Philosophical Diversion for a Sunday Afternoon

This is brilliant.  Although the source where I got it (Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project) cited it from Freud, they seem like an equivalent to the three fates from Greek and Roman mythology.  What I like most about the three dimensions is that they fit what we know about human behavior pretty well.  Much of our behavior emerges from a combination of our genes and past experiences and is to a large extent “inevitable.”  We also have “fateful tendencies” based on the differences in our cognitive abilities, emotional profiles, and personal preferences.  And of course, there is always the random “accidents” that emerge from our free will. 

“The names of the three spinners (of your life’s web) have been interpreted significantly…Lachesis, the name of the second, seems to mean ‘the accidental within the decrees of destiny’ while Atopos means ‘the inevitable’ and for Clotho ‘the fateful tendencies each one of us brings into the world.”