Japanese has two words for fate. Shukumei ('') is the fate you are given: your geography, your era, the conditions you did not choose. Unmei ('') is fate in motion, the part shaped by what you do next. The word shukumei has Buddhist roots, and its original meaning is more precise than 'destiny.' It refers to the conditions carried over from earlier lives, the accumulated result of past actions. In that tradition, fate is not imposed from outside. It is inherited, and it was made by choices. This changes how the two words relate. Unmei does not stay unmei. The decisions of one generation harden into the given conditions of the next. Yesterday's choices are today's constraints, and today's choices will be someone else's starting point. That is very close to a definition of sustainability. The carbon in the atmosphere was once a series of investment decisions, and it is now a physical fact. The same is true of depleted soils, ageing infrastructure and public debt. We live inside the...
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