A small pointless debate

The other day I was involved in a semi-serious argument with a friend of mine about free will and predestined events. Having been thoroughly mauled by the events in my life, and further, finding myself at a somewhat mediocre although comfortable station in the social ladder, I seemed to prefer the existence of predestined events as having shaped my predicament. After all no one would like to believe that he is a mediocrity because he screwed up things in a royal manner. A man who finds himself at a mediocre level would like to believe that things were screwed up for him because of an external agent - God.

This friend of mine faces a similar problem though in an entirely different way. His problem is that in the normal scale of things he is an astounding success. He lives in a plush residence that even the super-rich of Bangalore can scarcely dream of living; he has attained a degree of success even in the realm of letters (as a prolific and quite articulate film critic); he has won prestigeous fellowships; he has travelled widely and is even financially quite successful. A man who finds himself in such circumstances would scarcely be convinced that luck could have perhaps favored him to a certain extent. Undoubtedly it would be very satisfying to claim total authorship of his achievements attributing them to his own talents.

Well, the two of us with our preferred predelictions got into a serious discussion of what, in fact, could explain the mechanism of the universe around us. He gave solid instances from his life where he had taken wisely considered and astutely conceived proactive measures - like for instance buying certain shares when they were freshly introduced in the market; selling those shares when their value had risen and investing the proceeds in real estate when land prices had fallen in Bangalore; further doing these even when there were strong protests from his wife - and of course, he was proved right; and several instances of how his moves were calculated to succeed even when he was working as an officer in a bank.

I tried to present events from the lives of people I knew who I felt were mauled by circumstances. He argued that in each case it could have been demonstrated that the choice they had taken was the most inappropriate one. If they had the right foresight they could have avoided peril and any person could predict that they would flounder. As a sort of a grand touche, I said that the very fact that one was born in a certain class of society  rather than another (for example as the son of middle-class parents rather than as a maid-servant's son) seemed to definitely indicate that there is a certain amount of pre-destination. He tried to fob off the argument by saying that he didn't believe 'in a pre-existing 'I' before my actual birth!'

I argued that it is immaterial whether one believes in the existence of a 'soul' or karma or not but it is an incontrovertible fact that people are born in different circumstances and that fact itself can have tremendous impact on the outcome.

I have to admit it that he came up with a strong attack by saying "If you didn't believe that Dinakar couldn't overcome his alcoholism problem by using his 'free-will' and 'will-power' you wouldn't have cared to give him the dressing-down advice that you gave him the other day."

I had to grant him victory on that point. We all tend to inflict our advice on others because we really believe that they are capable of making major changes in their behaviour.  Further, he argued that perhaps insofar as the circumstances of one's birth is concerned there may be no free-will but subsequently there is total control over directing one's life the way one wants to. He rightly argued that without the possibility of free-will no one would ever attempt to change his or her circumstances.

To counter his argument I gave an instance from my own life - I was made to jump from kindergarten to fifth standard, and even though such things were done in India, I suffered severely in the higher class because I was never given adequate preparation before being admitted to the higher class. I hadn't been taught the processes of multiplication and division; in fact I hadn't even been taught addition and subtraction and I found myself in a class where we were asked to convert 6438 pounds into tons; asked to convert 843 pence into pounds and shillings and so on. I was barely being taught nursery rhymes when I was put in a class where we had to study history, geography, hygiene and so on for which I neither had the vocabulary nor the maturity to grasp those ideas. I was not taught cursive handwriting and was expected to take down the notes that the class teacher dictated. I was taunted by the class teacher as 'small baby' and no one would like to be called that amongst his peers. I was taunted by my class teacher so much that I came to hate the school and anything related to studies.

I argued with my friend that this is a clear example of how predestined events seem to exert an important force in one's life.

Ultimately we reached a truce of some sort. We agreed that if the total motive force of a person's life is ONE (1)  then it is perhaps true that some decimal fraction, less than one (X < 1) is predestined, and the remaining is left to a person's free-will. For example, X could be 0.46 (predestined) and the remaining 0.54 could be left to one's free-will. And I chose to further specify that the value of X though less than one, is a variable that differs from person to person. So if you let your free will choose a goal and put more of your free will and life energies to attaining it, the fact that you won't attain it is determined by predestination.

And inasmuch as I consider a large part of my misery to be predestined, I similarly consider a large part of his rich circumstance and fortune also to be predestined rather than having the generosity of attributing it to his talent !!!     :-)