Choice/Responsibility  and  Fate/Doing What Your Daddy Done

The trick it seems

when it comes to philosophy is to make sense of a coincidence of opposites.  On the one hand, is our intuitive sense of choice, that decisions are pivot points with consequences for which we blame ourselves (and others) or believe to be praiseworthy.  A hypothetical example:  “Why did you steal your sister’s shares?”

On the other hand is the assumption that cause and effect is seamless, without respite and with no gaps.  There is no room to exercise genuine choice, to play the hand that you’ve been dealt one way or another.  These two positions are antithetical, are contradictory principles.  And still we have enduring reason to believe, and to live in the light of two opposed realities.  A hypothetical example of stone-cold fate: “You stole your sister’s shares because you are a ‘bad seed’ and you’ve always taken what you wanted.”  There is no reason, — nothing to blame or to praise…

Lame examples for sure, but they easily could be lines from Succession, a HBO saga about power, politics, and money.

How in the name of philosophy, are both insights reconciled?  How to describe the dance of freedom and necessity?  How are these opposite and indispensable principles given their due, reasoned out?

[11] Who indeed, do you think is a better man, than he who…
understands that the limit of good things
is easy to fulfill and easy to attain,
whereas the course of ills
is either short in time or slight in pain:
he laughs at destiny,
(whom some have introduced as the mistress of all things)

He thinks that with us lies the chief power
in determining events,
some of which happen by necessity
and some by chance,
and some are within our control;
for while necessity cannot be called to account,
He sees that chance is inconstant,
but that which is in our control
is subject to no master,
and to it naturally are attached praise and blame.

–excerpt, Letter to Menoeceus by Epicurus

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How about a song, a tune that will buoy us in this segment of life?  This ballad!  Did I, as an exercise of freedom make a choice?  Or was this the one, the one by necessity to be featured?  The River by Bruce Springsteen.

The River

By Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band

I come from down in the valley
Where, mister, when you’re young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done
Me and Mary we met in high school
When she was just seventeen
We’d ride out of this valley down to where the fields were green

We’d go down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh, down to the river we’d ride

Then I got Mary pregnant
And, man, that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle
No flowers, no wedding dress

That night we went down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh, down to the river we did ride
Ah-yah

I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well, mister, they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
And Mary acts like she don’t care

But I remember us riding in my brother’s car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse

That sends me down to the river
Though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight
Ah-yah-yah
Down to the river
My baby and I
Oh, down to the river we ride
Ah-yah-ay

Ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh
Ooh
Ooh, ooh
Ooh