No one can resist the sense of fate \u2014 especially in all kinds of literary and artistic works, where every story seems destined for separation, life and death, and reunions that dissolve like a dream. It\u2019s like the \u201cdestiny poems\u201d in Dream of the Red Chamber \u2014 with a few strokes, an entire lifetime is sealed. This sense of fate is practically every Chinese fangirl\u2019s favorite theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet fate itself is far from a simple concept. The original meaning of destiny in Chinese refers to the idea that the stars move according to divine command \u2014 that celestial bodies follow fixed paths determining fortune and misfortune among people. It emphasizes the natural order and its unchangeable nature \u2014 everything in the world is governed by predetermined, irresistible laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What most of us understand as \u201cfate\u201d today, however, is closer to the Western concept of fatalism. Fatalism claims that everything in life \u2014 life and death, wealth and poverty, fortune and misfortune \u2014 is preordained and unchangeable. It argues that all events and changes are determined by an external or supernatural force, rendering human free will meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donald C. Williams\u2019s four-dimensional realism supports this idea: if time is simply another dimension, then past, present, and future all exist equally and eternally. Philosopher Richard Taylor went further \u2014 if the past, present, and future all exist, then the future is as real as the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fascinating, isn\u2019t it? As if fate is a loop \u2014 perhaps a M\u00f6bius strip humans can never escape. But the trouble is, fatalism can neither be proven nor disproven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People often use chance and free will to refute fatalism, yet no one can truly prove that what we call \u201cchance\u201d or \u201cfree will\u201d isn\u2019t itself part of fate \u2014 something dictated by laws beyond our understanding. If fate truly exists, perhaps it also dooms us never to fully comprehend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People often ask me: What if humans really don\u2019t have free will? We love stories with a strong sense of destiny, but we\u2019re also terrified that our own lives might just be part of some higher-dimensional being\u2019s novel \u2014 a few casual sentences determining a lifetime. My answer -- So what. I can\u2019t exactly punch the author outside the book, and I\u2019m not the tragic protagonist either. Believing in free will doesn\u2019t change much. If fate truly exists, it\u2019s not as if a thunderbolt will strike me down for thinking otherwise. And if it did, I\u2019d probably laugh at how petty that would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But ultimately, the existence of fate remains uncertain. Buddhism teaches that every being has past lives, endlessly reincarnating \u2014 hence the term \u201cdensity.\u201d One\u2019s deeds shape one\u2019s future, linking fate with karma. If fate and cause-and-effect are bound together, then perhaps fate must exist \u2014 every cause inevitably produces its effect, and every life follows its traceable path. Yet all of this depends on the law of causality being true. If causality itself collapses, then so does everything we know \u2014 and we still can\u2019t prove that fate doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what then? Maybe we\u2019ll never know. Perhaps this very unknowability is humanity\u2019s fate \u2014 something unbreakable, unknowable, and ultimately unchangeable even if uncovered. It sounds pessimistic, but maybe that\u2019s just life. When things go well, we deny fate; when they don\u2019t, we blame it. Fate seems to exist and not exist at the same time \u2014 a kind of quantum superposition. Well, whatever. If my destiny really is decided by some unknowable force, then at least give me a fate with a killer soundtrack \u2014 absolutly, I will be obsessed with that.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No one can resist the sense of fate.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[15],"ppma_author":[21],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-12","tag-15"],"authors":[{"term_id":21,"user_id":7,"is_guest":0,"slug":"zitang-tang","display_name":"Zitang Tang","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/edc88bcffb79f6e722b77e8257274109d367d4fed42aa4f43cb19a40059fb1d3?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":518,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions\/518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iyceo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}