“Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it, for the more power he attributes to Destiny, the more he deprives himself of the power which God granted him when he gave him reason.”
― Giacomo Casanova
At some point in my life, I became obsessed with an unpleasant idea.
“Maybe the future is all predetermined?” I thought.
Even if we had no say in how the future would turn out, it could still feel like we do. Maybe the universe has been rolling along for eons just so it could force me to write this exact blog post today, and even make me feel like I did it all by myself.
I don’t wanna get bogged down into the philosophical nutty grutty here.
People have been wrestling with this question for thousands of years, without coming up with any conclusive answer.
My own solution to the conundrum was simple.
“I could be wrong in two ways,” I told myself.
Either I believe there is free will, but there actually is no such thing. In that case, no problem! I had no choice in the matter to begin with.
But what about the other way to be wrong?
Maybe I convince myself there is no such thing as free will, but free will actually exists. This seems pretty tragic.
So my conclusion was to believe in free will, because whether I’m right or I’m wrong, I’m okay.
I thought I was pretty clever with this solution.
Until a few days ago, when I found out that this argument has been around, in one form or another, for at least 400 years.
French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal used it as an argument for believing in God (it’s even known as “Pascal’s wager”).
And I guess people (like Casanova above) have been using the same basic idea to motivate themselves to action in the intervening centuries as well.
The point being, I don’t know whether it’s your destiny to be successful or not.
I just feel you could be wrong in two ways.
Maybe you’re not destined for success, but you go through life acting as though you are. In that case, no big loss if you fail, and no fault of your own.
But maybe you are destined for success, but you do your damnedest to thwart destiny and to wind up as a big failure instead. Maybe you even succeed in failing. And that would be pretty tragic.
I hope the conclusion is clear.
Maybe even motivational.
And so ends my libertine sermon for this Sunday.