Determination is a distinction between the ordinary and the great

Determination is achieving a goal or getting what you want by using moral and ethical values whereas desperation is like achieving a goal or getting what you want by using immoral and unethical values. From an observer's point. How does it make you feel knowing (or having a strong gut feeling) that someone received a promotion that was more deserved by someone else because they were desperate (using conniving methods like back stabbing, setting peers up for failure, etc.)?

When you see someone get promoted for the right reason, you say they were determined; when you see someone get promoted for the wrong reason, you feel they were desperate. When trying to decide if it was determination or desperation, it is perception (which isn't always reality). A determined person wants to succeed, a desperate person needs to. A determined person pursues success, but the desperate person flees from failure.

You can never truly know someone else's motivation, but there can be subtle clues. Determination comes with focus, the desperate tend to panic. The determined are driven toward success, and may treat failure as a setback to overcome rather than absolute disaster. The desperate are consumed by thoughts of failure, and are more likely to treat success as a restoration of the status quo than as an opportunity or the next step in a bigger plan.

Determination is a form of critical commitment that allows for an awareness of being, a respect of the ontological dialectics and constituents at play in any given matter, which in turn opens the door to a cohesion of horizons (whether you choose to model that as hermeneutical horizons or metaphysical 'horizons') that then allows for the natural processes of the dialectic to form. “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” Determination is proactive, desperation is reactive. Determination is making a choice when many are available, desperation is waiting until only one choice is left.

Determination demands making a choice and hence taking responsibility for it. Desperation allows you to wait until you become a victim, and say 'I had no other option! Example: I need to change my job, because I know the salary growth will not be enough to support my family needs after my marriage(2-3 years later). But it demands getting out of my comfort zone, trying, choosing and finalizing. So I don't act. I say I am too busy, blame my family, that the market is not good etc etc. 2 years pass by.

Now I slowly start trying. I get 2 rejects. I say "I told you it was no use" Economy goes downhill - salary hikes reduce. Now the new jobs are not giving me a good hike. In the end, I have to take whatever comes my way. I take it saying "What else could I do? It was just hard luck!" That's desperation. If I had started 2-3 years ago - perhaps there would have been more options. But I cannot miss what I do not know. If you don't decide and change your circumstances, your circumstances will decide for you. For people who are not determined, that's a nice excuse.

That is Determination. Desperation, on the other hand, is the opposite. It is the blind resistance to the "providence" of the dialectic at work in the subject at hand. You are creating a violence to the natural "way of things", to being-in-the-world through a knowing resistance, due to fear. It is fear that drives you, and blindness, not awareness, in desperation. And so that fear only retards the process, whereas Determination becomes the vehicle to that process, or the dialectic becomes the vehicle to determination, at this point being synonymous with one another. Cheers!