Fight for your country — that is the best, the only omen! – The Iliad

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We are introduced to the realm of choice and consequence by our parents, for our own benefit. If you touch this thing, it will hurt you. It’s safer to hold hands when you cross a busy road. Lesson by lesson, experience by experience, we build up a model of the world, and how to navigate it effectively.

Later as adults, taking on and carefully managing your responsibilities, big or small, turns out to be highly valued by society. It might take some prodding, but we are able to admit it was our fault when we forget to take out the trash, pay a bill or drink and drive.

It’s not just social conditioning that makes us think we are in control of our lives, it subjectively feels that way too. We feel like a doer, an actor, an agent. As Robert Sapolsky argues, it feels undoubtedly like we have free-will, making it hard to relax and let life happen.

Just how long have we been thinking and feeling so responsible for our lives? Probably as long as any recorded history. At some point, maybe back when Homer’s sea was still wine-dark, the idea of applying our individual mind to a problem must have been a pretty new, radical idea.

It’s a persuasive call to action too; If you’ve got the guts, guile and will, you might be able to change your fortune. This is the Odysseus realisation. He sees a shipwreck or a knife wound as a consequence rather than chance. From this view, the world is wide open. Don’t just sit there. Help yourself. Just do it. Make it happen. This must have felt like taking drugs or riding a motorbike for the first time.

But if man is now in the drivers seat, what happens to the gods?

The images of Greek Gods like Poseidon don’t really have a place in the modern world. But there’s still truth to them. It can start as something small. You run out of an ingredient you need. You don’t see a text message in time. Your phone battery dies. You bump into someone you didn’t know was in town. Someone else tells you they’ve taken a job in another country. You wake up extra early feeling deeply refreshed.

The Odyssean, modern approach is to figure these things out. It’s about consequence. We seek out the cause. We might blame ourselves or someone else around us. Or we might say, oh I wasn’t paying attention while I was chopping that onion, that’s why I cut my finger. I’ll make sure to be more careful next time. This makes us feel more certain and in control of whatever we are doing and our place in the universe feels a bit less scary.

But are you certain you’re in control?

Why were you chopping the onion like that? Why an onion? Why that knife? Why then? Why were you distracted by that thought that crossed your mind? It really only takes a few simple questions before our own agency is overwhelmed by the black box of interdependence and conditionality.

I’m all for agency. I’m all for making things happen. And the mind is made to be used. But we should also try to see happenstances and other obstacles as one of the many ordinary forms destiny can take. They’re like little lightning bolts. And by working with them carefully rather than slicing them to pieces with our swords, we might find some relief like Odysseus does when he finally returns home.