1192 God’s Will

“God’s will” was certainly a convenient explanation for the arbitrary nature of life: Zeus himself was subject to fate. Fate is the belief that luck is controlled by an outside force. Fate was the accepted explanation for the vagaries of existence until The Enlightenment and the Modern concept of free agency & personal autonomy, which requires that people feel their decisions are their own and not preordained, nor a matter of otherworldly intervention. The ultimate maturation of this line of thinking, that everyone should control their own lives, was in the United States where individuals reaped the rewards or suffered the consequences of their own actions, and it was wildly successful for all as compared to anytime before such thinking, though not equally so. Unfortunately, Post Modern thought is that equality is the true goal, and predestination is back. However, instead of fate being the operative force, it’s a totalitarian state commanding outcomes, whose narcissistic elites act in the role of God’s will.