David Cowles
Jul 15, 2024
“Your Destiny is the Fate of others; the Destiny of others is your Fate.”
Destiny and Fate are two words I hardly ever use. They seem to suggest a passivity that is alien
to my philosophy…and perhaps to yours as well. But whenever I have used them, I’ve used
them interchangeably…and I was wrong!
Far from being interchangeable, Destiny and Fate are antonyms. And for just that reason, they
turn out to be very useful concepts after all! Destiny concerns what you make of yourself: “She
was destined to do great things.” Fate concerns what the world makes of you: “He was fated to
die in battle.”
But even that is an oversimplification. Better to say, Destiny is what you can make of yourself; it
is the sum of your possibilities while Fate is the sum of your limitations. Every failure can be
attributed to the fickle finger of fate; likewise every success is a fulfillment of destiny.
Traditional Physics offers a simplified view of the world: the future consists of all the points in
your forward light cone. This might work in an empty or solipsistic world, but it won’t work in
any universe that includes the category of the other, i.e. something other than the self but
sharing some ontological properties in common with that self.
Every ‘other’ has its own unique light cone but cones intersect, generating an interference
pattern that we know lovingly as this world. Imagine the Universe as a beaker of supercooled
water. Drop in a precipitant et voila instant crystallization. The other has just that effect in our
universe.
Such crystallization destroys the monotonous symmetry of the solipsist’s universe. The array of
points in the light cone now manifests as short cuts and obstacles, tools and impediments. I
remain 100% free in my actions but those actions now must take into consideration the
presence of the other. The insertion of the other modifies the terrain in which I operate.
All this has nothing to do with ethics; not yet! Whether or not I engage with the other, I must
take it into consideration simply in order to realize my own personal, entirely selfish goals.
When the law student asks Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” he is essentially asking who
qualifies as an other? Jesus makes it clear that all human beings belong to the category of the
other. His made his point. But we are free to ask, “Are human beings the only others?”
What about God? According to Martin Buber, God is the ultimate other. What about animals:
corvids and parrots, primates, sea mammals, octopus? Trees, forests, and other plants? Fungi
(the wood wide web)? Prokaryotes (e.g. bacteria)? What about the individual cells that work
together to constitute an organism?
We mustn’t forget other ‘life forms’ either, e.g. AI bots, Extraterrestrials. And what about Gaia?
Or Kosmos? Clearly, different cosmologies classify different entities differently.
Simply put, your Destiny is the Fate of others and the Destiny of others is your Fate. Example:
Robert Frost is out on his famous walk in a ‘yellow wood’. Home is his destiny (and
destination) but fate decrees that he can only get there via one of two paths. How come? The
forest also has a destiny: to regenerate and proliferate.
The forest’s destiny becomes Frost’s fate; his choice of routes is limited. But Frost’s destiny
requires the forest to accept two roads across it; that is its fate. Consistent with that fate, the
forest is free to pursue its own destiny by rejuvenation and reproduction.
Map this relationship onto the traditional timeline: destiny is the present exerting influence in
the future while fate is the future being felt in the present. And what of this illusive present?
The present is a region hypothesized to exist between past and future. Its width is
indeterminate: in some models (Laplace) it is zero, in others it is infinite (but bounded by a
membrane of infinitesimal width).
I am 5’ 4” tall; fate keeps me from realizing my dream of playing for the Boston Celtics. On the
other hand, I may be destined to ride a Kentucky Derby winner someday. Fate becomes destiny.
At any point I can see myself as the victim of fate or the beneficiary of destiny. A friend’s
mother used to say, “Whenever God closes a door he opens a window.” Exactly! In fact, a
closed door is an open window.
We all seem to have an almost insatiable desire to be ‘someone’, to make a difference, to leave
the world a better place, to fulfill our unique destiny. I am the author of my own play, the world
is my stage (Shakespeare) and you, dear readers, I might as well just say it, you are my props. So
go on, hate me! It’s ok.
Of course, you have your own destinies to fulfill, and potentially at least, I am one of your
props. So we’re both telling the same story, but in one version, I play the lead and in the other
version, you do. Life is a high school director’s dream: every part is the lead! (No more noise
from disgruntled helicopter parents or their overachieving progeny.)
Your destiny is the self you choose to project (superject) into the world. It’s you as you’d like the
world to remember you… a few billion years from now; as if. You control your destiny. If you
don’t control it, it’s not your destiny, it’s your fate…over which you have no control. Destiny is
what you make of yourself; Fate is what the World makes of you!
The Serenity Prayer (AA et al.) says it all: “God grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change (fate), the courage to change the things I can (destiny), and the wisdom
to know the difference.”
Ah, wisdom! A slippery commodity, that! Trying to alter things that cannot be changed (fate)
can lead to depression, resentment, anger, and addiction. Failing to alter things that can be
changed (destiny) can be a symptom of apathy, laziness, cowardice, etc. It can lead to anxiety,
rage, and self-loathing. Destiny is what you do to the world; Fate is what the world does to you.
You are responsible for your destiny. You are what you make yourself to be. But your little skiff
is not merely storm tossed on a dark and raging sea. Your boat is equipped with a rudder to
help you steer and, through the fog, you can just make out a beacon of light.
Value (Good) is the beacon that continually reorients you throughout your journey - it acts as
an existential GPS. Of course, nothing makes you sail toward the light; you can get your
bearings from a full 360° of possible courses. It’s 100% up to you, it’s your destiny after all, but
there is a safe harbor if you choose to take advantage of it.
If you arrive safely home, you may say that the harbor was your destiny all along and that the
lighthouse (wisdom) showed you the way. And that’s true! But you and only you sailed your
vessel safely into port. Ultimately, freedom trumps destiny and fate.
Destiny and Fate are often seen to be in conflict. The dichotomy is enshrined in our modern
Indo-European languages. When we speak using active voice verbs, we talk about destiny;
when we speak in the passive voice, we talk about fate.
We know how to struggle, how to fight, how to compete against others. Often, I pursue my
destiny by limiting yours. I do for myself by doing to others: it’s the Golden Rule for survival in a
bi-polar world. But is it best practices?
Is it possible that I might enhance my destiny by helping you advance yours? Could it be that
destinies can be mutually reinforcing? If I am your fate, might you harness that fate to help you
achieve your destiny? If you are my fate, might I harness that fate? Could fate be a trampoline
rather than a tar pit?
Consider space travel. The #1 impediment is gravity. The thrust needed to overcome the Earth’s
attraction requires an enormous expenditure of energy. But once I have put the blue planet in
my rear view mirror, I can use the Sun’s gravity to slingshot my capsule into deep space. What
was once an obstacle (Earth’s gravity) has now become a tool (Sun’s gravity). Gravity, my fate,
need not just limit my destiny; it can also facilitate it.
Jesus final commandment, delivered to his disciples on the eve of his Crucifixion, was just this:
“Love one another.” (John 13: 34) When I love an other, I want both of us to transcend our fates
and fulfill our destinies. In fact, I come to understand that achieving my destiny includes you
achieving yours. Your destiny and mine become entwined.
My destiny is your fate just as yours is mine. For the most part, one dampens the other; I limit
you, you limit me. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Every so often, our destinies may reinforce
each other instead. When that happens fate and destiny (your trajectory and mine) coincide,
each amplifying the other.
What do Utopia, the Garden of Eden, the Kingdom of Heaven, and Pepperland have in
common? They are states of being in which Destiny and Fate are one. Revelation tells us that
Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. Christ is not two persons; he is one
person with two aspects. He is the convergence of Destiny and Fate. He is that from which the
universe comes to be (“without him nothing came to be” – John 1: 3) and that toward which
the universe inexorably tends (“so that God may be all in all” – First Corinthians 15: 28).
Like great circles, our event lines diverge at Alpha and reconverge at Omega…but with their
‘orientations’ flipped. The arrows that once pointed up now point down. Event lines are Mobius
Strips; we live in an non-orientable universe.
Like electrons and other massive quanta, events occur in 720° space (vs. 360° for photons and
180° for gravitons). A key question in cosmology these days is whether ‘information’ per se has
mass. Most physicists think it does, but how do you prove it?
I would propose that the fact that events behave like massive particles (720° geometry)
suggests that events have mass over and above the mass/energy of their components. That
‘mass’ could only be a function of their information content. It could be that content.
According to Euclid, no two parallel lines ever intersect. What a lonely world that would be!
Talk about ships passing in the night. But 10 th grade geometry notwithstanding, the world is
anything but Euclidean. According to the ‘better geometer’, John of Patmos (Revelation), all
lines intersect…at the Alpha and at the Omega – one point, two countenances!
David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.
purpose and devotion.
Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving.
