Do you believe in fate/kismet?

[Darken12]

As a person with almost pathologically high agency, the idea that my actions are not my own, or that my will is not free, terrifies the living hell out of me. The thought that the path of my life has been laid before me and that nothing I do matters is enough to send me into a spiral of crippling depression.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Karma doesn't exist. Period.

There's no invisible force hovering around our lives righting wrongs and evening out injustices. Bad things happen to good people and lazy, violent, and dishonest people flourish, that's just the way life is. I'm really sick of hearing about it to be honest. The first few times I heard people talk about the concept of karma, I had a "yeah, that'd be nice" sort of reaction, but now it's getting ridiculous the sheer scale of people who believe "karma" is an real-life entity. Each person's definition of it also seems to change to suit his/her needs as well. I can't even so much as get teamkilled in Counterstrike without a butthurt opponent screeching KARMA! afterwords.

People who believe in this strike me as the same people who watch those ghost hunter programs on TV and take them seriously. People want to think that "fate" exists and that "there's a plan for everyone" because they don't like the idea of having no control over their lives. That's why when a tragedy happens, people pray to not feel helpless. The world is a random clusterfuck of circumstance.

That's only karma in the sense of being punished/rewarded in this life. Karma in the sense of being punished/rewarded in the next life isn't so easy to disprove.

Now, I don't believe in that either, but the world isn't smacking me in the face with how it doesn't exist the way it does with karma in this life.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

I prefer not to believe in fate, because I don't like to think we aren't in control of our own lives...

 

[thePyro_13]

I don't believe in any of that stuff. The universe doesn't have a plan; things happen, sometimes they turn out in your favour, sometimes they don't.

We create purpose, it doesn't exist on it's own. The horizontal branch on that tree in the backyard isn't strong just so that you can hang a swing on it. It's strong for it's own reason, we just take advantage of it for our own benefit.

I give karma some credit, your mental state colours your perception of reality, being good and keeping relaxed makes everything appear easier and allows you to enjoy things that you wouldn't normally enjoy and cope with things that would usually trouble you much more.

But theirs no magic going on there. If the universe punished bad people on it's own, we wouldn't need police.

NOTE: The universe is deterministic, but that's different. The outcome is predicable, but not intentional. We can use maths to know that a certain asteroid will hit a certain planet, and that asteroid was always going to hit that planet; but their was never any goal involved, it's just the way things worked out.

 

[Entourian]

I've always viewed fate as a wheel hurtling through the vast expense of time. Only some of its spokes are broken and others are missing. Most of us are bound to this wheel and those that try to escape either become pariahs and outcasts or simply fade away. For are we not all fated to die one day?

 

[dementis]

Luck has to exist, otherwise I wouldn't have rolled 4 natural 20s the other night when sneak attacking an end dungeon boss and ending the encounter my DM told me he had been planning for weeks in one attack!