Do you believe in fate/kismet?

Apr 5, 2008
3,736
0
0
I am curious to hear what the community thinks about luck, fate, destiny, kismet and what not. Is there such a thing as karma? Do you believe in these things?

Luck, fortune or serendipity, I think is the most common of these external forces that people suppose influences their lives; that intangible something which increases the odds of things happening in our favour when it's good, and things working out against us when it's bad. It is responsible for gamblers' winning streaks, good news following good news or beating the odds. Do you have a lucky T-Shirt maybe, or a pen, a lipstick colour or horseshoe? Do you wear "lucky socks" whenever your favourite sports team plays? Do some people have guardian angels? Are some people luckier than others?

What about kismet? Or if you prefer, fate or destiny. Is there a purpose to each of our lives? Do we have a singular soul mate placed on this Earth for us to find, placed by Divine providence, the stars or maybe by Eros Himself? Are we pre-destined to be who/what we are? Does everything happen for a reason? If there is such a thing, can we influence or change it?

What about karma? Whereby (I believe) our good deeds and bad are somehow tallied and recorded and later, paid back in dividends? (eg. What goes around comes around/He'll get what's coming to him)

Or is everything that happens purely coincidence, strictly random chance?
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
Legacy
Mar 15, 2008
14,316
1,492
118
This would probably get me bad kismet/karma/ju-ju/fate/luck/superstition/whatever else you want to put down if I thought it existed:

People who blame their bad luck on kismet usually are the ones making the bad kismet for themselves. You know the kind of people I'm talking about:

The "I have such bad luck with boyfriends" girl who keeps dating assholes and wonders why she can't find a good man
The "I'm always so broke because of bad luck" guy who is buying $50 worth of lotto tickets each week
The "Why are the cops always going after me" girl who has five DWI's on his record
The "Why is my car always breaking down" guy who has never heard of an oil change

So I suppose what I'm trying to say here is that luck favors the person who isn't a screw-up.

"Chance favors the prepared mind"
-Louis Pasteur
 

Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
Legacy
Feb 9, 2012
18,467
3,006
118
I don't know what kismet is. First time I hear about it. But if it's another word for fate, no, I don't believe in it.
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,580
3,539
118
Fate...kinda. But only loosely, and in hindsight.

The way things are very often look like the only way things could have been. What happened yesterday was fated to have happened, from today's PoV, but not from the PoV of the day before.

Of course, this isn't so much fate as the way people look at history, but there seems to be a bit of overlap in thinking.
 

NightmareExpress

New member
Dec 31, 2012
546
0
0
Fate only exists if you believe yourself to be powerless, karma is what I'd describe as coincidental justice that may or may not be in any way related to the crime(s) perpetrated.

Really, I'd describe the two as excuses or explanations for things on the basis of belief.
If anything happened to me at all, I can call it "fate". I was simply pre-destined to type out this reply, rather than it being dependent on chance and will. If I stole a piece of candy and someone happened to steal a piece of candy from me a month from now, I or someone else could say that it was karma or a predestined result based on morality.

If karma really existed, then a majority of rich tycoons would end up bankrupt and miserable rather than the few that actively make reckless mistakes. Some of the more horrid people on this planet have went on to live rather happy, long lives. Could it be that the karmic action that occurred in their lives was fine red wine being spilled on their white clothes in response to all the blood that they have had a part in spilling?

My take on the matter is everything in reality is coincidental and based off of cause/reaction.
The only predestination that exists is when we allow it to, and even so there is a chance for an unexpected result to take place.
 

Quaxar

New member
Sep 21, 2009
3,949
0
0
Fortune? Most of it is not understanding the odds, selective memory and psychological influence.

Destiny? The fact that this "perfect soulmate" is in most of the cases someone from the same city or area as you seems to be odd. It also directly contradicts free will and the possibility to do with my own life as I please.

Karma... as a fan of world mythology I detest this western distortion of a Brahmanic concept but I suppose going into a rant about it isn't exactly on-topic. Anyway, since this concept directly requires a judgemental higher authority I will have to put it with the others.
 

Kapol

Watch the spinning tails...
May 2, 2010
1,431
0
0
I do believe in destiny. But not as in the concept of a force guiding us through life. I believe our destiny is our own, but the choices we make are ones we'd always make in our lives. To put it another way, if you were able to develop a machine that could take in every underlying factor of events (the people, the situation, basically everything that came before that current moment to shape things) and made it intelligent enough, it could predict every thing that will occur for the rest of eternity. The reason being that we will always be the ones making our own choices. But we are shaped by the influences that have begun to shape the world long before we were born. We are our own person, but we will always act a certain way. Even trying to act differently than normal is caused by some outside influence bringing you to the conclusion that you should act that way and how you will act in an attempt to do so.

Basically we live our lives as individals, as does every existing thing in the universe. But each object is influenced by what came before and will influence what comes after. This will end up shaping the future just as the present was shaped by the past.

For luck, I do believe in luck. I don't think it's something anyone can really control. It's just a fact of life. Better things happen to some people and worse things happen to others. It doesn't matter if you're a good person or not. Them's the breaks. Which also helps me point out I don't really believe in karma. At least not as something we can affect. I'm uncertain if good things generally happen to good people and vice versa. But if it's true, then I think that karma influence is already a sort of pre-determined ordeal due to my earlier rant about destiny.

tl;dr: Destiny is a dick.
 

Hagi

New member
Apr 10, 2011
2,741
0
0
Erm... in a way I guess...

I am deterministic. I fully believe that everything that happens could not have happened any other way. But there's no purpose behind it, no awareness or morality.

It's simply the laws of nature having their course with all that exists. All that happens is the logical consequence of all that has happened before and all that will happen will be the logical consequence of all that is happening.

There's no such thing as free will, whatever that even means, or some sort of cosmic awareness that judges our actions and changes the future accordingly. There's only cause and effect, causality rules us all.

As Schopenhauer put it: Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
 

Lionsfan

I miss my old avatar
Jan 29, 2010
2,842
0
0
Not really. I'd like to think that I decide what to do with my life thank you very much
 

lechat

New member
Dec 5, 2012
1,377
0
0
i'll quickly write my favorite parable/fable for my views on fate

so one day a man was walking through a market when suddenly from a distance he spotted the grim reaper.
the grim reaper looked straight at the man and slowly reaching out his boney arm began pointing directly at the man.
stricken by fear and not wanting to die the man immediately started running. he ran as fast as he could to the ocean and took the fastest boat he could to the furthest place he knew. when he got there he grabbed the fastest horse he could buy and rode it into the heart of the jungle to hide.
confident that he was finally far enough that he may of escaped his fate the man collapsed against a rock in the middle of the jungle when suddenly there was a tap on his shoulder. the man turned and saw the grim reaper standing above him pointing. the grim reaper said.
"i saw you in the market the other day and wanted to ask you what you were doing there since we were fated to meet in this jungle only 2 days later"
 

Fieldy409_v1legacy

New member
Oct 9, 2008
2,686
0
0
Sort of. I believe there is no such thing as chance. Chance is simply a lack of information. You might say the number that comes up when a man rolls a dice is random, but what if I knew the position it began in in his hand, exactly how much he was going to shake it, how far he was going to drop it and how much force he put behind it. If I knew everything, maybe more than human beings will ever be able to know, if I was an omnipresent god seeing, knowing and understanding everything, then I would know exactly what is going to happen to any person or thing at any time by understanding how the chain reactions of things interacting effects everything and that is the fate I believe in.

Note that this doesnt mean I dont believe in free will, I just think your freely made choices could be predicted. Every time you know what a good friend is about to say you prove me right.
 

Gigano

Whose Eyes Are Those Eyes?
Oct 15, 2009
2,281
0
0
I believe in Fate/Zero.

Otherwise, no, there's no supernatural will deciding anything for you, or rewarding/punishing you for doing good/evil. There's you interacting with the world and other people, so better try to make the best of it.
 

Chemical Alia

New member
Feb 1, 2011
1,658
0
0
No, I don't believe in fate, luck, destiny, or any of that stuff. But I do believe in Unreal scripting, only because I've seen people do it before.
 

Brandon237

New member
Mar 10, 2010
2,959
0
0
Hagi said:
Erm... in a way I guess...

I am deterministic. I fully believe that everything that happens could not have happened any other way. But there's no purpose behind it, no awareness or morality.

It's simply the laws of nature having their course with all that exists. All that happens is the logical consequence of all that has happened before and all that will happen will be the logical consequence of all that is happening.

There's no such thing as free will, whatever that even means, or some sort of cosmic awareness that judges our actions and changes the future accordingly. There's only cause and effect, causality rules us all.

As Schopenhauer put it: Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
Uhm... hey there... I am just gonna take this, put it up as my own post, maybe give you some compensation (like a compliment: well-written post that describes my view on this exactly)... I will be going now... [sub][small]smooth... very smooth[/small][/sub]

I am not superstitious to any degree, and when people say "everything happens for a reason" especially when trying to console you in your grief-stricken state, I want to blow a fuse on the inside. This is because the "reason" they are thinking of is not that the laws of nature given the initial state of the universe dictated it would one day be so, but somewhat more spiritual reasons.

So no fate in the classical sense, DEFINITELY no karma, that said if you do bad things the law/revenge/painful things will catch up with you more quickly in many cases. Not because you are a prick, because your actions bring said consequences upon you.
 

zerragonoss

New member
Oct 15, 2009
333
0
0
I don't believe in any type of predetermination, fate, dentistry. I do however believe in the ability of the human will to slightly alter probability, which basically means luck. I also think that it is the simplest way to explain free will without dismissing the physical world.
 

Baron von Blitztank

New member
May 7, 2010
2,133
0
0
Fate? No. It feels wrong to believe that my future is governed by something else and that I'm not in control over my own life.
Karma? Kinda. I believe that those who do wrong inevitably receive punishment but don't see much happening the other way around where those who do good are rewarded.