On Fate and Free Will

By Sadhika on

On the subject of nature and nurture, fate and free will, I would say that the Piagetian state of the child exploring the world around it with awe and curiosity, learning to map it using its sensory systems and implementing goal-directed behaviours that can be reduced to conscious muscle movement is strangely akin to the picture of a prehistoric man exploring the brutal unfathomable world around him.


“What once dominated waking life, while the mind was still young and incompetent, seems now to have been banished into the night - just as the primitive weapons, the bows and arrows, that have been abandoned by adult men, turn up once more in the nursery.” - Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation.
 

Our ancestors breathed their learning into our genetic code, much of which directs our behaviours and shapes our perceptions. It is this collective unconscious which represents fate or nature, and it is the Piagetian child that embodies free will. This is the idea of reincarnation so deeply embedded in our cultures - the Piagetian child is essentially the reincarnated prehistoric ancestor, bearing its “spirit”, or should I say its genetic potential. The same hero in the world of chaos and order, the same MAP schemas to move through it and the same narrative of exploration, reproduction, predation and survival.


Word etymology might throw more light on what abstract concepts might truly mean. Consider the word origins* of the following:

1. Evolution (n.) 1620s - "an opening of what was rolled up," from Latin evolutionem (nominative evolutio) "unrolling (of a book)," noun of action from past participle stem of evolvere "to unroll", first recorded in describing a ‘wheeling’ manoeuvre in the realignment of troops or ships.

2. Destiny (n.) mid-14c. - "fate, overruling necessity, the irresistible tendency of certain events to come about; inexorable force that shapes and controls lives and events;" also "that which is predetermined and sure to come true," from Old French destinée "purpose, intent, fate, destiny; that which is destined", noun use of fem. past participle of destiner, from Latin destinare "make firm, establish".

3. Fate (n.) late 14c. - "one's lot or destiny; predetermined course of life;" also "one's guiding spirit," from Old French fate and directly from Latin fata, neuter plural of fatum "prophetic declaration of what must be, oracle, prediction," thus the Latin word's usual sense, "that which is ordained, destiny, fate," literally "thing spoken (by the gods)," from neuter past participle of fari "to speak, tell, say."


It is strange that ‘wheel’, ‘revolve’ and ‘evolve’ all have the same root words. A wheel moves in a repeated circular motion but also moves forward at the same time. It is no surprise that a lot of nature moves in a repetitive but progressive fashion. Perhaps that which is predetermined is only so because it has happened before - which is the primary idea behind religious concepts such as rebirth and reincarnation.

Within the realm of philosophy, the idea of predetermined fate has been explored by Nietzsche himself, who talks about the "unteachable" core of our souls:
"Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment does that does not merely "conserve"—as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of our souls, quite "down below," there is certainly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined, chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable "I am this"; a thinker cannot learn anew about man and woman, for instance, but can only learn fully—he can only follow to the end what is "fixed" about them in himself. Occasionally we find certain solutions of problems which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they are henceforth called "convictions." Later on—one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge, guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves ARE—or more correctly to the great stupidity which we embody, our spiritual fate, the UNTEACHABLE in us, quite "down below."


Explore more:
1. The Moral Judgement of the Child - Jean Piaget
2. Symbols of Transformation - Carl Jung
3. A Schema Theory of Discrete Motor Skill Learning - Richard A. Shmidt
4. Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

*Word definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Keeper

By Sadhika on
Image
Of late, there has been a feeling settling in my chest like dust in an empty room—soft, silent, and certain. It is the quiet realization that my memories are not permanent things. Not chiseled into stone or sealed up in iron-bound books, but written in pencil, the graphite growing faint with each passing season. I am aware, now more than ever, that what I remember will not be remembered for long. I think of my parents often. I remember my mother in her early sarees —floral, soft, like the curtains of a spring house. As the years passed, her colours dulled. Maybe they matched her age better, or maybe they just matched her mood. I see her now in my mind, young, barefoot and newly married, in a kitchen not yet hers, lifting a spoon to her mother’s lips and asking if the peas were soft enough. What was her scent like?  Turmeric?   Talcum powder? Or those white rajnigandha flowers she loved so much? I don’t remember. I think of my father and the way he used to hum when he shaved, a...
Read more

A Village Denied

By Sadhika on
Image
Co-authored by  Shrankhla and Sadhika on August 28, 2025 Of all the deprivations visited upon modern childhood, none is so grave and yet so little acknowledged as the absence of other people. Those of us who grew up in fuller households know what today’s children are missing. We remember weddings where ten different families would squeeze into one house, sleeping on the floor, with cousins lined up like sardines. We remember giving up one’s own bed to an elderly uncle, and waking up to the sound of aunties and uncles gossiping arguing over tea. In those homes, very little belonged entirely to us. The bed we slept on, the food on our plate, not even our stories. Someone was always listening in, correcting us, mocking us, softening our triumphs with their own, or placing a hand on our shoulders when we faltered. It was infuriating. It was also how we learned that life is not designed for any one person’s comfort—least of all a child’s. Siblings taught us this brutally and tende...
Read more

So begins our undoing

By Sadhika on
In rich aplomb we sit Atop the piles of gold and good That we write to our credit, When the good Lady Fortune’s scales tip And the waves of Chaos come gushing in From directions unventured, To lay waste to our kingdoms. So begins our undoing. Then a shadow confronts us To which, earlier, we became privy Only in brief flashes of thought or dream, And brushed away with impatience. The darkest among us have a still darker self Long lost and buried Beneath the best of us. The old altars lay slighted, Our ideals bear no resemblance  To the names we gave them. We are ruled by Furies aplenty. How do we rebuild our fallen kingdoms Without Divine Guidance? Somewhere along our final descent, We meet the gods we banished. A faint glow (perhaps even imagined)  Beckons across the waste yonder. Do we follow? Or do we give in to the darkness? 
Read more