Is Your Future Preordained?
By mareem
@mareem (147)
United States
January 19, 2009 12:24pm CST
I finally got around to watching the season premiere of Smallville. For those of you that don't watch it, this episode centered around Clark Kent meeting members of Legion, who came from the year 3009 to help him defeat the Persuader and Brainiac. While working with these people from the future, Clark learns some of what his future holds and how Superman will affect not just Earth, but other worlds, as well. At the end of the episode, Lana tells Clark that his destiny is not what is written in some book in the future, but something he is making right now.
There are a number of schools of thought on both sides of this issue. Those on one side would agree with Lana's assessment that we are in complete control and we write our own destiny through free will and the choices we make. Those on the other side believe our destinies are preordained and the only time we actually are able to exercise our free will is in minor decisions, like what will I wear today, or what do I want to eat for dinner, and, even if we think we are exercising free will, in major decisions we are merely acting in a way we are preordained to act.
Which side do you believe is correct? Why do you believe it is correct?
2 people like this
4 responses
@mareem (147)
• United States
20 Jan 09
I happen to agree with both of you, that we are in charge of our own destinies and your argument for freewill is both logical and concise. I am curious if you have an argument for set future actions be knowable by us, since you wouldn't be able to exercise your free will to make changes to those set future actions if you didn't know what they were. According to some of those who believe in preordained destiny we wouldn't know we weren't exercising free will and would think we were in charge of our own destiny, when we were actually just following the path outlined for us. That would mean some all powerful entity was directing our path and the entity would know the future actions that were set. If that were the case, the entity would not be likely to share the information with us.
@ronnyb (6113)
• Jamaica
20 Jan 09
No I dont believe the future is preordained ,I think that largely depends on your choices ,chance and sometimes divine intervention.I mention divine intervention because I think at times God intervenes to protect us or lead us in a particular direction but I dont think it is written down,it think it happens on t.he fly
@mareem (147)
• United States
20 Jan 09
Very interesting and different. I've discussed this topic with many others and I've always found that people who believe in divine intervention are among those who believe our destiny is preordained and divine intervention is used to keep us on that path.
@cobrateacher (8432)
• United States
19 Jan 09
Other than the genetic aspects of our biology, the idea of preordination is spurious at best. Many people change drastically in the course of their lives. Indeed, reinventing oneself is almost automatic as we acquire age and experience. I believe we are as we choose to be.
@KatieDidit (989)
• United States
20 Jan 09
No, I believe we create our future one moment at a time by what we do in each present moment.
