Search Results: fate

My unpopular opinion is that fate dictates our lives. Since birth, we're wired to react to certain scenarios in our unique way. The way we learn, process information and form our views... it's all predetermined. Think of life as one big explosion. Ever since the big bang, atoms and molecules had their paths set and all of the ways they react with each other could also be calculated. Even when life is formed, the reaction of all of the biology in every organism and their electromagnetic waves could also be predetermined. Of course the math is too complicated for humans to calculate, but it's still very logical.

I know some people may hate me for saying that none of their choices are their own. But I genuinely believe that free will is an illusion.

If you were given a chance to bring complete world peace (set aside your disbelief this is possible) but it would mean you were completely erased from existence, would you accept?

And by erased from existence, I don't mean die. I mean you don't and never did exist. There would be no afterlife as you were never born. So this isn't a sacrifice that you can gain anything from. You can't make up for any past actions or misdeeds with this noble act because you'll be complete utterly gone. Think of it as your soul, your being, your essence, the energy that makes you up being used in exchange for peace. Time would be redone so it isn't like you suddenly just disappeared. This would be you never were.

For those with children, your spouse/partner/whatever met someone else and the children were still born so no cosmic upset of reality is going to happen. Your parents had another child instead of you. There would be no other repercussions to the world beyond you no longer existing. (So no paradoxes or changes the fate of the world in some way.) And no, the other child instead of you isn't you reborn. No one would miss you or be sad or hurt or anything negative. You are completely POOF!

By complete peace, I mean total peace. No fighting, no war, no hunger, no poverty, etc. Everyone would have what the need to survive and be happy. True harmony, and a world that is perfect.

He was a philologist professor who served in the Franco-Prussian war, on the German side, that helped liberate Europe from a "liberated" French empire. He was also a musician, poet, novelist, and philosopher. He lived from about 1845 to 1900, so not that long ago. He is very much oversimplified by people who teach "philosophy" classes.

We are always eventually rewarded for our goodwill, our patience, reasonableness and gentleness towards what is strange. —The Joyous Science, 'We must learn to love'

Life has no deceived or disappointed me! ... Life [is] an experiment for the knowledge seeker - and not a duty, not a tragedy, not a swindle! —The Joyous Science, 'In media vita'

To not die from doubt and distress when inflicting great suffering and hearing the cry of this suffering. —The Joyous Science, 'A part of greatness'

The epicurean selects the situations, the persons and the events which fit with his extremely irritable intellectual constitution; he renounces the rest - that is, the bulk of them - because they would constitute fare too strong and too heavy for him. The stoic, on the other hand, practices swallowing stones and worms, glass shards and scorpions, without revulsion; his stomach is supposed to become indifferent in the end to everything that the accidents of existence pour into it. ... For men subject to the capriciousness or fate, who live in violent times and are dependent on abrupt ans changeable men, stoicism may be quite advisable. But he who anticipates that fate will allow him to spin out a long thread does well to set himself up as an epicurean, as all men engaged in intellectual labor have hitherto done! For it would be a great pity for them to forfeit their delicate irritability, and to receive in return the rough and spiny hide of a stoical hedgehog. —The Joyous Science, 'On stoics and epicureans'