Attractions Are Proportional to Destiny

What if what we call destiny were simply the name we give to what we keep unconsciously choosing?

We are used to thinking of destiny as something outside ourselves. A mysterious force, chance, coincidence, an encounter that arrives at exactly the right moment, a door that suddenly opens or closes. When something happens that we did not plan, we often say, “It was meant to be.”

But are we really sure that destiny is only what happens to us?

Perhaps there is another possibility, one that is more unsettling and, at the same time, more interesting: part of our destiny may be shaped by our own minds before we ever become conscious of our choices.

This is where a seemingly enigmatic statement begins to make sense:

“Attractions are proportional to destiny.”

This does not necessarily mean that some supernatural force leads us toward what has been written for us. It could mean something much more human: we are attracted to what is compatible with our inner structure, and by following those attractions, we gradually build our own trajectory.

Attraction Does Not Arise in a Vacuum

When we say, “I like it,” “I’m interested,” or “I’m attracted to it,” we rarely ask ourselves why.

We can meet hundreds of people and feel inexplicably drawn to just one of them. We can have dozens of possibilities in front of us and stubbornly desire only one. We can walk into a place and immediately feel at home, or experience a sense of rejection that we cannot explain.

It is as if something inside us has already made a decision before our rational mind has even begun to debate it.

Our mind does not simply observe the world: it interprets it. And in interpreting it, it selects what appears important, desirable, dangerous, or possible.

Unconscious Postulates

We can call unconscious postulates those deep assumptions through which we organize our experience without realizing it.

“Safety comes first.”

“You can’t trust people.”

“I have to prove my worth.”

“To be loved, I have to be indispensable.”

A person can live for decades according to one of these principles without ever clearly putting it into words. Yet that principle may influence the people they choose, the opportunities they recognize, and the ones they allow to pass them by.

It is a kind of invisible grammar of existence.

The process could be summarized like this:

unconscious postulate → perception → attraction or repulsion → choice → behavior → consequence.

An isolated choice does not necessarily create a destiny. But a repeated choice becomes a habit; a collection of habits creates a way of life; and a way of life can eventually begin to look remarkably like destiny.

The Unconscious Does Not Magically Create Reality

Saying that the unconscious mind “shapes reality” does not mean that our thoughts can magically materialize whatever we desire.

We do not choose the circumstances of our birth, other people's decisions, economic crises, illness, historical events, or chance.

But we can influence the way we move through those circumstances. The unconscious directs attention, shapes expectations, influences our perception of risk, and helps determine which possibilities we consider desirable—or even possible.

The point, therefore, is not that the mind creates the world, but that the mind helps construct the personal reality we derive from the world.

Attraction as a Compass

And this is where the original statement takes on a different meaning.

Attractions are proportional to destiny.

Not because we are necessarily attracted to what destiny has already determined, but because we are often attracted to what is compatible with our inner configuration.

We may unconsciously seek what confirms our worldview, satisfies a sense of lack, or allows us to repeat a familiar pattern.

And this is one of the deepest contradictions of being human: we may be attracted not to what is good for us, but to what feels familiar.

Familiarity can be mistaken for love. Anxiety for passion. Caution for wisdom. Repetition for destiny.

Attraction, therefore, is not yet destiny.

But it can be one of the paths through which destiny is built.

From Plato to Jung

The idea that attraction reveals something about us has ancient roots.

In Plato’s Symposium, eros is presented as a longing toward something perceived as beautiful, desirable, or lacking. The object of desire therefore also tells us something about the person who desires it. We do not simply desire a person or a thing: we desire what that person or thing represents to us.

With Jung, this insight enters the territory of the unconscious. Our fascinations, projections, and attractions may be connected to psychological contents of which we are not fully aware. Even synchronicity, in his perspective, illustrates how an event can acquire particular meaning when it encounters a structure of meanings already present within us.

There is no need to assume that the universe is sending us a message. It is enough to recognize that we are not neutral observers of reality: we assign meaning to it through what we are.

Character Is Destiny

At this point, we can better understand the ancient intuition attributed to Heraclitus:

“Character is destiny.”

Character is our habitual way of being in the world. The cautious person sees dangers that the bold person does not. The insecure person looks for reassurance that the self-confident person does not consider necessary. The distrustful person interprets as a threat what someone else sees as ordinary. The ambitious person sees an opportunity where someone else sees only hard work.

Character thus becomes a filter through which we select reality.

It does not determine everything that happens to us, but it helps determine how we encounter what happens to us and which possibilities we are able to recognize.

Perhaps We Call Destiny What We Have Repeated

Here the argument becomes truly uncomfortable.

Perhaps some people have not simply had “bad luck.” Perhaps they have unconsciously repeated the same patterns: choosing similar people, avoiding the same opportunities, reacting in the same way to the same problems.

After twenty years, they look back and say:

“It was destiny.”

But perhaps it was repetition.

This does not mean that everything is under our control. Life contains chance, injustice, and circumstances we cannot control. It does mean, however, that we must consider another possibility: part of destiny is not written before us, but emerges from the choices we repeatedly make.

Freedom Begins When We See What Guides Us

If this is true, freedom is not simply the abstract ability to choose. It is the ability to recognize where our choices come from.

As long as we cannot see our unconscious postulates, we may mistake them for truth. As long as we do not recognize our patterns, we may call them character. As long as we do not understand our attractions, we may call them destiny.

The question then changes.

It is no longer simply:

“What do I want?”

It becomes:

“Why do I want this particular thing?”

And then:

“Which part of me is doing the wanting?”

And finally:

“If I changed the unconscious postulate guiding this choice, would I still want the same thing?”

Perhaps this is the true frontier of inner freedom: not always doing what we want, but understanding who it is that wants.

What If We Are Destiny?

Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is not whether destiny exists, but how much of what we call destiny has been built, day after day, by ourselves without our realizing it.

We may have spent years saying, “That’s just how it turned out,” “It wasn’t my path,” or “I wasn’t lucky.” And perhaps, to some extent, that is true. Life contains chance, injustice, and circumstances beyond our control.

But there is another possibility: that part of our lives is the consequence of what we kept choosing without knowing why we were choosing it.

Perhaps we called a fear that became a habit destiny. A wound we never understood, character. The fear of taking risks, prudence. Perhaps we mistook for love whatever confirmed an unconscious need within us.

At this point, “character is destiny” stops being merely a philosophical formula and becomes a responsibility.

Because if our character shapes what we see, what we desire, and what we choose, then changing our destiny may first require becoming conscious of what moves us.

The final question, therefore, is no longer:

“What is my destiny?”

But:

“How much of what I call destiny is the result of unconscious postulates I have never questioned?”

Perhaps we are not merely people to whom life happens.

Perhaps we are also the people who, without realizing it, keep choosing the same life.

And this is where the opening statement takes on its most unsettling meaning:

attractions are proportional to destiny not because destiny leads us toward what we desire, but because what we desire may lead us toward the destiny we will eventually call our own.

The Little Bird on the Terrace and the Things Beyond Our Control

Years ago, I found a small wild bird on the terrace of my home. It could no longer fly; it seemed either injured or simply too weak to continue its journey. My family and I tried to help it: we gave it water and food, and we took care of it, hoping that it would regain its strength and return to freedom.

But the next day, we found it dead.

That simple episode has remained with me as a small but profound lesson about life. There are situations, people, projects, and paths in which we can invest all our commitment, our goodwill, and our energy, yet despite everything we do, the final outcome does not entirely depend on us.

We can try to save a little bird, but we cannot always give it back its life. We can try to help a person, but we cannot always change their destiny. We can build a project with passion and dedication, but we cannot force the world to embrace it.

Life constantly places us before this limit: the distance between what depends on our will and what belongs instead to forces greater than ourselves.

Accepting this does not mean giving up or becoming indifferent. On the contrary, it means recognizing the value of the attempt itself. The meaning of our actions is not determined only by the final result, because there is also value in the journey, in the effort, and in the inner transformation that every experience creates.

I often think about this reflection also in relation to this blog.

I have devoted time, study, and passion to writing these articles. I have tried to explore profound questions: the meaning of life and death, contemporary society, history, politics, religion, anthropology, and the nature of human beings. Every article has been a journey of research and discovery for me.

Of course, the success of a blog does not depend only on the person who writes it. It also depends on the historical moment in which an idea emerges, on algorithms, on people's attention, on the dynamics of contemporary communication, and on circumstances that are completely beyond an author's control.

I can only do my part: write with honesty, investigate, share ideas, and leave a trace.

The rest will follow its own course.

If this blog reaches many readers, I will be happy. If some ideas manage to reach distant minds and inspire reflection, it will be a great satisfaction. But even if the final result is different from my expectations, I would not consider this journey a failure.

Because the true value of an experience is not measured only by external recognition, but also by what it leaves within us.

This blog, before being an attempt to communicate with others, has been an exercise in knowledge and awareness. It has forced me to ask questions, to challenge my own beliefs, and to look at the world through different eyes.

Perhaps the little bird on the terrace taught me exactly this: we cannot always change the destiny of things, but we can choose the attitude with which we face them.

We can do what is within our possibilities, offer our contribution, and take care of what we encounter along the way. Then we must accept that reality will follow its own course.

And in this acceptance — which is not resignation, but maturity — perhaps lies one of the deepest forms of human freedom.

Is Free Will an Illusion? Toward a Theory of Probabilistic Determinism

Free Will Is Probably an Illusion

The belief that human beings possess genuine free will has shaped Western philosophy for centuries. Yet a closer examination of how we actually make decisions throughout our lives raises an unsettling question: do we truly choose, or do we simply follow the path that was always the most probable given who we are?

Every decision emerges from the convergence of factors we never chose ourselves. Our genetic makeup, upbringing, cultural environment, life experiences, personality, emotional state, and the information available to us at any given moment all contribute to the outcome. None of these elements originates from an autonomous act of will. A decision may therefore be nothing more than the endpoint of a causal chain that began long before we were born.

This perspective echoes the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, who argued that people believe themselves to be free only because they are conscious of their actions while remaining unaware of the countless causes that determine them.

The Past Could Not Have Been Otherwise

If this view is correct, it fundamentally changes the way we look back on our lives. We often revisit decisions made years earlier and conclude that we should have chosen differently. Yet this judgment is based on information we possess only today.

At the time the decision was made, our knowledge, maturity, emotional condition, and life experience were entirely different. Under those circumstances, the choice we made may not have been merely one possibility among many, but the only decision that was realistically available to us.

Even inaction, procrastination, hesitation, or fear are not exceptions. They are themselves decisions produced by a particular psychological structure interacting with a particular environment. Regret, therefore, may be little more than an illusion created by hindsight.

Personality Narrows the Range of Possibilities

Personality plays a decisive role in shaping our decisions. Two individuals facing the same situation rarely possess the same practical range of options.

A perfectionist is likely to postpone action while waiting for ideal conditions that may never arrive. An impulsive person is more inclined to act immediately. An anxious individual will often avoid risk, whereas an adventurous personality is naturally drawn toward uncertainty and exploration.

Although countless alternatives may exist in theory, each individual can realistically access only a small subset of them. Every person carries a unique probability distribution that makes certain decisions highly likely and others almost impossible.

Destiny Becomes a Matter of Probability

From this perspective, destiny takes on an entirely different meaning. It is no longer a mystical force directing our lives, but the statistically dominant trajectory produced by the interaction of biology, psychology, environment, and personal history.

If it were possible to rewind the universe while keeping every relevant condition exactly the same, there is good reason to believe that the same individual would make exactly the same decision once again. Not because of supernatural fate, but because the variables governing the decision-making process would remain unchanged.

Destiny, then, may simply be the name we give to the most probable outcome of an extraordinarily complex system.

Parallel Universes Become Less Relevant

This interpretation also reshapes the way we think about parallel universes. If, at every moment, one trajectory is overwhelmingly more probable than all others, then alternative histories remain largely theoretical possibilities.

Even if parallel universes exist, they would represent scenarios built upon events whose probability, given an individual's actual history and psychological structure, was virtually zero. The universe we inhabit would still be the one in which the statistically dominant sequence of events unfolds.

An Implicit Critique of Nash's Game Theory

This perspective also raises an interesting question about John Nash's game theory. Classical game theory assumes that rational players evaluate a set of available strategies and choose among them according to expected payoffs.

Real human beings, however, do not experience every strategy as equally accessible. Some options are psychologically unavailable, while others emerge almost automatically as a consequence of personality, habits, and past experiences.

Treating all strategies as equally viable may therefore overlook an essential feature of human decision-making. A more realistic model would incorporate not only the payoff associated with each strategy but also the probability that a particular individual is actually capable of selecting it.

Toward a New Theory of Decision-Making

These considerations suggest a possible reformulation of decision theory. The true decision space is not the set of all logically conceivable alternatives, but the set of alternatives that are statistically accessible to a particular individual.

Each person enters every decision carrying a unique history of experiences, beliefs, fears, motivations, biases, and cognitive limitations. This personal history filters the available options, making some choices overwhelmingly likely and others practically unattainable.

Decisions therefore do not arise in a vacuum. They emerge from a probability distribution shaped throughout an entire lifetime.

A Philosophical Consequence

The ultimate implication of this perspective is a radically different understanding of human nature. The individual is no longer an independent cause capable of freely interrupting the chain of events, but rather the point at which countless prior causes converge.

Every decision becomes the provisional outcome of an entire personal history. Freedom no longer consists in the unlimited ability to choose among all imaginable possibilities, but in expressing the biological, psychological, and cultural structure that one has become.

Perhaps free will is nothing more than the subjective experience of a process determined by innumerable factors operating beneath the threshold of conscious awareness. And perhaps what we call destiny is not a mysterious force guiding our lives, but simply the statistically dominant path along which our existence almost inevitably unfolds.