Some people argue that the human condition is determined by factors deep in our DNA, in mechanisms of survival, adaptation, and extinction embedded in the genetic code of our species. These biological determinists call us back from getting caught up in fantasies of human transformation and thinking we can break free from the bonds of Fate.
Those who say that temperament is Fate – temperament referring to the genetic inheritance of human biology – have neighbors across the halls of academia who add the co-determining factor of environment to the picture. They point out that genes are switched “on” or “off” in response to external conditions and events.
The temperament of individuals caught in chronically unsafe, inhospitable, or hostile circumstances will adapt by becoming more anxious, reactive, and vigilant. Genes and their host organisms don’t survive in a vacuum, but are constantly reading and reacting to their environments.
These neighboring theories are actually siblings in natural science, of the empirical approach to knowledge that resolves only to work with the reality outside our minds. Concepts, hypotheses, explanations, and prophecies – all constructions of mind – must either be drawn inductively from experimental observations or get down to the facts as quickly as possible to prevent drifting away into creative (i.e., idle) speculation.
Together, temperament and environment can be seen as the internal and external dimensions, respectively, of human Fate.
Using that term doesn’t mean that the factors on either side cannot be altered somewhat through various interventions. We’ve known we can alter the external environment for thousands of years now; culture itself is both the product and fallout. And very recently we have discovered how, if not yet to what extent, we can change the genetic instructions in our DNA and possibly reengineer human biology itself.
What most scientific accounts leave out of the picture are the very things that make the human adventure so interesting: our subjective experience as persons, our individually unique perspectives on reality, our universal need for security, belonging, orientation and significance, and the sense each of us has of a Mystery at the center of Everything – however dim and nearly forgotten.
Such interests and concerns were historically the province of spirituality, nurtured under the supportive guidance of religion for thousands of years.
The diagram above shows the axis of scientific dimensions, internal temperament and external environment, intersected by a second axis with its poles in things that don’t lend themselves to objective examination. An image of a bow-and-arrow suggests that the real dynamic of human transformation is to be found here.
Having identified the first axis with Fate, with factors that seem largely outside our control, I will associate this second axis of the bow-and-arrow dynamic with what in earlier ages was known as Destiny. This is more than just where things are “destined” to end up, which once again is what we typically mean by Fate.
Destiny has always had a more optimistic and hopeful ring to it than Fate.
If Fate is the way things are, Destiny is how things might go if they were to somehow transcend, break away, or be released – like an arrow from its bowstring – from the constraints of Fate.
Humans are the species of Destiny, one among many with the unique capacity of intelligence to look beyond the limitations of temperament and environment and imagine what isn’t here now, maybe never was, but one day might be.
This visionary talent has enabled us to create maps of optional futures, inventing the various genres of earthly utopias and apocalyptic dystopias, heavenly paradises and torture-chamber hells, solar explosions and cosmic winters, or just the winding-down of our own retirement, old age, and inevitable death – which can sound again more like the knell of Fate than the ring of Destiny.
The spiritual wisdom traditions used to be our imaginarium for contemplating these optional futures and a higher purpose of human existence. Their mythologies and guiding metaphors offered lenses into hidden dimensions, not in Reality so much as of our own mind, that placed us in contexts where our life, choices, and actions matter on some larger scale.
By spreading before us possible futures of apotheosis or apocalypse, fulfillment or collapse, salvation or catastrophe, an escape from time by a series of escalating cycles through progressive lifetimes or by a sudden “blink of an eye,” spirituality, through its mediator and mouthpiece of religion, enabled us to take in a bigger picture and longer view of life.
Historically the disciplines of morality, art, and philosophy (the “love of wisdom”) were first conceived in the fertile womb of religion.
Today, despite the fact that many religions have lost their roots to the mythopoetic imagination and are defending their myths as so much supernatural journalism (e.g., the biblical literalism in Christianity), humans are still possessed of this longing to see through the narrow channel of Fate, between their environmental conditions and temperamental dispositions, into a vision of how their beliefs, values, choices, and commitments – in short, their creative authority – are together the determining factor in human Destiny.
Let’s take a closer look at this dynamic axis of human Destiny, represented by the drawn string and poised arrow in the diagram above. A principal role and responsibility of religion, as already mentioned, was historically to cast a vision before its people, optional futures that depended to some extent on human beliefs, values, choices, and commitments.
In the sport of archery, the very notion of getting focused and taking aim assumes at least a fair chance of “missing the mark” entirely – a favored metaphor in religion (Greek hamartia) for falling short or flying wide of our Destiny, represented by the will and character of its mythological god, the imagined exemplar of what humans are meant to be and become.
Remove the target entirely and there is nothing to take aim at: no objective goal, directional path, consistent intention or longer purpose to guide and attract our human aspirations. Without a guiding myth, that is to say, humans are trapped in the narrow channel of Fate with a dead-end future.
This presence or absence of a guiding myth which unfurls a bigger picture and longer view of life where human freedom matters has major consequences for the shaping of character, referring to the enduring habits of belief, attitude, and behavior that develop through repetition over time.
According to this definition, a newborn has no character to start with, but gradually constructs one by repeating and thereby reinforcing a characteristic, self-consistent, and increasingly predictable way of engaging with Reality – what is also called a “way of life.”
Character is a “third force” that many determinists leave out of their diagnoses of the human condition. Are we determined by genetics and nature, or by environment and nurture? The consensus has been both to some degree. But there is this other determinant: the force of character that draws back the string of desire, longing, and aspiration, with an intention of launching us into the future – actualizing its picture into reality.
Obviously, if there is nothing very attractive or compelling up ahead, so far as we can see, our habits of character will get oriented to a rather pointless existence, forming beliefs that nothing ultimately matters, attitudes that are dark and despairing, issuing in behaviors more reactive, desultory, and careless as time goes on.
What’s the remedy to this depressing account of our human condition? A new guiding myth, a bigger picture, and a longer view that draws desire deeper into our human potential, aiming our aspirations in the direction of what we still have in us to become and achieve.
The interesting thing about this co-determinant of human character is its instantaneous and adaptive responsiveness to whatever optional future we entertain in our mind and energize by our choices, in each apparently minor moment of every day.
We tend to become the persons and get the worlds we imagine. Our time is ripe for a New Philosophy of Life.
Tracts of Revolution 