“I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act, but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.” - G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s character is his fate.” - Heraclitus
What is Fate? Again, this is one of those rhetorical questions that I don’t feel I can afford to take rhetorically. So, I’ve come up with an answer: Fate is the force through which human narrative expectations enforce their projections on the ‘divine’. Anyway. If I am saying that gods - divine is a more inclusive term, but I don’t know that it is always applicable - that the gods are already a projection of some kind of psychic force of belief made real, then it makes sense that this same
human psychic force can influence the actions of the divine (including the gods).
As for narrative expectations.... Christopher Booker says that there are only seven basic plots; that all others are in some way derivative of these. I’m going to be honest here and say that with everything that’s been going on with me lately, and the rest of the stuff I’ve been looking in to, I haven’t had a chance to read this in detail. If you want a quick and dirty version, have a look at this review by Chris Bateman. But it is interesting if it is true. At the very least, I am willing to accept that human expectations of stories are culturally framed. We have expectations, and even if the order in which things happen isn’t completely formulaic, it is pretty rare that we are completely taken by surprise. As an interesting aside, I think that in more modern.... or post modern? Gah, lets just say contemporary fiction writing, the realization of this is something that writers have been actively fighting against, and if they are successful, I don’t know what impact it will have on the mass psychic shaping force (i.e. fate).
But back to Booker’s idea. The point is that we have expectations of how stories should go - we have ideas of how *characters should progress*. These expectations are clearly encoded in our mythology. Joseph Campbell (and again I’m only passingly familiar) boils the seven plots even further, positing that there is only *one* basic hero myth:
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
So it is clear that humanity has expectations from the divine, and that these expectations conform to a narrative form. This is fate. Fate predetermines outcomes based on these culturally influenced (bounded is too strong) narrative expectations. Of course, there are always different twists a story can take. My friend C is an author, and form what I gather, sometimes characters just don’t behave the way you want them too. Or expect them to. You mean to write one thing, and then realize something better works. And sometimes the whole ‘stories having a life of their own’ trope touches a little too close to home. Maybe that’s why I’m caught up in this whole ‘authorship’ metaphor.
So how strong is fate? Who does it effect? Everyone? Or just potentially anyone? The answer I am going to offer is that those who are more strongly defined by the narrative are those more strongly affected by it. So the gods (at least the way I’ve been talking about them, and I’m being less inclusive on purpose)? Yes, absolutely, their lives are very much defined by fate. I think that it explains a lot really - it explains why prophecy becomes self-fulfilling for them. Once a story enters the collective (un?)consciousness, the expectations of its fulfillment is reinforced by the prescriptive power of Fate. I think there are gods that learned this too late, and now their best shot at survival is is to convince the world that they are somehow clever enough to find a loophole. If it is acceptably ‘in character’ for them to cheat fate, and they can actually figure out a way to do it..... Then maybe they’ll be able to pull it off at the last minute. Well. Good luck with that.
So if the gods are more constrained by fate, then lets say that those who are tied to them directly - tied by fate in some way, I don’t mean just your general worshipper or even necessarily a priest or whatever - are going to be affected by it in some way as well. But to what degree? If there is a human who is tied in this way, say.... caught up in the web of the divine... does the fact that they are also human give them a channel into the collective unconscious that they can tap into or direct? Do they lose that as they get more tied to the divine? If you write yourself into the story, does that constrain your power as a author? I don’t think we can be both in this context, especially because individual authors ultimately have so little power. So, as I said to a friend of mine, the further into the story you go, the less control you have. As you become a character, and become more a part of the mass subconscious that powers Fate (and are powered thus by more authors), expectations of who you are will develop, and you will become constrained by those expectations. Maybe the only shot we have is to make ourselves out to be who we want to be, and less as who we are?
Now if only we could answer that one.
Moving on... There’s an academic theory that says that in a lot of mythologies, there are forces that represent either older, more primordial beliefs, when survival against the elements was a prime concern. Religion was developed at first to appease these forces, and eventually gods were created to give a face to them - to humanize them. To create a buffer through which the chaotic elements could be controlled. In Mythology this plays out through physical conflicts - the Greeks versus the Titans, the Norse versus the Giants, even the Irish have the Formori and the Tuatha de Danaan. Now, these monsters show up in the stories, but as antagonists. Are they also bound by Fate? What if we take this theory a little further and say that the gods are the creation of the human collective unconsciousness, and that their role is to provide a buffer over forces which humans have no ability or expectation of control? The stories, then, become the way to try and orchestrate that control, through the Gods. We believe they can control the lightning, the storm, the sea, love, the harvest. We give them that power, because we need something to have it. So we create a psychic buffer against that chaos, and our belief guides it, and constrains it.
But its just a buffer - there are always new monsters. And sometimes they’ve just been banished, and the stories promise us they will return. So we keep needing the gods? Except that there are a lot of dead religions out there, or effectively dead ones. Sure there are a handful of neopagans who call on them, but real influence in the human subconscious? They are still here because we still have the stories. But there aren’t any *new* stories. Maybe that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter what they do now, because their time really has passed? Maybe there is a connection here with Fate and Faith. Maybe I need to think about this more, and have just been rambling on for far too long.
But back to Booker’s idea. The point is that we have expectations of how stories should go - we have ideas of how *characters should progress*. These expectations are clearly encoded in our mythology. Joseph Campbell (and again I’m only passingly familiar) boils the seven plots even further, positing that there is only *one* basic hero myth:
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”
So it is clear that humanity has expectations from the divine, and that these expectations conform to a narrative form. This is fate. Fate predetermines outcomes based on these culturally influenced (bounded is too strong) narrative expectations. Of course, there are always different twists a story can take. My friend C is an author, and form what I gather, sometimes characters just don’t behave the way you want them too. Or expect them to. You mean to write one thing, and then realize something better works. And sometimes the whole ‘stories having a life of their own’ trope touches a little too close to home. Maybe that’s why I’m caught up in this whole ‘authorship’ metaphor.
So how strong is fate? Who does it effect? Everyone? Or just potentially anyone? The answer I am going to offer is that those who are more strongly defined by the narrative are those more strongly affected by it. So the gods (at least the way I’ve been talking about them, and I’m being less inclusive on purpose)? Yes, absolutely, their lives are very much defined by fate. I think that it explains a lot really - it explains why prophecy becomes self-fulfilling for them. Once a story enters the collective (un?)consciousness, the expectations of its fulfillment is reinforced by the prescriptive power of Fate. I think there are gods that learned this too late, and now their best shot at survival is is to convince the world that they are somehow clever enough to find a loophole. If it is acceptably ‘in character’ for them to cheat fate, and they can actually figure out a way to do it..... Then maybe they’ll be able to pull it off at the last minute. Well. Good luck with that.
So if the gods are more constrained by fate, then lets say that those who are tied to them directly - tied by fate in some way, I don’t mean just your general worshipper or even necessarily a priest or whatever - are going to be affected by it in some way as well. But to what degree? If there is a human who is tied in this way, say.... caught up in the web of the divine... does the fact that they are also human give them a channel into the collective unconscious that they can tap into or direct? Do they lose that as they get more tied to the divine? If you write yourself into the story, does that constrain your power as a author? I don’t think we can be both in this context, especially because individual authors ultimately have so little power. So, as I said to a friend of mine, the further into the story you go, the less control you have. As you become a character, and become more a part of the mass subconscious that powers Fate (and are powered thus by more authors), expectations of who you are will develop, and you will become constrained by those expectations. Maybe the only shot we have is to make ourselves out to be who we want to be, and less as who we are?
Now if only we could answer that one.
Moving on... There’s an academic theory that says that in a lot of mythologies, there are forces that represent either older, more primordial beliefs, when survival against the elements was a prime concern. Religion was developed at first to appease these forces, and eventually gods were created to give a face to them - to humanize them. To create a buffer through which the chaotic elements could be controlled. In Mythology this plays out through physical conflicts - the Greeks versus the Titans, the Norse versus the Giants, even the Irish have the Formori and the Tuatha de Danaan. Now, these monsters show up in the stories, but as antagonists. Are they also bound by Fate? What if we take this theory a little further and say that the gods are the creation of the human collective unconsciousness, and that their role is to provide a buffer over forces which humans have no ability or expectation of control? The stories, then, become the way to try and orchestrate that control, through the Gods. We believe they can control the lightning, the storm, the sea, love, the harvest. We give them that power, because we need something to have it. So we create a psychic buffer against that chaos, and our belief guides it, and constrains it.
But its just a buffer - there are always new monsters. And sometimes they’ve just been banished, and the stories promise us they will return. So we keep needing the gods? Except that there are a lot of dead religions out there, or effectively dead ones. Sure there are a handful of neopagans who call on them, but real influence in the human subconscious? They are still here because we still have the stories. But there aren’t any *new* stories. Maybe that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter what they do now, because their time really has passed? Maybe there is a connection here with Fate and Faith. Maybe I need to think about this more, and have just been rambling on for far too long.
“The future was with Fate. The present was our own.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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