Book Review/Takeaways: Determined
Success is the accumulation of luck over time. That’s kind of the message I came away with after reading Determined, Robert Sapolsky’s book that makes the case, through scientific and research backed data, that free will doesn’t exist. Rather we are all a collection of genes, experiences, hormones, environments, and more, that we have no control over. Ever since reading Gabor Mate’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, the idea that we all choose our own paths is something that I’ve questioned. In that book the emphasis was on trauma, usually early childhood trauma, that shaped peoples lives. In Determined he explains how it is way more complicated than that. How it is actually everything that matters.
Fifteen or 20 years ago I would have been one of those people criticizing people who just couldn’t seem to get their life together, and couldn’t avoid making the same mistakes over and over. At the time I was so confused by it and couldn’t understand it. But books like these have made me understand the reality of why we’re all different, and why we all do different things (good or bad). Now, instead of being critical, I ask questions to try and understand where someone is coming from and meet them where they are at. With a goal of helping them in any way that I can.
Determined was a dense read for me through the first 6 chapters. There were a lot of terms and concepts that were way over my simple mind, and I needed to look up. But I got through those tough first chapters and flew through the back half of the book because I just didn’t want to put it down. And while I definitely missed some of the more technical details, the overall concept of the book stuck. We don’t determine our fate, our fate is already determined for us by hundreds, thousands, millions, of inputs that happened before that fateful moment, that we have no control over. So practice compassion when you’re out in the world, because chances are if you’re in a position looking down on someone, you’re, like me, one of the lucky ones.