Destiny

[Guest Metal Dragon]

I was thinking about this for some time now and I decided to see what others think.
Does anyone believe in destiny?
Destiny means: The inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined. So in other words, if it's your destiny to destroy the world, then there's nothing you can do about it since you have no control over your future.

I for one don't believe in destiny. Your future is what you make out of it and it's always in your control and no one can decide what will happen in your future except you. Well, that's my opinion, what about your's?

[The13thMan]

[FONT=Century Gothic] [COLOR=DarkOrange]The only thing for certain about destiny is that it's impossible to figure out rather it's real or not. There's no proof for or against fate. I personally don't like to believe in fate, but if it did exist then i wouldn't mind. The way i see it, it's my destiny to make the choices that i will make. So either way they're my choices.

Though i don't personally believe in fate because God gave us free will. If we had a destiny then we wouldn't have free will. And if we didn't have free will then we mine as well be robots that follow God's every word. I also don't believe God would do that, because what does the love of a robot mean? It's not real, so it doesn't mean anything.

Later.
[/COLOR] [/FONT]

[KatanaViolet]

I'm pretty much more or less on the same page as you 13th Man.
I'm skeptical about the existence of fate/destiny, but if it does exist, I think that it's ever-changing, because it's my decisions that I make today that ultimately influence my future. I don't like to think that the course of my life is predetermined. That would take all the fun out of living.

For every action there is a reaction.

[Anime Elf]

They way I see it is we have a way our life could turn out that would ultimately be the best for us in the long run, which may involve anything from becoming a president, becoming a teacher, or maybe even just having kids. I think that fulfilling destiny just means becoming self actualized and its our own choice whether or not this happens.

[TheResplendent]

Despite one of my most favorite characters from Naruto being Neji, i do not believe in pre-destined destiny, but rather everyone has the potential and ability to create and follow through with their own destiny. I suppose the concept is really that simple. People have different inclinations and different hard-wiring and it is ultimatley up to them to take advantage of it and achieve what they are capable of. It is also up to the person to decide upon an ultimate goal, though it is contrary to human nature to be completely satisfied with it once it is achieved. There is always a strive for more, and even more after that. Those who believe in and find their destiny are the lucky ones.

[Guest shoki de nai]

I think that you future is what you make it, because there are so many choices that you can make in life that affect your future. So having only one preordained future is impossible because your future is affected by the choices you make.

Such as, if you are supposedly destined to destroy the world you can?t do that if you decide to throw you self in front of a bus.

[Taltos]

Fate is a very tricky concept. You can theorize that everyone's fate is to die, and you'd be right. Because what is a person's life, anyway? A series of events that may or may not be noticed by more or less people than the [i]next[/i] series of events.

The point is, it's an exercise in futility to obsess over it, because then your fate will have been wasted. :D

[Guest tanukioh]

I think destiny as more of "This is probably going to happen". o.o it's hard to change, but it is possible. :)

[2010DigitalBoy]

I do. Because whatever happened in the end was your destiny from the beginning. If you were to deter from the path of your destiny, it wouldn't have been our destiny at all, so it is therein impossible to change your destiny. I don't get how scriptwriters get that confused so much...

[Guest Stafal-chan]

hmm i'm not sure...i don't like the thought of having a preset destiny...i don't think something could be that concreate. how coudl somethign be decided liek tha right away ^_^ i don't really believe in destiny ^_^ i think you chose to do as you wish and that shapes your destiny making it so that your destiny can alway change depending on the things you've done ^_^

[Guest Ver2.0]

I kinda beleive that we have a mix of destiney and no destiney I beleive God knows what we'll do in life and can see basically our whole life from start to finish, but I think that there's kind of split at spots that might have say Rout A, Rout B, Rout C, and so on but God knows what will happen at the end of whichever one we choose.

[Fasteriskhead]

God, I'm going to have to get a little longwinded for this. Apologies in advance.

Now, how the question of destiny goes is obviously going to depend first and foremost on what we mean by the word "destiny." Metal Dragon defines destiny as "The inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined." This is how the idea of destiny is most often conceived in everyday discussion. I would formulate it by saying: destiny conceives one or more events in time (time here conceived as a kind of [i]space[/i], constantly moving in one direction and infinitely divisible into any number of single "moments"), and specifically events situated in the future, which are already objectively determined and cannot not take place. These events are, in other words, future moments, future [i]presents[/i], which will necessarily happen.

(No, I'm not just trying to sound pretentious here, I'm trying to put out the problem in the clearest way possible)

Formulated like this, as the reality or nonreality of objectively extant future presents, the question of destiny is pretty obviously impossible to answer (as The13thMan said further up). Normally understood, the future is [i]precisely[/i] that region of time which we have no sure way of seeing or confirming; we can certainly make increasingly accurate [i]predictions[/i] by way of examining experiences we've already had and, through induction, making general laws out of them, but that's about it. Temporal events, roughly speaking, are arbitrary. There's simply no way of knowing for sure (no, not even through prophecy &c.) whether a given present that comes about necessarily [i]had[/i] to happen or just turned up by chance. So the question of destiny, phrased this way, basically only ever allows us to say whether we "feel" like there is or isn't destiny, presumably just because we do or don't like the idea. To paraphrase Heraclitus, it's probably useless to take random guesses about this kind of thing. But! Even if we say that we'll never know whether the world is on rails or not, that still doesn't mean we've gotten rid of destiny. It could just be that we've misunderstood what it means, and thus asked the question wrong.

So, let's see if we can start over. The word originally comes from the Latin [i]de-[/i] ("completely") + [i]-stinare[/i] (something like "to stand"). Destiny can then mean refer to something "completely fixed," or in other words the objectively extant future present we mentioned above. But I think it might also mean something else. It can mean, not that the [i]event[/i] is set (objectively, necessarily), but that [i]we ourselves[/i] stand [i]towards[/i] something in a set way. For example: think of how we use the similar word "destination." The status of our destination when we set sail (or whatever) has nothing to do with its being inevitable, but rather [i]is[/i] our destination precisely because that's what we're oriented towards. Think of the number of times we've heard in bad TV shows, "It's my destiny to go to Harvard," "I'm destined to marry that girl," and so on. None of this has anything to do with inevitability and all that crap. Rather, destiny becomes the question of we, as human beings, being [i]oriented towards a destination[/i].

Don't get me wrong, this is not to fall into some feel-good cliche like "you choose your own fate" (ask someone really dedicated why they do what they do, and 9 out of 10 times they won't have a good answer). Destiny means that we ourselves are destined, that we stand towards a future that (so to speak) turns us towards itself, calls for us, and challenges us. However, this is a completely different definition of future than simply "events that haven't happened yet." So the problem is that in order to understand destiny (well, [i]this[/i] kind of destiny), we have to begin to question the traditional idea of time as a sequence of "nows" that have and haven't gone by. Or, to put this even more broadly: to get some grasp on destiny, we first have to ask, "How does time work?"


(you know, the worrying thing is that I tried to put all that in as clear a way as I could and it's STILL incredibly difficult to read)

[Xerxes]

I believe that destiny can be real but also not real because some people's destiny could be to inherit what your parents do as a job. The other part is that it can't be real because we don't have control on what goes on in life and if we did than the people who want to kill us would have already done it and we would be dead right now. And that is what I think

[Hanabishi Recca]

[quote name='Taltos']Fate is a very tricky concept. You can theorize that everyone's fate is to die, and you'd be right. [/quote]

I'm not sure about that. Fate isn't a ticky concept. For this reason, Men and women live and die every day. But [My thoughts] I think that it is more inportant to live spiritually.
Because, If you never live spiritually, then what do you have?

[I know alot of people can and might disagree with my last statement]

But saying that a destiny is where you are dertermend [sp?]
Isn't it a self choice?
I believe that God can bring you to a place.
But it is a choice for you to take the right action.
Isn't your destiny in your hands then?
Therefore you have control over your own destiny.

Me saying from this stand point, I know what my destiny is.
Since I have control over it.

[Aaryanna]

[COLOR=DarkSlateBlue]Well first of all I do not believe in destiny. Believing in destiny would to me seem to take away our ability to make choices. It would imply that (for example) the woman who was beaten to death by her abusive husband was destined to die at his hands. And that he was destined to kill her. In a sense such a thing would make crimes acceptable since the person was ?destined? to do what they did.

I also don?t believe in it, as it would limit what you could do. Any attempt to rise above your destiny would be futile since other accomplishments or horrendous deeds were not in your destiny.

That being said, I do believe in our choices being influenced. For example if I want to fly by myself, well it?s just not possible as I am not a bird and lack wings. It requires the influence or use of technology in order for me to safely leave the ground and in a sense fly.

And as others have already put it, your future on some level is what you make of it. [/COLOR]

[Stark]

[SIZE=1]Believing in Destiny is counterproductive to the human capacity of creativity and free will. At least, that's what I think. I'm someone who has a lot of interest and faith in what people are capable of doing. Saying that everything is subject to fate seems like a step backwards to me.

In any given situation, people have dozens of choices that they can make. Saying that everything stems from fate takes away those choices, and ruins any potential for greatness. Creativity comes into play in those choices, and with creativity comes advances in everything from medicine to modern philosophy.

Anyone who says that we were destined to be where we are today doesn't seem to understand that people adapt to their environment and the era in which they live. Some people might say that they are just a product of the times, but everyone has the potential to break away from the trends that dominate the current time. But very few break away, and they blame it on the times, their parents, place in life--in otherwords, they say it was fated to happen.

Seems like a cop out for me. Another way of not taking responcibility in a world of increasing complexity. So no, I don't believe in destiny. I believe in people.[/SIZE]