Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Predictability of Future 

This is a question I have been pondering over a lot over the past one year . How is it that some astrologers who know nothing about you can predict your life so acurately ? What kind of patterns exist in this world if any . There have been almost the same answers every where , yes life is predictable but ultimately it lies in the hand of the human being to decide his course .

Recently I came across this beautiful written paragraph of predictiblity by E.F.Schumacher in his book Small is beautiful ( which btw I think every Indian should read ) .

Here is how it goes  " When the Lord created the world and people to live in it . He must have reasoned with Himself as follows : " If I make everything predictable  these human beings , whom I have endowed with pretty good brains with undoubtedly learn to predict everything and they will thereupon have no motive to do anything at all  because they will recognise that the future is totally determined and cannot be influenced by any human action . On the other hand , if I make everything unpredictable , they will gradually discover that there is no rational basis for any decision whatsoever and , as in the first case , they will thereupon have no motive to do anything at all . Neither scheme would make sense . I must therefore create a mixture of the two . Let some things be predictable and let others be unpredictable . They will then , amongst many other things , have the very important task of finding out which is which ."


4 comments:

Ritu said...

but I thought you didnt believe in God !!

Akhila said...

you did not get the point ..its not about belief in God ..its the reasoning that follows ...really liked the way he put it ..

Ritu said...

I did get the point, and I liked the way he has put it too....but the fact that you also liked the reasoning surprises me !

Akhila said...

just that the fact that some conversation refers to God does not put me off from liking it . I already talked to you about patterns in life and what man's role is ...but have never come across somebody put it so succintly ..particularly the thing about how we being intelligent characters could have figured everything out if it was so predictable