So the opening remarks of J. M. G. Le Clézio's 1969 novel Terra Amata concern the likelihood of the book which the reader is now reading. Le Clézio asks what is the probability of that particular book being read by that particluar person might be, and he got me thinking about fate and chance again...
I think most people assume that fate and chance are opposites, that we must choose to see the world either in terms of fate - in other words that all our lives are dictated from the outset - or in terms of chance - in other words that what happens is not predetermined but happens spontaneously as we move along the curve of time. Both views agree that we have little control over what happens to us.
But fate is nothing more than chance seen through the lense of time. Chance happens now, and after a given period of time, fate happened then. They are perspectives on the same thing.
The idea that we can influence the odds of what chance throws at us is thus made laughable when we look back at things from the high seat of hindsight, and see that we were all just pawns in the game of fate. People think they can affect their chances, but if they are made to believe that they are actually under the influence of fate, they cease to think that they can affect their fate. The word fate, produces a different - a more hopeless - mindset. If fate and chance are the same thing, then this is a clearly ridiculous attitude.
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