[eyewoo]

so true, balistic... it is how you handle your life at those times that either brings clarity if you are true to yourself or fog if you fool yourself. That fork in the road and the choices made may be more important than any situation that brings you to the fork.
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[Yarik]

Point taken Ballistic, but I don't agree. I'm only 20, and I can only begin to summarize the shit that has plagued my life. If I start telling you about it all, it would take me at least 3 pages of writing. I've been through horendous troubles in my life, starting at age 4, and more recently around 18. To say I can't be the judge of what people do, has no meaning to me whatsoever.
I've probably been through more shit in the bast 13 years, than most of you will face in your entire life.

[Domino Harvey]

[balistic]

Yarik: I never expected that, at the age of 25, I would be taking narcotic painkillers 4-5 times a day to remain semi-functional. I never expected to have to consider whether or not I'd be able to continue my professional career after working for just five years, after barely beginning my first feature film. Or to confront the fact that I'm probably going to be in pain every single day, for the rest of my life. That's a scary corridor to look down. I never expected my nervous system to turn on me.

And there are people who have had it much worse. I can still move my arms and legs, after all.

In a way, it's made me a better person. I don't worry about my career anymore. I enjoy my job, and I'm no longer worried about what my next big gig will be. I concentrate on being comfortable right now. I read more (averaging a book a week right now). I'm much more compassionate. I've become much closer to my sister and my good friends. I remember their birthdays now.

Don't become so consumed with society's definition of success that you ignore your life in the present.
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[gLitterbug]

Somehow I start to think that this thread has people actually talking about 2 different things, or at least situations.

I don't think that anyone actually would say "oh it was your free will that made that genetic defect and you yourself are to blame for your misfortune" or something like that. What I do think the "you are master of your own destiny" crowd is talking about is someone sitting at home complaining about the shit life gives him when in reality he's just not trying hard enough or at all. You can't say in which category a person writing a post on the internet belongs to. The weak-willed whiner or someone who actually has it bad.

Personally I am blessed with a very good life. I have some issues, like everyone, but nothing that really limits my freedom. Not everyone can say so and I wouldn't want to switch with anyone for sure.

But life giving you shit like a disease or a horrible accident or whatever has little to do with what I understand as free will. Free will in my opinion is along the lines what Sumaleth said. Of course you only have free will as much as your environment lets you, but the big thing there is that some people's free will gets stopped by "you need to smoke to be cool" while other's only gets taken down by a broken neck and not even by that.

The reason I get worked up everytime I hear "there is no free will and life is oh so unfair to me" is because I had close contact with the prime example of the whiner type for quite a while. The guy had a way better situation than so many other people could even dream about, but he was so drowned in self-pity that he would've liked to fall into some coma just so he doesn't need to cope with life. Offered help was soon not taken anymore, because it would've meant work and more than simply giving in to self-pity again. The conclusion I have drawn from that experience is that you can help such a person only by force and by making him/her realize that it is up to him/her to act and break through the minor limitation that life throws at him. As long as such a person has the excuse that there is no free will anyways and it is all up to some mysterious force, the situation will not improve. In that case it is not due to any worldy limits but simply due to his own personal limits which are very superficial and something that leads me to have little respect for a person.

I can't say how bad Domino has it or what happened to Yarik, but for as much as I know they could have had the same shit thrown at them and simply differ in willlpower.

edit: I realized this might sound harsh and attacking again, so I thought I'd better state now that this isn't meant as an insult to Domino or anyone else in this thread. Rather I just meant to say that it is impossible to judge over someone here, since we don't know the real circumstances at all in these cases.

[Domino Harvey]

I'm not taking offence by what you said; rather an earler statement of yours sums it up perfectly. I only have as much free will as the situation permits.


Couldn't have said it better myself.


I'm doing all I can every day to fix things but right now that can't be done and I've got my work cut out for me.
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[Mikko K]

[Misc]

[Naeem]

hey guys,
there have been some really great points made. i don't know if you're all mad at me for starting this thread. I've also gotten the feeling that you think I'm whining about life. I'm not trying to justify myself, but perhaps I can give you an example.
I'm not one of those self-pity people who crawl up into a ball and moan about life. It barely has anythign to do with my life. But tell me this; a guy I know, lived and studied in a foreign country in a branch of medicine called Homeopathy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy ). He studied for 6 or so years, and devoted his life to it. This was back in the late 80's or early 90's. When he lived there, he had an okay life. He owned a small clinic, was respected in his town, and lived a good life.
Then, he decided to come to the US. He saw it as a place where his dreams would blossom. And he thought that he was in control of his life, and that he made the choice of his own accord. Yet, why DID he make that choice? Because of circumstance... He'd heard many accounts of success from men leaving from his country, going to USA, and living the life of their dreams. Yet, those were lies created by those same men for praise, and respect. Those men boasted, and liked feeling 'above' the rest when they came back to visit their country and hometown.

With 6 years of Homeopathic study behind him, he comes to USA in hope. Here, he's devastated. Homeopathy is merely a placebo, perhaps not even that, with perhaps a few molecules of the actual medicine needed to cure an illness. He couldn't open a clinic here, or there would be lawsuits on his door by the end of the week. Now, with the title of Dr., and literally, an almost abandoned branch of medicine in today's day and age, he works in a book store, doing general things (cashier, stock, etc.) .

He came here to USA, technically, by his own free will. No one forced him. Yet, he was under a circumstance, that led him to this choice. He won't go back to his country, because he has a family now, which is an almost binding circumstance in itself. Today, at the age of 40 something, he lives in an apartment, paying the grand per month for rent, trying to give his kids what he dreamt of.
There go his 6+ years of study, and his dreams of having a decent life. Self pity isn't what's gotten to me. It's just looking around, you see people stumble and fall after they've worked SO hard, at times. Why? They did it all right. They gave those dreams the devotion, the love, the care. All because of circumstance...

My statements in my first post were just an observation... pity for others, I suppose. Those who've tried to achieve and failed. Those who are born into a family in the Middle East, or Africa, or Asia or anywhere, with a huge disadvantage that may very well threaten their lives. Those who starve, not because they chose it, but because they had no choice. They can't rise, because there are no resources for them to do it with.
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[Sumaleth]

annisahmad, interesting first example there. But from my view, it contradicts the point I think you're trying to make.

If the story had concluded with this man dying alone and destitute in a gutter, then that might have supported your contention. But even with six years of wasted learning and a poorly judged move to the US behind him, this man has gone on to find new work, a home, and a family.

So he's not the millionaire he envisioned becoming, that doesn't make his life a failure-by-chance.

Because we learn from our mistakes (even the ones we had no say in). We don't keep driving a straight line after we've driven off the road. The man of your example didn't keep trying to practice homeopathy until he died in a gutter.

--

Your second example -- that of people born into environments that struggle to support life -- is a more difficult one to analyse. I suppose because I don't know why people keep being born in such locations.

If a landscape has no clean drinking water and no farmable land and no great resources, then it would seem obvious that people shouldn't try to live there. And certainly not try to raise a family there. But they do. And then it looks like people are born into bad luck, which I suppose they are, but that "bad luck" definitely has human choice behind it.

--

Having said all that, I do agree with your original post that most of an individual's success or failure in life comes about through processes they have little or no control over.
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[gLitterbug]

Hey annisahmad, I'm surely not mad at you for creating this thread, it is very interesting after all.

To get to your example. I honestly don't think that it is a good one to show the things in life you can not influence which lead to trouble. First off as Sumaleth already said, he didn't end up in dire circumstances it seems, but rather a "normal" life. Secondly in my opinion it was very much his own choice to come to the US. The only problem I see is that the choice was based on hearsay from questionable sources. Would someone not usually reliably inform himself before making such a big step and move to another country? Surely he could've found out about the state of homeopathy in the US before he actually moved there? What kept him from doing such research and more importantly, why did he stay after he found out the hard way? If it was due to family, it was again his choice rather than anyone forcing him into it without any reason. Of course there are plenty influences that led to his decisions, but I would hardly call any of them something he himself could not have dismissed.

Your second example is something that Sumaleth answered pretty much fitting my own opinion too I guess. If you were born with AIDS in some dry land in Africa I really don't think the world is to blame or the evil western countries that try to keep those people down. That doesn't mean I do not pity the innocent kids that end up dying horribly. I do however blame their parents and the medicine man and whoever contributing to the fact that there is still such horror going on. When I hear stories like a medicine man saying that a night with a virgin will get you rid of AIDS and people believing that although they can actually see that it is bullshit and nothing ever changes, then I start to wonder why that is. Of course those kids get raised with all the influences from their parents like that you have to respect your chief and whatnot, but there are people breaking out of that now and then to show that there is actually free will possible there too.

The real problem I think is often times not the lack of free will of one person, but another person using its free will in a way that limits the first person's. Like someone drinking and driving, then causing a fatal accident. The victim of that has no influence, but the drunk guy surely had every choice.

[Lunatique]

I think the only thing that matters is how you face the cards you're dealt. For example, an artist who lost both arms in an accident might get so depressed that he would commit suicide, while another artist learns to paint with his feet instead of giving up on life altogether. Who you are as a person will always be the determining factor, while circumstance just change the scenery of your world. But just how much control do you have over who you are as a person?

I've seen so many examples of people royally fuck up in ways that I just can't fathom--people who were given great opportunities but makes a huge mess of it all by being...well, themselves. Some people just aren't physically capable of being cautious, or grateful, or hardworking, or responsible, or compassionate..etc. If a guy whoes brain is lacking the normal alarm signal for impending danger, he WILL take stupid risks and get himself killed, or walk into a casino and gamble his entire life away in a night (there was actually an educational TV program about people like that). So with all those pesky brain chemicals essentially pulling the strings, just how much control do you think you REALLY have? We are flawed to begin with, and that is a scary thought.

So in the end, does it matter if it's free will or circumstance that shapes our lives? If we can't even control who we are in the first place, how can we be confident that we can face the cards we're dealt in a healthy manner, or know what is the right thing to do to shape our lives? What if our priorities are wrong and we don't even know it, and no one bothers to point it out to us because they're just as clueless as we are?

Some people feel it in their gut that they know right from wrong, who they are, what they want out of life, and am confident that they were dealt a pretty good set of brain chemicals to get to where they want in life. People like that believe they can overcome the deterrence of circumstance--no matter how dire, until something comes along and slaps them in the face really, really, really hard--something that's far worse than what they'd experienced in the past. That's when the moment of truth determines who is capable of rising above, and who will sink under. Untested, we could all be optimistic and idealistic, and we better hope and pray we never have to face that determining test--like a war, horrific accident, fatal disease..etc.

[gLitterbug]

I actually had a dream about war last night. Everything went down hill and prevented me from going on as planned to reach my goals in life. I vividly remember me saying "WTF". Hopefully that stays just a dream.

[Yarik]

Lun: Loved what you said in the first paragraph. Look at Ballistic, even though he was dealt a bad blow, he still lives on. He is fighting on, and not feeling sorry forhimself. Look at me, I've been dealt lots of bad blows, yet I do not feel sorry formyself. I do not feel like I want to kill myself or do harm to others. I got out of the rut I had a child and kept moving on.
I still face many obsticles, with the disease that I have, and the horrible mental memories. I am getting myself a phsycologist to help me through this time.

But the point you made was brilliant. it is not what hand you dealt, it is how you deal with what you got. Keep a poker face my brothers!

[Domino Harvey]

The point I was trying to make is that sometimes going on living is the best you can do with what you're dealt.

You can't magically overcome some things no matter how much effort you put into it or how you look at it.
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