Why destiny does not exist

Although individual particle processes can move backward or forward in time, the universe as a whole is skewed in the forward direction, because its past endpoint was highly ordered, and its future endpoint is highly disordered. Our mortality is this asymmetry in microcosm. We have the feeling that the past is fixed because we have records of it, created as the universe slid from its highly ordered origins toward a messier future.

We have no such records of the future. We acquire this knowledge only in the act of living. Our decisions might be preordained, but we still have to go through the paces, and that is what gives our volition meaning.

But at the quantum level, time gets fuzzy. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle causes us to have as little knowledge of certain past events as we do of future ones. Quantum mechanics redraws the line between ignorance and knowledge, and therefore between future and past. Should we actually be troubled by the idea of information from the future traveling into the past?

But our control of the past is very limited—as it must be, if the universe is to avoid imploding in a big logical paradox. Quantum mechanics is set up to deny you that influence. It creates an eddy in the river of time, but only a little one. Retrocausality skeptics complain, not that retrocausality is weird— all the options for explaining entanglement are—but that proponents have yet to flesh out their ideas into a full-fledged theory. Proponents accept this criticism.

According to Cramer, every event sends out a wave propagating both forward and backward in time, connecting the measurement of a particle with its earlier preparation, but canceling out at other locations in spacetime.

Other researchers are using retrocausality to explain existing results. An atom that normally emits light will cease emitting when its surroundings become incapable of absorbing that light. Retrocausal models have forced physicists to reconsider long-standing taboos. In affording a role for future events in the present day, it joins a line of thought stretching to Plato and Aristotle.

They argued that nature, like man, is organized around final ends and goals. But then things don't turn out the way they should have, and those same signs are now seen as premonitory of an adverse fate. We only see what we want to see, it's obvious. It may happen that adverse conditions or bad luck repeatedly affect people and things. Being in the right or wrong place at the right of wrong time may change the course of your life.

That's for sure. That's what really happens, or do we just want to see it that way? For Ignazio Silone destiny is "the invention of the resigned" , and for Leopardi "destiny may change even on your deathbed".

To each their own theory. Blaming destiny for not having succeeded in life does definitely not help us reacting to adversity. We decide all by ourselves? In part, we surely do. But then luck, or we may call it destiny, surely affect our actions. However, we make the final decisions. Talking about the world we are connected to: fashion, design, photography. There are many examples of people who have changed completely the course of their lives by reacting to initially unfortunate, if not downright tragic, conditions.

Becoming one of the world's greatest entrepreneurs after a childhood spent in an orphanage; the children of a small-town dressmaker having trouble sustaining her family becoming top manufacturers; a man running an anonymous hand-crafted business who became one of the key people in the world of design and finance. Italy is full of such examples, families who started from nothing and are today renowned names in the world.

Determination : If all of time is a solid, existential block devoid of progress then time is un-experienced perfection. Our conscious creation of the present moment is the chaos of random influence that ensues, leading to presumed imperfections.

Video games take advantage of our endless desire to reach destiny by assuring us we will, in the end — with a bit of practice — because the ending has already been written.

It's a classic case of "the best of both worlds": Destiny with Free Will; an adept fantasy of life repeating itself with a chance to 'do over' again and again until you finally claim what was always rightfully yours.

Except that, life doesn't actually work that way. We only get one stab at the pie, there aren't a zillion takes. Yes, there is the chance to practice in life but not on the same chunk of time. But sometimes life offers us a second chance — not often. And when it does, it kind of suggests that just maybe destiny does exist and so time must give us another go around because the future really is all set in stone. A friend of mine once 'came on to' a girl in a chip shop who was totally unimpressed.

Later, he slipped on the wet pavement outside and broke his arm. In hospital that afternoon the nurse who came on shift was the same girl. They hit it off. Code-breakers and magicians go by a set of rules, some are obvious — like frequency — others less so. A situation can be duplicated, the fundamentals are all there; that's what they rely on to decipher code. However, while the situation on any given day might be the same, the day is not.

In the case of my friend, the situation was the same: two people thrown together; let's see what happens. But the wider world was not the same and can never be duplicated. Hence the different outcomes. It was only because he noticed her in line at the chip shop that an impression was made. Had he not been attracted to her he probably would not have noticed that the nurse had been standing beside him earlier in the day. She likewise. We pass hundreds of people a day in town, so perhaps we should make more note of those we see sitting beside us on the train or walking down the street.

It's why a feather in the cap will get you noticed. They say, we are all just seven steps away from connection on Facebook. But in world pandemonium where there is no algorithm trying to link us together, we can spend a lifetime on the bus and never meet a fraction of the people with whom we daily share it.

Or is there? The Meaning of Time is covered in the next chapter. It states that our existence is defined by change, so if the past and future are identical, nothing can be. Mistakes are just as likely to lead to success as accuracy, proving by probability that destiny exists.

What really matters is effort. It is true that, NOT trying to achieve something means it will probably not happen. However, this may be your destined path. You are obliged to try and survive — just as a squirrel collects nuts in autumn — and you may, or you may not. Regardless, your efforts to affect or alter the future are determined by such things as fear, custom and conditioning. That doesn't mean they necessarily work.

Squirrels die young, too. We must remember that, in modern societies, the future is often laid out before us. Jobs in town are available, shops are for rent, careers are established avenues with paths and prospects already in place. All that most have to do is fit in and follow the leads. Under the guidance of these arrangements that are already prepared for the working masses leaving school, one could almost say: Yes, destiny does exist.

Very few toss all that security and establishment aside on the off chance that their crazy idea of a future might work. They are called entrepreneurs, and though many fail, a small percentage succeed in spectacular fashion and become superstars. Play The Game and follow the leads, just like real life. There are no right decisions or wrong decisions with destiny, there are only decisions that lead to an outcome, the only outcome available.

That was your choice and you must learn to live with probabilities. Accidents befall us, they can be cruel or kind, so neither should you blame yourself nor take credit for yours or anyone else's destiny when you are such a small part of its manifestation.

Be humbled, accept the cards you have been dealt, and find solace within. Really, if you had the chance, would you go back in time and change the destiny you are presently living? Knowing that there would be the possibility of you dying younger on a different time-line?

At least you are now alive! You might wish to alter a terrible injustice in the past, but might it not lead to another — even worse? The future happens to everybody, equally. Sure, we are bombarded daily by media musings on the rich and famous, but there are just as many successes in small, poor communities. We just never hear about them. It seems, of the four billion of us on Earth, there are only a set number of wonderful destinies available; the human population can only handle so many.

Get in line. In reality, destiny is not just about success or greatness, it is equally damning, equally unsympathetic, and as we see in the media everyday it can be equally horrendous. And it is just around the corner for everyone. Tomorrow plagues us all, it has no social exclusions or ethnic boundaries. We are all presented with the same offer everyday, to make of it what we can — and we try to — however fallible we are.

When Destiny Unravels we discover who we truly are. The terrifying implications for a time traveller who is forced to reconcile with his own past self - to save his own life. Many of today's eastern philosophies hold time in the highest regard.

Hindu and Krishna teachings consider time to be connected throughout and that there are no such things as coincidences. There was no beginning of time as there is no present moment; "Moksha" reveals that time cycles and the future is set — rebirth just as sure as sunrise — everything is meant to be.

In essence, all of time unfolds all at once Destiny exists. How Christianity treats destiny is more vague. Time is a measure of physical existence only, it has a beginning and an end. Eternity, it is written, is for God and the hereafter. The passage of time and how it manifests is not considered in the Bible nor in other teachings. Neither is the prospect of one's predetermined destiny disclosed other than our fate and possible ascension to Heaven — which is not actually determined until you reach the Pearly Gates.

Some believe God has a plan for all of us, while others interpret the scriptures to mean we do have Free Will in our affairs. It is often said following a tragic death that "God works in mysterious ways".

From a Western, academic perspective there are two camps. Temporal Ontology is their ring, and the canvas upon which they wrestle is the enormous subject of existence, itself. In simple terms, the A-Theorists believe in "Presentism", whereby the past does not materially exist, the future has not happened and so we live in a vibrant present state only, progressing onwards.

B-Theorists consider the "Block Model" to be how time is; that all of time from the past through to the future exists all at once, and that the flow of time is merely an illusion that conscious beings rely on to function. Some argue that our path through life is governed by random assembly and not decision making, like a role of the dice.

Indeed, it does at times seem as if there are too many variables in the mix and that what or how events occur might be purely chance. Let's call them the C-Theorists, C for casino or chaos. What of fortune, fluke or luck? A wise man once said: "There is no such thing as luck, it is all in the planning. But whose plan? Your plan or the larger universal plan that involves our predetermined passage through time? We could count Carl Jung among the C-Theorists.

His belief in an under-lying consciousness that, like dreams, is devoid of time and can connect with future events, was how he explained chance encounters with our fate as more than mere coincidence. By suggesting that no time passes while we are unconscious offers the notion of a mind able to travel at will instantly from one period within our lives to another, thus throwing chronology out of the window.

We deem our direction through time to be towards the future. We make use of the past by name as if we have come from there, as if it was there before the present moment. Whereas, we should be pointing out that the past only exists because of the present; we create the past by being conscious of our deliberations — regardless of the theorist that we may be.

There is no direction, no course, only the presumption of terrain overlooked. Clocks and watches disagree, as does our orbit around the sun. They demand direction by numeration, thus creating, by such triviality, the prospect of time's heading and so ironically its reverse.

By specifying points and periods are we not distancing ourselves from time as opposed to getting closer to understanding it? First, the bad news. If neither the past nor the future exist, only the present, how wide is the present? If it has no range or breadth surely it cannot exist A banal analogy: when does A-Theorists can easily state here that the present is just an abstract word placed on our conscious consideration of 'now', when in reality it obviously does not exist. Easy start.

But that doesn't get us anywhere; it still defies logic that we could be aware of a moment in our progress through time that has no dimension. Can we suggest that a massive stellar object passing through the cosmos in motion and time only exists in a present, undefinable and impossibly justifiable moment? How does an entire planet fit inside a moment, unless it is somehow attached to what came before and what comes after? It is all very hard to swallow.

If the past and the future do not exist, the present moment by itself is relatively speaking, nowhere, so a physicist would strenuously argue were his name Albert Einstein. Presentism at first glance seems flawed from the outset. It relies on the premise that a moving object can have no legitimate extrapolation, we can't tell where 'now' is because it's ethereal. On the other hand, the beauty of the proposal made by A-Theorists is its simplicity.

They argue not for the physics but for the reason. What is the point in living if it has already been done before? Surely such a redundant process would never have been dreamed up by something as dynamic and complex as nature. And for good measure: If everything existed all at once it would all be over and done with, right? How can progress be made if time is a solid lump of rock? We have to ask. How we perceive time, and how we appear to move consciously through this moment we call 'now', is covered in a later chapter and is called "The Kalahari Effect".

Everything that will happen to you is quite unavoidable. This would surely be a disaster! Not just for you and me but for the evolution of every intelligent being, one might think. If there is nothing we can do then lets stop trying to change things and just see what happens. This would not bode well for humanity. Without the desire to achieve, to challenge or to question, there would be no future for the human race.

No desire to live — no life! So, unless Evolution has a good answer Destiny is resigned to a dusty shelf, once again We can easily appreciate that an animal's need to eat brings pleasure, even though the choice to get up and go find its next meal is really controlled by hunger and the hopeful alleviation, thereof.

It gets up, it finds something to eat, it feels good, so it wants to do that again. This is instinctual, and it has worked well for eons. However, many small animals can indeed see a few minutes into the future, and make choices with that in mind.

Larger mammals may consider an hour or day ahead; while elephants could be making decisions based on thought process involving weeks, even months in advance. And now there's us, and given a brain to think about all this we could easily upset the cart if we accepted Destiny. We could stop making an effort; we could just sit and wait for our future, seeing as how it is already out there and coming our way. Evolution, having unwittingly provided us with a mind to contemplate our future, gave us also the means to question it!

In so doing, it created for itself a catch-twenty-two. Clearly a 'fool proof' mechanism would be required to keep us from falling off a cliff. Did evolution come up with a devious carrot in order to perpetuate intelligent life on Earth? Just like it offers us fear to escape danger , or ecstasy to achieve birth , might evolution also have offered us the notion of 'choice' to progress?

In a sense, we already have such a fail-safe system programmed into our brains. Preservation of life is not something we question, it is automatic. Taking one's own life is extremely difficult, if not impossible for most of us. The decision, therefore, to consider our destiny and act to insure benefit and survival is all part of the same mechanism.

How does such a system work? You could say, decisions are habits. While we imagine we can choose to act with complete freedom and independence, choices we make are actually repetitive by nature. We are condition over time, we have evolved over time, and now our decision making is practically predetermined. We wander from one habit to the next, not always precisely in the same way, but somehow we wind up doing that same thing we always do, almost in the same way. We are the kind of people we are: Risk-takers; introverts; calculators; or realists.

We are predictable. As is a fox, who sleeps in the same place if he can, then goes down to the river to drink in the morning, follows the same path, hunts for rodents in the farmer's corn field and finally goes for a nap on his favourite mound in the woods. Is there a creature that reacts so spontaneously and without pre-conditioned rationale that every minute of everyday is a new experience, and his future therefore is just so unpredictable?

Such a creature might have existed, but would it have been successful and passed on its genes? So we have to wonder: What is really steering us onward through time to our destiny? Habitual behaviour is safe.

Because it has been done before and worked, it can be done again. So, we make decisions, but these decisions are part of a much larger system that has been in progress since the beginning of time. Hmm, perhaps better described as Conditioned Responses , as described in this supplement.

So you think you are making a personal choice to, say However, because the future already exists, there are no million and one options you can choose from, even though you think there are. Like, sign up for the gym, join a soccer team, buy a bicycle, avoid junk food, try medication, a yoga class, etc — no, sorry, there is only one: To diet.

Habitually, dieting is the kind of course you are good at; you enjoy a challenge but are not athletic; and though you are an achiever, you are introvert. This so called 'choice' you made was already planned by character, it was in the mould, it was inevitable that you would. What you get for your trouble is a pleasurable sense of adventure. You get a feeling of individuality; you develop an important emotional awareness. All this is paramount to your self-esteem.

And you get slimmer, or you don't. That, we might say, is just part of your personality, the one you were given, not one you chose.