Technically, yes, but the concept of personal responsibility could be included, or not, in causal chains (fractal webs, really), likely leading to different outcomes.
It’s not so much that we can’t change the outcomes; it’s more that we’re tangled up in the outcomes in such a way that whether we will include certain concepts is not actually a choice we make. It’s likely to feel like one, though!
Maybe some other Aria in some distant quantum universe makes a different call, because some particle scatter tips things a little somehow. Wouldn’t it be amazing to see some of the worlds where things worked out a little differently, especially long ago?
In such-and-such a world the Prophet Gheinok’s next-door neighbor opted to grow a crop of cucumbers instead of potatoes. What changes? Oo, that would be so neat to see!
Anyway, I’m not 100% on everything really being worked out from the universe’s start (because quantum weirdness) but yes, it does seem pretty clear to me that what I think and the decisions I make are less “mine” than most people might like to believe: all a bunch of stones and such tumbling down a hill.
And one of the ways we bump and jar against each other is the ideas we trade. That’s a form of influence, and it is included in the outcomes.
That … is … a very interesting notion. I’ll have to think about that.
Hmmmmm. True, but you do tend to be pretty confident in your perspectives you know? “No, Aria,” could have been your personal tagline for, like, months, a few years back.
Maybe not forever, though. We’re all objects, processes, in motion after all.