The Right to Free Will

The people of today’s society may claim to be fatalistic, but only when it suits their ends. Fate has come to be used, much like religion, science, or morality in general, as a tool by both the well-meaning and the ill-intentioned. We may say that a certain outcome is simply “fate” when we do not wish to take responsibility for the consequences of our decisions. We may, however, claim a good result to be the product of our accomplishments, ignoring fate when it so suits us. We may, still, claim that something was “mere chance” if we do not know whether to pride ourselves or discredit ourselves; this is our safe middle-ground. In every case, though, we have denied ourselves the consistency of beliefs.

Overall, what we really do when we flip-flop between blaming fate and crediting our own efforts is deprive ourselves of the consistency that originally gave the concept of fate its power. If we remain steadfast in our belief or dismissal of fate, then we force ourselves to heed our own senses, accepting both the good and the bad or honoring neither. When we blame ourselves for our wrongdoings, we also commend ourselves in our acts of altruism and benevolence; ignoring fate, we are forced to acknowledge our own behaviors and their consequences, and are thereby persuaded to effect, through more positive actions, more positive results.

It is my strong belief that we should not play it safe, so to speak, by removing ourselves from the effects we have on others and on ourselves. If we own up to the end results of our decisions, saving claims of “fate” for only those circumstances in which our minds can see no clear causes whatsoever, then we make ourselves not only vulnerable to our own failures but open to our own successes. We must drop the pretense of chance, accept the inevitability of our own right to choose, and let that right empower us to influence our society for the better.