universe we are not thought, and worse we shamed for!
Like when you want to express yourself and are told to shut up or you are not "good enough".
When you want to be a screenwriter and your parents tell you, "you will starve - go study economics".... that needs to be reversed, and we need to be thought the right stuff.... how to follow our bliss and create our reality, while everybody else does that to.
I am usually looking forward to a plausible future I think I will like, imagining how that future might come to be, and connecting the dots between then and now to map some trail from me to there. Then I follow that trail like my life depends on it. I try to do this on a small and large scale (map 1 day, map 50 years)
Do everything you can to influence how you want your future to be. I hope your trail ends with ultimate fulfillment.
My view on destiny is that, if I am a primary influencer of it, I am doomed, because everything I do is essentially random. My intro post explains, I flip a coin for almost every decision in my life, even the small ones so for everything I do I generally have to think of at least 2 good options and it doesn't leave a lot of room for thinking about the future with that level of branching. Sometimes I will have a series where everything I think to do, coin says no and my 15th or so option is the one I pick, then some random thing happens I never expected and on it goes. My theory is destiny on a global scale exists, and there is no way for humanity to escape what is coming.
It's good to be the primary influencers of our own lives. When you say random what do you mean exactly?
Basically the idea is to find two good options for anything, and randomly decide between them using various methods. If there are more than 2 some form of binary division is used where each toss of a coin eliminates half the options or more until only one remains, and in some cases the hands of my clocks or watches are used to find direction, such as any time I'm exploring some area or traveling, I leave my fate to the circumstances of the exact timing, so if the multiverse theories are correct I would be the kind of person that ends up in vastly different outcomes in very short time spans, but that isn't the reasoning behind it, I'm more interested in my own theory that something in our future is looking back on us.
The multiverse theory is not testable and observable.
That's true, I think of it as an interesting concept although I don't base my actions on that but rather my own ideas instead. I think something in the future is controlling the probabilities based on the anomalies I see almost every day, and it at least vaguely seems to be on my side so I haven't stopped since day one, even though there were many instances where that could have easily happened.
By a definition of the word random in this context, it means that, in terms of cause and effect, an effect must occur without any cause. In a deterministic universe, this is impossible.
At least, until you get into quantum theory :-)
Yes an effect cannot occur without a cause. Nothing is random.
So if It's random paradox, could you do me and yourself a favour...or an experiment?
Instead of flipping a coin, could you ask your gut or your Intuition next time the same you would do with a coinflip?
For an hour or a day, and than respons to this post?
coin said not to try that, three times in a row ;)
hahahah!^^