Somewhere East of Eden

Are we free or are we simply the playthings of fate?  Can we ever be free or does or life follow a predetermined pattern?  Are we cause or are we effect?  The supposed conflict between free will and fate is a problem as old as philosophy itself.  It’s a problem that has engaged so many minds, those far greater than my own.  It’s a problem, it would be wise to conclude, that has no solution and will never have a solution, a sort of dialectical chicken and egg. 

But there is a third way of looking at the issue.  It seems to me that the age old problem of fate and free will is based on a wholly false dichotomy.  Free will is what we have in the immediacy of our circumstances; we have choices to make for good or ill which, in turn, impact on fate. 

Fate or karma, if you prefer, consists of the wider variables, the things that we cannot control, those things determined by the actions of God, of history and of other people.  But we are not marionettes; we do not perform an invariable dance.  Life, rather, is an unscripted play.  You and I and everyone else has a part, though it is not predetermined.  You are only a puppet if you think you are a puppet. 

Take the example of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, a brilliant dissertation on the interplay of fate and freewill.  Hamlet’s father has been murdered.  He has been chosen, by fate and by circumstances, as the instrument of vengeance.  But the whole tragedy then focuses on the tension between this fate and Hamlet’s doubts and uncertainties.  He fights against fate “O, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.”  He even considers suicide as a way of avoiding fate – “To be or not to be.”  Contrast him with his erstwhile friend Laertes, a pure instrument of fate.  It is he who, in the end, propels Hamlet into action, a fusion of free will and fate in a given set of circumstances. 

Shakespeare is good on these issues but John Milton in some ways is even better.  There is God in Paradise Lost contemplating the fall of man, a perfect illustration of the clash between fate and freedom, and, it might be said, the limits of divine power;

So will fall
He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate! He had of Me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

There is God, angry at his own creation, angry that freedom means freedom, contemplating a Fall that has yet to happen!  Ah, free will, where would God be without it?  After all; it serves as a perfect alibi.  Yes we are free, free to struggle with fate, free to struggle with an allotted role, free to travel to the Land of Nod, somewhere east of Eden. It’s a perfect definition of the human condition itself.  I for one cannot think of any better.