CULTURE FILES // EREC SMITH ON DITCHING OUR DISCOURSES OF DOOM
We all face challenges. They do not determine our fate
By Erec Smith
Volume 4 // Issue 4 // Spring 2023 // FATE
Does someone with several roadblocks on the way to happiness really have the same opportunities as someone with a clear path ahead?
While we live in a free and civil society, which simply means that we can express ourselves freely and pursue whatever interests we’d like, some people certainly have an easier road toward fulfillment than others. Our society is imperfect.
But I take issue with those who do not acknowledge a road in the first place or who, if they do acknowledge it, believe the obstacles before them are much too big to ever overcome. And what of the instinct to blow up all the roads? What good does such an attitude do for us as individuals or as a society? What can come from embracing a hopelessness that tells us not to try in the first place? What is the point of such a discourse of doom?
Fate has sometimes been viewed via a deterministic, theological lens, with our lives laid out for us by a higher being. I argue that a similar type of deterministic, albeit secular, fate has taken hold within the rhetoric of contemporary social justice. Based in part on immutable qualities such as race, or on the class into which one is born, some see another sort of unchangeable prescription. Those who embrace this understanding of fate see a person’s probability for success or failure, which often correlates with the zip code in which that person is born, and then interpret it as a life sentence, rather than as a starting point from which change is possible.
Rather than giving up or blowing things up, we must adequately acknowledge the challenges that some people face, and we must remove barriers to opportunity—these are complicated and long-term problems to solve by policymakers and affected communities. However, we must also address the importance of personal mindset when dealing with these issues. I know too many people who live their lives by what Martin Seligman and Steven Maier have called “learned helplessness”: the idea that a sense of hopelessness is so ingrained in some people that it becomes a significant factor in predicting one’s future success.
Perhaps a different definition of fate may create more empowered individuals who believe that their choices can help them achieve better life outcomes. I abide by what I’ll call “agential fate,” which can be construed as a confluence of pre-established circumstances—one’s life experiences—combined with free will. This agential take on fate, associated with Eastern philosophies as well as Stoicism and cognitive behavioral therapies, can help us address the aforementioned “zip code fate” and much more.
Eastern philosopher Deng Ming-Dao describes “fate” as “nothing more than the consequences of our actions.” Similarly, the Buddhist text Contemplation on the Mind-Ground Sutra, reads, “If you want to understand the causes that existed in the past, look at the results as they appear in the present. And if you want to understand what results will appear in the future, look at the causes that exist in the present.” Basically, “cause and effect” is a fundamental concept of life, and a focus on the present and future is more useful than a focus on the past.
Only by focusing on the present and future can one alter the negative effects of one’s past. In order to do this effectively, one must enter into a place of agency, possibility, and hope.
The perils of determinism and selective ‘past’ thinking
Unfortunately, in many contemporary social justice circles, one’s conditions at birth are considered a kind of determination of life experiences or outcomes. Indeed, with article titles such as PBS NewsHour’s “In America, inequality begins in the womb,” one can discern something akin to the concept of deterministic fate. Studies do show that the zip code in which one is born can be a reliable predictor of that child’s adult life conditions. This phenomenon is an issue that we need to address as a society, and works such as Ian Rowe’s Agency, Rachel Ferguson and Marcus Witcher’s Black Liberation Through the Marketplace, and Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law work to do just that.
However, we should also question the fatalistic discourse associated with these studies. If someone is born into downtrodden circumstances, that person is discussed in a discourse of doom that sees no way out other than the complete undoing of the contemporary social order, rather than as someone who needs to be given opportunities that already exist within that social order.
Additionally, a belief in deterministic fate and indecision or inaction go hand-in-hand. When people feel powerless and confused, a belief in fate can assuage the discomfort and cognitive dissonance that ensues. “It’s out of my hands,” can be a very liberating statement to someone suffering from anxiety in decision-making, or “paralysis by analysis.” It can even feel like a green light to do what one pleases. “It doesn’t matter what I do,” one might say, “so I guess I’ll do what I want, or do nothing at all.”
So, is the belief in fate in its traditional sense the last-ditch effort of those who feel powerless and confused to convince themselves that power and clarity don’t matter, anyway? Is a belief in fate a kind of existential “sour grapes” fallacy, as if to say, “I can’t decide. Well, my decision doesn’t matter, anyway, so…”?
This attitude is akin to what is called “the Lazy Argument” in philosophical circles. It relinquishes responsibility. For our purposes, the difference between the Lazy Argument and learned helplessness is that the latter consists of the Lazy Argument coupled with a kind of “genetic fallacy,” which denotes that the origin of something will necessarily and forever determine its essence.
An astounding example of the genetic fallacy/lazy argument can be found in Shannon Sullivan’s article, “Community as a Political and Temporal Construct: A Response to Patricia Hill Collins.” In reference to a 2019 acquittal of police officers who shot and killed an unarmed black man in Sacramento, Sullivan writes the following:
In a meaningful, non-metaphorical sense, Sacramento is co-temporally living 1492 (the year that systemic European colonization began in what came to be the Americas), 1619 (the year the first boat with captured Africans landed in what is now Virginia), and 1857 (the year of the infamous Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Black people have no rights that white people must respect), as well as 1955 and a host of additional times. The years 1492 and 1619 and 1857 and 1955 are still now. (Emphasis added)
What we see in this excerpt is the refusal to acknowledge progress coupled with the deterministic nature of origins, i.e., once oppressed, always oppressed. Sullivan is speaking in a literal sense and implies a kind of fatalistic, i.e., not agential, determinism. It is interesting that in her reading, no positive incidents in our past are “non-metaphorically” co-temporal with the present. Amistad, the initial stages of Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, civil rights, and the first black president are not “still now.” Why is that?
I believe that this concept of fate, however it is named and articulated, is used to buttress a narrative of oppressor and oppressed put forth by critical social justice, an ideology derived from critical theory whose tenets include—perhaps primarily—the assertion by Robin DiAngelo that, “The question is not ‘did racism take place,’ but rather, ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?” All of this comes together to suggest that racism is always already happening, and that marginalized races, therefore, are always already doomed to suffer from it. That is the very definition of hopelessness that we need to avoid in order to effect change.
Channeling our individualism and our existential MacGyver
Most often, we are free to choose our associations, our hopes and dreams, and the courses of action toward fulfillment. Our goals as well as our circumstances will influence our actions, and the possibilities abound. Some Buddhists may call this the concept of “Three Thousand Realms in a Single Moment of Life,” which is to say that, in a particular circumstance with particular material characteristics, in which our particular selves bring particular goals, our choices are more abundant than we can possibly imagine. Of course, some situations will feel more confining than others, but to be adaptable is to figure out what to do with what we have at our disposal.
First, the nature or origin of an effect does not necessarily determine how we each will react to it as individuals. Especially in a free society, where one can more or less choose his courses of action, people can experience the same stimulus at the same time and have very different reactions, even among minorities: What is a microaggression to one person of color may be an innocuous and forgettable statement to another. What is considered an obstacle to progress by one black person may be seen as an opportunity by another. Likewise, what may seem like a fated reality to one person may simply be one malleable circumstance out of many for another. Fate is in the eye of the beholder, as it were. What’s more, which interpretation of fate is “right” or “wrong” is irrelevant; what matters is the framing of the situation and the action that results from it.
Our reactions and choices have much to do with our individual goals and other “intrapersonal” characteristics, such as our self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness.
To have social awareness, i.e., the ability to understand a given context to best ensure our ability to take advantage of the situation’s available opportunities, we must be skilled in both self-awareness and self-management; we need to know who we are, what we are able to do, and how to act accordingly.
To be a master of fate, as it were, is to be a bricoleur of sorts, i.e., an individual who makes the best of what is given to him. Being determined to act as an individual must happen in context; it is confined to particular situations in the here and now.
Think about the show MacGyver, in which the titular character is able to build a useful gadget out of whatever happens to be in the room at the time. To be a bricoleur of agential fate is to be a kind of existential MacGyver. Such a skill is comparable to a superpower if cultivated.
I am reminded of Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric: the ability, in any given circumstance, to discover the available means of persuasion. The more one can discern and utilize the available means, the closer one is to being the master of his or her fate. In fact, as a rhetorician myself, I see fate as the ability to adapt to one’s circumstances and communicate in a way that best ensures movement in a particular direction. Fate is intertwined with the circumstance, the backdrop of a present situation. The ability to take what is given, to recognize a window of opportunity, is the ability to adapt. Adaptability is the wherewithal to work with aspects of a particular circumstance for a preferred outcome. If we have some kind of agency—and we almost always have some kind of agency—we have a say in our fate.
Such purposeful engagement can lead us in more favorable directions more often than can a mere surrendering to our circumstances.
We’re in this together, and change is possible
This is not to say that, as individuals, we don’t need others. We should not ignore the fact that agential fate relies on the interdependence of individuals. Agential fate is not simply about a single person’s encounter with the world. Agential fate acknowledges and uses our interdependence with others. As individuals, we can make choices with regard to who we associate. The more other people in our environment who believe in personal agency and the efficacy of adaptability, the better we are able to make strides in positive directions together—to negate or even eradicate the previous negative effects of our environment.
In addition to the aforementioned books by Rowe, Rothstein, and others meant to address societal inequities, perhaps we should add works in Stoic philosophy, empowerment theory, cognitive behaviorism, rhetoric, and, of course, Eastern philosophy. Read up on these things, watch videos online, and, most importantly, implement whatever tactics you encounter in your own lives. Yes, test them out. I treat such tactics like an infomercial product: Try it for 30 days; if you don’t like it, give it back.
Lastly, none of this means we should not try to reform or change the world for the better. In fact, my take on fate means that, at the very least, there is real potential for change and that we can be the agents of that change—together. This take on fate means that, regardless of one’s zip code of origin, we can work to remedy the negative effects of our environment for ourselves and others.
This all may be easier said than done, but with agential fate, “done” is at least an option. We have a choice. //
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