Several days ago a friend sent me this graphic.  The three fates are pictured attending to their respective duties, measuring and allocating the course of good and the not-so-good fallout of “chance” in the life of the individual and also of nations.  Our ancestors understanding of “determinism” had to do with the meta observation of experience, and they devised ways of thinking and speaking about the course of things. 

We “moderns” have recourse to science.  Science is a viewpoint derived from the manipulation of matter and energy within Nature.  Science indicates that from the initiation of “reality,” the big bang, every event has a precursor, a chain of cause and effect that hypothetically could be tracked all the way to the beginning.  Chance is illusory, our way of expressing the ignorance that clouds our understanding.  We are the product of intersecting chains of cause and effect, full stop.

Fate then is the backstory to our lives.  A backstory that we know little of, because we live on the knife edge of the present.  I liken the matter to the engineering under the hood of a new corvette.  For the most part the driver is unaware of the mathematical dynamics of fuel injection system design, or of the electronics behind the control of the ignition system.  A great deal of engineering work is translated, in felt exhilaration by the driver, as the LT2, 6.2-liter, Z51 Corvette is driven to it’s top speed of 194 mph.  Increasing G force pressing one into the seat; moaning fuel intake greedy for more air; the crescendo of exhaust note, etc.   That, is the knife edge of the present — pure raw emotion.

Our ancestors had marvelous stories to explore the outworking of fate, or determinism as we’d speak of the matter.  They assumed they were subjects to the outworking of their destiny.  Concurrently they expressed, celebrated the freedom of high cultural achievement which we can see in the relics of sculpture and in the literature left behind, which has survived the passage of time. 

The language which we use to express the sensation of freedom, the sense of being the subject of our one life, (that driver behind the steering wheel of our corvette) is “freedom” or less accurately put “free will.”  That manner of expression in the West comes from the stories within the Jewish and Christian sacred texts.

It is exhilarating to be alive.  Each of us has won a lottery, against staggering odds, — you and I were born, grew to maturity and are alive here and now to read this, as a self aware adult human being.  Fate.

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Here is the graphic and the information received from a friend several days ago.

The three goddesses accepted as the Fates were the personification of destiny, inevitability and fortune. Each of the three Fates, the weavers of fate, had specific tasks that they were divided between them. Clotho spun the thread, Lachesis measured it and Atropos cut the thread. Their name means “Parts.” “Shares” or “Alotted Portions.” The Three Fates (the Moirae) were believed to appear three nights after a child’s birth to determine the course of its life. As goddesses of birth, they had the power to prophesize the fate of the newly born, as goddesses of fate they clearly knew the future. Zeus was entitled the Leader of the Fates, and the three goddesses sat in attendance of his throne, presiding over the sacred laws of heaven. They were the distributors of good and bad fortune to mortals and to nations. The three Fates were also present at the birth of gods to declare their divine privileges and functions.