Uhm, hello? Is this thing on?
Yes, hello all. I'm absolutely new to this site, but this was the first topic I stumbled across, and the first to genuinely interest me. I know I can't really match up to anything that has been said before, but I felt the need to chip in my two cents, as t'were. So, here goes (wish me luck).
I can very much relate to your experiences, Flynn. Several times in my life has my mind spawned ideas that seem completely and totally original to me at the time, only to be later proved to be quite startlingly unoriginal. My 'invention' of Holisticism is a prime example: my thinking had led me down the road of Buddhist philosophies and Holism, and I wanted to combine them and some other ideas into a... well, not a religion, but more a way of seeing the world. Thus was Holisticism born in my mind. I was as excited as an excitable person with a special reason to be excited, and went around telling everybody like an anthropomorphic bunny hopped-up on caffeine (please excuse the pun) that I was the founder, leader and sole proponent of a whole new -ism.
So you can imagine my surprise when I idly typed 'Holisticism' into Google one day (one is reminded of that fine song for the piano-forte called The Lost Chord: 'Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease / And my fingers wandered idly over the mighty keys') and discovered that, in fact, Holisticism had already been created. Well, that day was this day. I was properly knocked for six, I can tell you.
However, if one was to follow the tenets of Tao to the letter, would it not be highly illogical to plump for either fatalism or its logical opposite indeterminism? These things are binary opposites and, as represented by the Yin and the Yang, are neither more prevalent than the other - indeed cannot be, for the existence of each depends on that of the other, and therefore both ways of seeing fate and causality (or the lack thereof) are both equally correct and equally flawed.
For example, several times in my life have my thought processes run along paths that ended up mirroring those of others, and therefore foretold (without my knowledge) what I would see in my future. However, these could be said to be completely freak happenstances - what of the myriad thoughts and visions that did not come true?
Not that I believe that anything is a completely freakish event, of course. It is my view that Fate and Free Will are, like all the other dualities of the cosmos, constantly interplaying amongst each other. We cannot know the answer for certain (The closer one comes to the solution, the more problems arise.), but if I was to guess I would say that Fate and Free Will are both equally responsible for everything that happens - overall and on average, of course . Using the micro/macrocosm idea, t'would appear to me to be the only logical explanation.
