Does anyone here believe in "meaningful coincidences"? As in everything you do in your life and all the things that happens to you has a meaning in the grand scheme of things? I'm not talking about fate, where all your actions are predetermined. I'm talking about something more along the lines of determinism, where wikipedia defines it as "the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behaviour, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences." There is a Japanese term that comes up alot in a manga series I read; a concept called "hitsuzen." The series, XXXholic (no, it's not hentai ;P), describes it as the idea that an action is inevitable because without it, other related events in the future could not happen. Therefore all decisions and actions are related, and there can be no coincidence, only hitsuzen. What are your thoughts?
I agree with this concept completely. I don't believe in "karma" or "reaping what you sow or any such religious idea that there is a balance in the world.
The world works by a set of laws, such as gravity: simply put, what goes up must come down. Other laws dictate how we interact, react and respond to stimulus. We are all products of our parenting, environment, etc. We do what we do. If our actions are deemed good, bad or in between then it is done so through the eyes of the beholder. After we do what we do then those actions elicit the natural response that we cannot control. We can only choose our actions differently.
Therefore, coincidence is when irony meets with reaction.
I don't agree with the deterministic concept. Of course, it's difficult to argue against intellectually. For example, if I act "against" my nature to prove the point, the determinist can say that that was still caused by a string of past causes.
I don't think I believe in the concept of coincidences, either. Nor would a determinist, I believe, so there's some common ground.
My cosmos is a living thing, not a machine, or a bunch of rocks floating around.
But the bottom line is I'm still a student and prone to mistakes, and I have much more to learn.
