Of Fate, Men, and Time

You come into possession of a time machine. You think back through your life, and reflect upon the time when your father died from being accidentally pushed down some stairs at work. The police never found out who did it, and if it was even intentional. That day was been replaying in your head since you were young. You know can solve the mystery. All this time, and now you can travel back into time to find out who it was, and if it happened on purpose. So you boot up your time machine, set in the year, and with a loud whiring, and a crack, you're instantly shot back in time. You step from your time machine, and race to your fathers place of work. He should just be getting off, soon and the time of his fated death is near. You run to his office. It's almost 5pm, so every one's getting out of work and the hallways are swarmed with people. You push your way to his office, it looks exactly the same as you remember it. Shaking off the nostalgia, you frantically looking around the jostling crowd. As you reach the stairs, you feel your feet give out under you. Someone left a Styrofoam cup on the ground, and you lose your balance. You instinctively push your weight forward, and slam into the person in front of you. You regain your composure, but the older gentleman in front of you, is knocked down the stairs, toppling head over heels, and lands at the bottom, his neck twisted in a deathly fashion. You stair down the cold marble stairs, to the face of your father. You were the cause of your father's death...

Now lets stop the story here. As you probably have asked, who pushed him then before? Or, would he still have gotten pushed, if his son never went back in time to find out? The implications of a story like this are so paradoxical that they really can't be answered. The same goes for that great scene in the movie The Matrix. Neo walks into the Oracles house, and the elderly, wise woman, tells him not to worry about the vase. Perplexed, Neo asks, 'what vase?', and turns to look around, and knocks over the vase. She rhetorically asks him, does he think he would have knocked it over if she wouldn't have said anything. These loopy questions and idea's are part of the much bigger picture, and that is of Fate. ( I capitalize Fate on purpose.)

Some people believe that our Fate is predetermined. That even as I'm typing these keys, it is written in some cosmic book somewhere, that I'm meant to type these keys. Even me thinking about Fate, is predetermined. Not to get too religious, but most people who believe in this prescribed Fate are generally religious. God has determined all our moves before hand, and watches our movements like a released wind up toy. (When I refer to God, I don't speak to one religious sect). This leads to the belief that God who is omnipresent, knows of the results to all our choices, and therefore approves of all our paths, for he has not changed them. 

The other camp believes that we determine our own outcome. That our Fate is what we make, and that nothing is set in stone.


In the movie, "Big Fish" The movie's main character a very charismatic, all American guy, is given the rare glimpse when he's a child. He gets to see how he dies. This means that for the rest of his life, he can do anything he wants, cause he knows only what he saw is how he's going to die. He could jump out of an airplane with no parachute and someone be promised to survive it. This would be the biggest example of a pre determined Fate. Nothing at all, can change the fate of his life. So we obviously see a problem with this. If his Fate is determined, then he could literally do anything and get away with it.

Another Fate problem is the Back to the Future problem. Another time machine example. If I were to go back in time, and murder my parents, or prevent them from ever getting together, then how could I be born? If I was never born thanks to killing my parents, then who went back in time and killed them? This grisly  question is one that stumps and really puts a wrench into the idea of time travel.

So which do you favor? The idea of Fate as this mysterious figure who you encounter every so often, showing up in the biggest moments of your life? Or a collar and leash, rigidly attached to your neck, dragging you along, kicking and screaming?