I see the world as in conflict between many competing forces, however slowly this conflict rolls out: but the conflict is most fierce within the person. Each person is a vortex of conflict, although different people experience this to greater degrees than others.
The process of the conflict works according to laws, and they cannot be controlled by a free will. What occurs first determines what occurs next.
Understanding both the conditions and laws of the conflict is a necessary part of achieving self-determination.
The ‘self’ is nothing but one’s body of knowledge of both these conditions and laws.
Heraclitus basically voiced this philosophy first, but then it was modified and adapted by Aristotle, Spinoza, and Nietzsche, among others. Dewey seems like a candidate, and possibly Whitehead as well. I have only read about Whitehead, but he was the proponent of something called ‘process philosophy,’ and from some of the details I’ve read, it looks compatible in its most general form.
Natural Causes 