Beyond Fate

by Margaret Visser

Many people today are afflicted with a sense that they cannot change things for the better. They feel helpless, constrained, caught — in a word, fatalistic. Beyond Fate examines why. In her characteristically lively prose, Margaret Visser investigates what fate means to us, and where the propensity to believe in it and accept it comes from. She takes an ancient metaphor where time is "seen" and spoken of as though it were space and examines how this way of picturing reality can be a useful tool to think with - or, on the other hand, how it may lead people into disastrous misunderstandings. By observing how fatalism expresses itself in one's daily life, in everything from table manners to shopping to sport, the book proposes ways to limit its influence. Beyond Fate provides a timely and provocative perspective on modern life, both personal and social.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Margaret Visser writes on the history, anthropology, and mythology of
everyday life. Her most recent book is The Gift of Thanks, published by HarperCollins. Her previous books, Much Depends on Dinner, The Rituals of Dinner, The Way We Are, and The Geometry of Love, have all been best sellers and have won major international awards, including the Glenfiddich Award for Foodbook of the Year in Britain in 1989, the International Association of Culinary Professionals' Literary Food Writing Award, and the Jane Grigson Award. In 2002 she gave the Massey Lectures on CBC radio, subsequently published as the best-selling book, Beyond Fate. Her books have been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. She appears frequently on radio and television, and has lectured extensively in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. She divides her time between Toronto, Paris, and South West France.

Reviews

[Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed with the first lecture. I wrestled with what I didn't like, and I tentatively think that I found that her style of oral presentation had not translated well to the written word. A bit too repetitive, and a few too many returns to the opening theme. Which was too bad, I thought, because her premise is an excellent one: that we, as citizens of a 'free' society are using that freedom to choose to revert back to being victims of fate, which we have chosen to call 'globalization' or 'technoloighy' or 'meaninglessness.'

Visser examines how the Greek (and hence Roman) thinking was rooted in fate via the ideals of honour/shame, place/revenge, and how that zeitgeist imprisons the citizenry in a status quo concomitantly with endless cycles of honour saving revenge. She articulates the idea with the image of a line contrasted against the closed line (circle). By the end of the book she has tied the idea very well to present practices and habits of thought, but in the first lecture it was interesting but not well connected.

An example of one of these interesting, and important, points she makes in the first lecture is the role that Christian beliefs founded in Judaism had in breaking the trap of the shame/revenge cycle:

An important aspect of the Christian revolution was a new resolve to break out of the ancient Greek and Roman view that human beings are in thrall to fate. Christianity's roots in Judaism provided it with a perennially powerful story about hope and freedom: that of the Exodus, or Way Out. The picture is of a journey of a people out of bondage to liberation. The journey took time, forty years — the number forty being a Jewish symbol for enough time, "the time it takes." This epic of liberation from captivity — through vision, determination, trust, and agreement to obey God's law — is a radical alternative to fatalistic thinking, to believing that the way things are is necessarily how they must continue to be. The biblical account of the Exodus made linear time, rather than cyclical time, a foundational metaphor for the West, and hence for any society influenced by the cultures of the West. Implicit in it is the concept of progress: human beings are able to free themselves, to learn, to achieve enlightenment. The road metaphor is kept but its meaning changed (20-1)

The second lecture, 'Fate and Furies' redeems the book. It is simply brilliant but not as good s the third lecture, 'Free Fall.' Visser articulates the difference between shame and guilt and why knowing the difference is important. Shame is conferred onto the person by the society — it requires an audience. Guilt, on the other hand, is felt by the individual, and is invisible to the society. This is important, Visser argues, because shame demands a revenge in order to recover the lost honour, whereas guilt demands self knowledge and repentance. It also allows for, but does not demand, forgiveness. The former binds the person to his or her fate, whereas the latter allows for the individual to change and grow. Guilt, repentance and forgiveness empowers the individual to move beyond his/her own failings and to redeem his or herself, i.e. to grow, independently of how the society sees that person. Fate does not allow for that, and Visser effectively argues that we are societally reverting to fate language, fateful thinking, and feelings of being imprisoned by forces beyond our abilities.

From 'Fate and Furies:"

An honour system is communal, close, warm — even fiery. It insists on selfless loyalty to all those defined as being one's own. Individualism, on the other hand, can often feel cold and lonely. It seems at times to undermine every attempt at community. In an individualistic society, the very same diagram as that of the jigsaw we referred to earlier lies behind many metaphors for social patterning. Only here what is being said by the diagram tends to be that each area, each life, is complete in itself, separated from all the others, responsible for itself. Impingement upon others is discouraged, and the invasion of one's own privacy is experienced as an outrage. The image is like the one we looked at earlier, of a table set for dinner. Or a demand that others — especially strangers, of course — should not nudge or pat me too often, or stand too close while speaking to me, or sit down right next to me when I was hoping to be all alone on the beach. Individualism tends not only to protect but to isolate; it can trap people behind the walls that separate each person from every other.

What individualism demands — just as the whole point of guilt is the possibility of forgiveness that it offers — is for people to feel safe enough, ready and willing and free enough, to open up those protective barriers in order to notice, take care of, and finally love other people, even those not felt to be immediately rewarding or appealing. The outstanding characteristic of Christianity is its placing the highest value of all on love," not only for one's family or group, but for everyone — including people who do things like chew with their mouths open. This insistence that love is greater than all the other virtues was, in the context of classical culture at the time of Christianity's beginnings, a revolutionary notion, since it appeared to downplay bravery, loyalty, honesty, obedience, dignity, and all the other ideals of ancient Rome. One of the social or structural reasons for the Christian insistence on love was the immense push that the new religion simultaneously gave to individualism. Without the transcendence love provides, individualism becomes a prison. Individualism requires transcendence so that the "walls," so wisely and carefully raised in order to shelter the individual from incursions by others, can remain — but be surmountable, for higher ends (49-50).

I highly recommend this book, even though the first lecture is a tad hard to get through. To see an even longer review, visit my blog at egajdbooks.blogspot.com.

[Raiden Mano · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book felt like more of a linguistic or Greek mythology le ture than learning about fate. maybe I just missed the point of the book but I think it was meant to put ideas about how to think more than "well it's fate".

[Hamuel Sunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sanctimonious as heck and mostly a drag, though I enjoyed the etymological arguments and the points about addiction and boredom in consumer culture.

[enderen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Feel somewhat bad rating this without reading the whole thing, but I feel the need to record this as a warning to myself to read at least a few paragraphs from a book before you buy it.

I've definitely 'stuck it out' through books that I wasn't immediately drawn into, or even put off by, and from these experiences I've perhaps naively concluded that something can be learned from any book. While this industrious approach may allow for the joy of finding a truly unexpected nugget of wisdom, or even just act as as a counteracting force to our selection biases, my brief (30-45 minute) perusal of this series of lectures (in fairness it is possible the medium really does not translate well to the written word) has me weighing more heavily the drawbacks to this reading philosophy.

I found the turgid, meandering rhetoric to be completely tiresome. Perhaps such a topic and style requires more upfront effort of synthesis on the part of the reader, but I was not given any inclination that it would be worth the effort.

[Christina Barber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Margaret Visser’s 2002 Massey Lecture, entitled “Beyond Fate” is an exploration of the notion of fate, chance, freedom, and choice. Travelling through history, exploring the origins of our need for order and reason in Ancient Greece and Rome, down through the Enlightenment and finally the present, Visser shows the changing nature of our desire to impose meaning and reasoning on otherwise meaningless events. Human beings need to find meaning, as the pondering and questioning beings we are, however, ideas of destiny and chance remove the need for our own actions and free us of responsibility. A fascinating series of lectures that also delved into our obsession with dichotomies and explored the etymology of language especially as it pertains to fatalism and how it is applied to everyday life.

[Ilona · Rating 2 out of 5]

I discovered, on reading this small book, that I enjoy Margaret immensely more as a speaker than a writer. I absolutely adored her chats with Peter Gzowski on CBC radio, years ago, and expected more such lively play here. Instead, though I did love the way she played with the ideas, I found the book too archly self-indulgent -- "get to the point, Margaret!"

As this book is a transcription of lectures, perhaps it is more accurate to say that I enjoyed the lively banter between Margaret and Peter on those Morningside shows so long ago. On her own, for all the mental play in these lectures, the writing plods.

[Neil Haave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. I enjoyed the application of an academic intellect toward understanding the boundaries that set our fate: honour and shame, boredom and embarrassment. I appreciated Visser's consideration of our Western (Christian) heritage, which attempts to escape fate through mercy and forgiveness. However, the last page brings it all together: we have a choice to remain bound to fate or to choose freedom instead by embracing love.

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something really lovely about Visser's writing style.

[Shirley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always enjoy the Massey lectures series

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

Visser writes in a very rich and gastronomic way, yet the end of the book is definitely more cohesive than the beginning.

As an inspirational and socially conscious book, Beyond Fate is perfect, because it shows exactly how believe in fate/dogma/destiny as a substitute for our own will power, can drive us down. And how this is connected to present-day societal fatalism.

She explores fate throughout the centuries, from Plato to Richard Dawkins ("we are our genes") and she shows the different ways humans see the passing of time and their lives, and how ideas born out of numerical representation can actually come to define whole new ideologies.

Overall, the ending 2 chapters made the whole book worth to me, though because the quality wasn't anything over the top, I'm only going to give it 3 stars. But Visser is a social critic that we should keep an eye on, because she is almost completely free of the ideologies of the current era, and her belief in self fulfilment in society, rather than individualism/atomism and belief in fate, is quintessential.

[Loyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Visser is a unique voice, thoughtful and precise in her observations. She dissects common rituals, customs, and habits to which we've grown accustom, and puts them under a microscope to examine their DNA. Most interesting, and most intriguing to me, is an examination of the subtle differences between fate and destiny, and how each one reveals how a society perceives the world.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find the book to be enthralling, and the gimmick of exploring concepts related to time and fate through semantics mostly didn't appeal to me.

[Rhys · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fatalism is the refusal of transcendence. Hmm.

[Sally]

This seemed like a lot of pretentious-sounding drivel to me, but maybe I'm just cynical??

The only thing that made this book worthwhile is that I just happened to be reading Gorky's "The Spy" (aka "Life of a Useless Man") at the same time. What a fortunate coincidence! Almost like it was...fated! Usually the big-picture themes/morals of a novel go right over my head, being more the kind of reader who hones in on the writing style, historical stuff, etc.... but not this time!