Essay 2

I feel that there is no such thing as fate, there isn't somebody out there who has planned out my life. For what ever reason I'm here today in this class is because of my own doing, my choice. I made myself what I am now, not fate. We all make decisions, and based on these decisions we live out our lives. I refuse to believe that there is nothing I can do to change it. I will use examples from the Matrix film related to the decisions Neo had to make in the movie. I will also use examples from Theodore Schick Jr's essay to help support my statement.

Neo in the movie said, "Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life," in response to one of Morpheus's question. I agree with his answer because I too don't like the idea that I am doomed to live out a life that is already planned out for me. I'd feel so enslaved, almost like I have no choice. If I had no choice then what happened to my freedom? There would be none. Why bother with trying to live life if I have no choice or power over it, its just going to play out the way its supposed to be. I don't believe in fate or determinism, I can't. If I did then all my attempts to change my life would be meaningless, a wasted effort. Schick writes, "In a completely deterministic world, no one should be held responsible for their actions because nothing they do is up to them," page 96. This is a good example of stating no one will ever do what it is they want because they were supposed to do it anyways. The freedom of choice builds persona, characteristics. It lets others judge on my actions, whether or not I'm a good person or bad; trustworthy or nor; mean or nice. But if we had no choice in out actions, what character do we have? None. People will just say that I'm doing exactly what I was born to do, I can't help it. B.F. Skinner claims, :that we should give up the notion humans have free will and with it the notion that they should be praised or blamed for what they do." (96). I believe that we should be praised or blamed, we make the choices. That's the beauty of being human, the ability to make rational decisions.

In the Matrix film Neo had to make a number of different choices through out the entire film. One of his first more important decisions was choosing between blue pill or red pill. Neo chooses the red pill only because he wanted to, also he already had some knowledge of the Matrix. Knowledge plays a big part ion free will, the more you know the more choices you have. Lets just say if Neo had no idea of what the matrix was, or had no idea that it even existed, he would have no reason to pick the red pill. If that were the case and he still picked the red pill then maybe there was fate (or complete coincidence). But because he knew he chose the red pill, driven by his curiosity and one question. What is the matrix? Another example would be be when Neo decides to go back into the Matrix to go save Morpheus. After having spoken with the oracle, he was told that he would have to make a decision to either save Morpheus or not. Of course, if Neo was never told maybe he wouldn't have cared as much that Morpheus was going to die. But because he knew that he had a choice to save him, decided to go in and save Morpheus. The oracle didn't tell Neo that he was going to save Morpheus, just that there was going to be a moment when he had to chose. IN the essay there is a statement, "Caplace's demon - or any oracle for that matter- can be trusted to make accurate predictions about people's behavior only as long as the person involved are not aware of the prediction."(97). This is another example of knowledge, maybe if someone were to make a prediction that I was going to sleep at 8 and I didn't know that they made that prediction I might sleep at 8. If I knew they predicted something, I might me inclined to stay up longer to make their claim false. If someone were told a prediction of their life, the still have the ability to change it. Just because they were told it was going to happen, doesn't mean it has to.

I don't believe in fate or determinism. I don't believe that I have no control of my life, I run my life the way I want to. I have my choices and these choices shape the way my life is planned out. The more knowledge I posses, the more choices I have. The ability to chose also gives us characteristics, that people judge us on, its who we are. Without them we are just entity's living out our scripted lives. We'd be machines that are performing the actions that were assigned to us. I am in control of my life, no one else (or thing) is.