"Every life has 2 parts: what's given (body, era, birth, the laws of nature) and what's chosen (character, effort, direction)."
"Virtue has no master; as each honours or dishonours her, he'll have more or less of her. The responsibility is the chooser's; God is not responsible."
"Oh, how mortals blame the Gods! They say their troubles come from us, yet they themselves, by their own reckless folly, suffer beyond their lot."
My main questions regarding this is: aren't character, effort, direction, virtue and folly also determined by fate?
Your willpower, your genetics (and other things, like what your mother did while you were in the womb, what she ate/drank, ect) affecting your mental health which then affect your decision making and worldview. How much of our choices and folly is truly our own?
What's truly "us" that isn't separate from genetics, cultural environment, the way one's brain is structured, IQ, impulse control, reaction to events, ect.
For culture, a quick example. Slavery today is seen as an obvious evil, mainly due to modern Western culture. Go back less than 1000 years ago and almost no one would see it as evil but just a normal part of life. This is mainly a cultural thing. Were the people back then responsible for their folly of not being able to see that slavery was wrong?
One's chart/fate doesn't just determine the environment, it determines how you respond to it and how you go about doing things in the world.
For example on what I mean here, Fate can make one poor but have a strong will. It can also make one rich but then they were born with a mental disability keeping them at a child-level IQ and mentality for their whole life.
I don't believe this was properly addressed in the article. Necessity and Freedom are deeply interlinked, and it's a blurry line between the two, as a choice that appeared to be out of "freedom" might not have been a choice at all, meaning they either could have always been fated to make that choice or could have been fated to not know any better so they couldn't have made a different, better choice, which might mean the same thing.
It doesn't necessarily mean it's all fate, but how free are we really? The more I learn about this from both a biological and spiritual standpoint, the less free I think we really are. Your willpower is largely determined by the size and activity level of certain brain parts, although neuro-plasticity is a thing so exercising willpower can in fact increase it, kind of like the more money you have the more you can make, but if you're already broke...
I thought this is worth discussing. I feel like things are divided between guilt-based mindsets where everything is one's fault or guilt-free mindsets where none of it is your fault. The truth as usual is somewhere in between, but the key is determining how much is it really one's fault.
To further outline what I mean, let's say it's decreed in one's chart, for example, that they will be born with low-intelligence, low willpower, the desire to be violent, a violent environment and that the person will eventually commit a murder at a later point in their life, and then they do actually commit a murder, how much of it was really their fault?
Ignorance is also another big factor. Not knowing all the facts at hand can also throw a quagmire into how free we are to make a choice. Not knowing everything (or worse, relying on false information, how gullible you are is also determined in your chart) can make you do a very wrong choice (such as for example, determining than an innocent person is guilty), which can then lead to a lot of harm. Was this really your fault in that instance?
It does all feel rigged to me, as much as I don't want to use that word. Blaming current circumstances on one's "karma" is ignoring the fact that at one point, you lived your first lifetime which was also fated to go a specific way, which then determines the next one and so on, kind of like compounded interest on a loan you had no say or control over in receiving.
Being human is itself like being in a drugged or drunk state, to use that analogy, as it assumes the sober state was a rational, free one. I don't believe anyone in a physical body on earth is ever truly sober. We're constantly, from our birth, influenced by things outside of our control from both within and outside ourselves.
The Gods are perfect and free because they don't have to deal with any of the above. They're all knowing, free from any influence and all-powerful. They truly have the ability to make a choice, a real choice. We don't.