"It is we that are blind, not fortune"
About this Quote
The jab lands because it reverses the usual alibi. “Fortune” is the classic scapegoat: an impersonal goddess you can blame when plans collapse. Browne flips it with a calm, almost clinical rebuke: the problem isn’t the world’s randomness, it’s our perception. In one short line he turns misfortune from a cosmic verdict into an epistemic failure.
That framing makes perfect sense for Thomas Browne, a 17th-century physician-naturalist writing in a culture where plague, war, and religious conflict made “bad luck” feel like a daily weather system. Early modern science was also teaching a new habit of mind: observe closely, distrust superstition, admit what you don’t know. Browne isn’t pretending fortune doesn’t exist; he’s saying we mythologize it to avoid the harder work of seeing clearly - patterns, causes, our own mistakes, and the limits of our control.
The subtext is moral without being preachy. “Blind” implicates the self: not just ignorance, but a willful squinting away from responsibility. It’s also a warning about narrative comfort. “Fortune” offers a neat story - I was doomed, the universe had it out for me - while blindness is messy, personal, correctable.
In a modern register, the line skewers the algorithmic-era equivalent of fortune: vibes, fate, “the universe,” whatever lets us outsource agency. Browne’s sting is that the world may be chaotic, but our first misread is thinking chaos absolves us.
That framing makes perfect sense for Thomas Browne, a 17th-century physician-naturalist writing in a culture where plague, war, and religious conflict made “bad luck” feel like a daily weather system. Early modern science was also teaching a new habit of mind: observe closely, distrust superstition, admit what you don’t know. Browne isn’t pretending fortune doesn’t exist; he’s saying we mythologize it to avoid the harder work of seeing clearly - patterns, causes, our own mistakes, and the limits of our control.
The subtext is moral without being preachy. “Blind” implicates the self: not just ignorance, but a willful squinting away from responsibility. It’s also a warning about narrative comfort. “Fortune” offers a neat story - I was doomed, the universe had it out for me - while blindness is messy, personal, correctable.
In a modern register, the line skewers the algorithmic-era equivalent of fortune: vibes, fate, “the universe,” whatever lets us outsource agency. Browne’s sting is that the world may be chaotic, but our first misread is thinking chaos absolves us.
Quote Details
| Topic | Free Will & Fate |
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