Alamo-Girl, the ancient Greek conception of Fate -- the World soul cycling in an out of potency, and men getting dragged willy-nilly along in its train for better or worse -- seems to be implicit in this observation.
Yet from a Christian point of view, the same statement can be read as an affirmation of the "two-way street" that obtains between God and man.
It seems to me that successful communication is always a "two-way street." Failing that, it seems we are left to the Greek conception of Fate to settle our issues for us.
Plato thought the universe was a living being possessing a soul that waxed and waned according to its own natural rhythm or time pulse. If a man got stuck with being alive during a bad patch, then bad luck to him. One must ride the cycle -- which is operating at a timescale that has no correspondence with the human timescale, and in fact uses eons where man might use hours to measure the "passage" of time. Man born at the wrong time gets to be a victim of this ride....
Christianity is ever optimistic, especially as compared with the Greek idea of Fate, which embroils all men for good or ill, regardless of their personal qualities, talents, or efforts.
This is an extraordinarily weird problem for the modern mind to contemplate. But it might do us some good to do try. :^)
Of course, this is a much debated subject on the Religion Forum - as it should be - but it also should be debated among the secular and scientific posters, IMHO, because it has to do with personal accountability, social structures and the ilk.
In my view, reality includes both predestination and free will. Of course I see a spiritual realm as well as a natural realm. If one narrows his worldview to just the natural, strong determinism is the first inclination short of a two way information mechanism within the physical universe.