A postmodern sense of fate

People often give me strange looks when I tell them I feel a sense of fate. However, I believe the feeling that life operates on terms other than random occurrence and chaos brings comfort in times where there would otherwise be none. The point I have trouble reconciling revolves around the slippery slope of predestiny: how do I resolve any feeling of fate with the gut impulse that we do have control and should have control to realize responsibility to others around us. For me, ‘fate’ helps me explain the indeterminacy and contingency of politics. The idea that events happen for a reason provides a response to the radical and lonely Calvinism that would have us believe that events are more random, people more sovereign and isolated, and life more unstoppable. ‘Fate’ de-ciphers my life and the lives of other people in such a way that makes them more politically salient. Take an act of god (any of recent note are acceptable): Hurricane Katrina. A category 4/5 storm hits a major city and largely decimates entire populations of people, primarily of color and poor. An act of a cruel and inhuman god should be seen instead through the lens of a series of events established through specific practices that can and should have a response: hollowing out of inner cities, global warming, systemic poverty. Determinacy only exists so far as we allow it to exist. The façade of randomness shields the specific practices employed to make the event possible.

The gut feeling of fate opens up a way to talk about my life in a meta- level. There are no specific physics nor merely a vacuum here, no specific content fills this space. However, asking the question “why would this happen?” serves a function in causing me to think through the events I’ve experienced and the potential roles they play; re-enforcing lessons about life that, while not necessarily otherworldly, significantly shape my life.