Rationality vs Fate

Ever since I got the essence of the two very crucial words in everyone’s life, surprisingly enough I have never been able to place the 2 of them on the same line of thought and attitude.

Rationality and Fate.

Can a rational human being ever believe in fate? Or can someone who believes in fate be ever rational? Or to be more confusing as well as precise can a single individual be both rational and believe in fate?

The moment I make an effort to look for an answer, my mind, my heart and my senses all collide and the result is a complete chaos just like the outside universe and thus maintaining the much needed equilibrium of life. At a personal level I would rather abstain myself from ever believing in the concept of fate. However this doesn’t imply that I always make an effort to be rational. This brings me to yet another question. Does the absence of one of the characteristic imply the presence of the other? If not what do we call a person who is neither rational nor does he believe in fate?

The degree to which my mind is cluttered now can be explicitly seen in how the above thoughts have come out to be. I myself am now trying to figure out what exactly do I plan to prove or conclude. And to add to the misery, I put up a simple question to myself!

Define rationality and fate.

And the sad part is I genuinely do not have a definition which could possibly fit in the plethora of varied perspectives of life. The very basic issue is when we proclaim an action to be rational or otherwise we do it on the basis of certain assumptions, which are mostly implicit and seldom do we realize their presence in our so called logical reasoning. So if one fine day I start questioning those assumptions and rate them on the scales of their rationality, we will reach situation where we have no assumptions to make which isn’t as rosy as it seems. Lack of assumptions could possibly imply an absence of a ground to build the foundations of rationality.

Thus when we make an assumption and then build up the network of rationality, we have already left the success of the process to its own fate of doom or existence. And later when we humans tend to believe that we are rational we fight against those who believe in fate, sometimes even derogating and questioning their rationality. Don’t know about others but I do it with myself. Probably this is the moment where even existentialism can’t come to the rescue to wage a war against fate. And hence I end up from where I started. The questions still remain unanswered. Probably they are meant to be just questions to raise yet remain unanswered or evoke a thought process. Plausibly this is what that has and will continue to lead to the evolution or devolution of human mind.

-Sriram