Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.
Interpretation
Destiny is often used as an excuse for immoral actions, distancing the perpetrator from ethical accountability.
This quote by Steven Erikson critiques the concept of destiny, suggesting that it is a fabrication that allows individuals, particularly those who commit heinous acts, to justify their behavior. By labeling their actions as preordained, they evade moral responsibility, thus undermining ethical frameworks and social accountability. The quote challenges the notion of destiny by exposing its potential to rationalize atrocities and the lack of moral context it entails.
In practice
In a discussion on ethics, one might say, 'Remember, as Steven Erikson pointed out, destiny can often be a misleading justification for one's actions.'
Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish. -And we’re no different you’re saying- We are, soldier. We possess the privilege of choice. The gift of foresight. Though often we come too late in acknowledging responsibilities….
We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.
I've spoken often of how the fantasy genre is able to, with the greatest freedom among all the genres, take a metaphor and make it real. But of course that's only the starting point.
Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.
War has its necessities...and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life.
I agree today that a man has no business trying to tell women what their characteristics are, which ones are inborn, which are more admirable, which will be best utilized by what occupations.
When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?
Humanity needs justice, peace and love and we can have this only by returning with our hearts towards God who is the source of all this.
When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.
Nay, do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue hast but thy good spirits To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
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