Everything does not happen for a reason.

One of the most pervasive metaphysical or religious beliefs in American society today is the old adage, “everything happens for a reason.” It does not even need to be articulated this clearly. You hear it implied in talk shows, soap operas, and any other form of media you run into.

Of course, the belief in this adage implies belief in some guiding order or force to the universe. For most people this is God, and for even more a specifically Christian God. But it certainly doesn’t have to be. It only requires someone to have a mildly mystical view of the universe to presume that somehow, the minute and major details of their life are ultimately guided by a larger plan book, written either by some inarticulate ghost of intelligence and energy or, by a very articulate, very large giant in the sky called God.

Such thinking is also encouraged by the tendency to supernatural thinking that all of us, whether believers or atheists, share from our biological inheritance. Humans are designed to search for patterns, because whoever could discern patterns the most quickly was probably the most likely to survive back when we were evolving into our current form on the African savannah.* However, some of us are more willing to identify superstitious thinking when we experience it, while others of course do not recognize it as superstition, but realization, often a spiritual one. An event in our lives that initially seems entirely crappy eventually leads to another that ends up quite positive – ah ha, we say, look, everything happens for a reason. Yet, we conveniently ignore all those crappy events in our lives which remain resolutely crappy, or, we chalk it up to the undecipherable nature of God that we cannot comprehend.

What bothers me is that this assumption goes against nearly all observed evidence and everything in the observable natural world. Evolution, contrary to the popular understanding of animals purposely evolving certain characteristics to adapt to certain environments, does not work through a series of purposeful alterations but is a product of completely random genetic mutation and likewise random natural selection. And as quantum physics has been arguing for a while now, atoms don’t even “happen for a reason,” – their behavior is subject to statistical chance. And putting aside science entirely, anyone with a relatively normal life of good and bad events should be able to discern that some of the pain they suffered, if not meaningless in what they took out of it, was meaningless in cause. There is no reason why someone gets terminal brain cancer and another doesn’t, at least no reason in a metaphysical or religious sense (perhaps one of these people unwisely ignored the warnings about Red Bulls and the other didn’t, but you get my drift.) And whenever huge natural disasters occur, and thousands of innocents are killed, only the far right crazies claim it was the result of an angry God – most just shake their heads, say “you cannot know the way of God,” or, don’t even consciously think about how this might challenge the preposition they also hold casually in their minds that, “everything happens for a reason.”

Yet I dare someone to go on public television and assert that this belief is foolish. Just the other day Will Smith was on TV, telling me that when bad things happen to me, it is best to capitalize on what I have to learn from that suffering, because God gave me that opportunity for a reason. While I do not dispute that it is best to make lemonade out of lemons, why does this require a divine intervention? It seems much more straight forward to say that shit happens, and all that anyone can do is try to carry on the best they can. No God required. But while I winced at my television set, Oprah of course nodded approvingly, “absolutely.” I wonder what Smith and the audience’s reaction would have been had she suddenly retorted, “That’s silly, everything obviously does not happen for a reason.”

I will end here, partly because this is getting too long and, partially because I have to think on this a little longer before I extend my argument to why it is bad for people to believe that everything happens for a reason. Emotionally, of course, this is a tricky wager; when things go well or somewhat badly, it can be comforting – there is order to the universe despite it all. But when things are really atrociously bad, and horrific things happen to innocent people, this becomes a tortuous belief, resulting in much anger towards a strangely still believed in God. Much psychological angst would be relieved, I would think, by simply giving up the idea of a guiding order to the universe and realizing that we all are in this shit storm together, for better or for worse but, not for any one particular ordained reason. It opens up possibilities and relieves us of anxieties in many ways; but of course, then you have to give up God. And for many, that is an emotional and psychological cost too high to pay simply for putting to rest the endless question of “why?”

Here is a video from PBS’s “The Question of God” which addresses this issue. I think I can trace my contemplation of this particular question to this particular video, and was also my introduction to Michael Shermer, who is at the moment my favorite of the “New Atheists.” He has a easy going humor that I think displays how happy, in fact, atheists can be; as happy as those who seek to solve the riddles of life through an obstinate belief that “everything happens for a reason.”

Go here to watch the video, a small link above the transcript — I defintely recommend the video over the transcript, as the transcript cuts out the best parts from the first three minutes:

“The Question of God” – Suffering and Death

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* I steal this observation from Michael Shermer, who talks about it in more detail in How We Believe.

Reflections on MILK.

I saw Harvey Milk last night, and now I have been trying to articulate my thoughts that I came away with. I have pretty much failed so far. What started out a programmatic approach about why the ultimate message was for me one of hope, descended into a depressing description of the emergence of the New Right and the total inability of a vast chunk of the American populace to understand the pluralistic nature of modern democracies. It resulted, ultimately, in a realization once again of how separated I am from the popular discourse of my country, populated with people who believe that their religious beliefs can be drafted into legislation and that they are tolerant and open-minded at the exact same moment that they take away the rights of a minority group – and all the while calling themselves victims of the 1960s!

I can’t explain here why they are wrong, because like most things worth knowing, it is complex; too complex to possibly be fit into any reasonable amount of space. But I want to get back to my initial hopeful beginnings, and even more so I want to write something clear, lucid, and accessible to whoever might be out there reading it. So I am going to impose on myself a system of bullet points that will attempt to keep short my fundamental thoughts, without academic digressions:

Why the film gave cause for optimism:

- How people think about tolerance has changed. Back in the 1970s, Anita Bryant openly and successfully lobbied for the repeal of gay rights legislation that protected gays from discrimination in housing or employment. Today, the fight against the “homosexual lifestyle” has retreated into areas where supporters can (disingenuously, for sure) claim their personal religious freedoms and parental rights are at risk. The religious amongst the Prop 8 supporters now “hate the sin but not the sinner,” and actually steal the rhetoric of victimization which they perceive is all a selfish ploy used by a cabal of gay activists intent on denying them their right to define the culture for everyone else through legislation.*

- This change has come part and parcel with a fundamental change in political rhetoric. Open gay baiting is no longer appropriate; rather we have claims about tolerance that hype up civil unions as equal rights enough and again, steal the rhetoric of their opponents by casting themselves as victims of an intolerant political correctness that makes them feel oh so very lonely in their Medieval religious convictions. It’s ridiculous, of course – I wonder how someone openly disagreeing with your politics can possibly compare to being forbid by your society to marry or, getting beat up on a monthly basis in high school, but we’ll push that aside for the moment – but in a way it is a good sign. They have to work within the paradigm of the political discourse, which no longer recognizes openly homophobic, intolerant or hateful speech as legitimate.

This shows us that while in the short run   they have won this battle, they have in fact been steadily and surely loosing ever since the 1960s. Our job now is to expose these more subtle arguments as fundamentally linked backed into the same discarded tenets that were once worn openly by the religious and New Right, even when people who promote them are not consciously aware of this (which I would argue is in fact the case almost all of the time nowadays.) We need to hammer home the fact that to argue that Prop 8 “protects children,” is to argue that homosexuality is something they should be protected from, and is thus at heart ignorance. We need to hammer home the fact that to legislate against a minority group on the pretense of protecting religious freedom, is in fact to denigrate religious freedom by violating the fundamental divide of church and state that any pluralistic society which values individual rights must observe. We need to hammer home the fact that political symbolism is important – that societies express their tenets and restrictions through symbolism, and thus to paint those opposed to Prop 8 merely as selfish agitators is to display a fundamental ignorance of how political and social power operates within societies.

But finally, a closing reason for optimism. I study the Enlightenment, and in times like this it is on my mind. 400 years ago, the West started questioning the basic assumptions of its society – first it was merely the position of the sun in relation to the planets. But then came the undermining of absolute monarchy, of an established church, and then of Christianity itself. And with each new challenge came new principles of freedom of expression, equality under the law, and the separation of church and state. Ever since then, passionate and violent resistance has been met every step of progress; each one has been painted as another attempt to create a Godless society or to undermine all which is moral and beautiful in life. Yet society has not only continued to thrive as one barrier after another was exposed as ancient farce, but a flowering of human creativity and dignity like the world had never seen continued to blossom. I see no real reason to find the major setbacks very convincing – a new generation is coming, and this generation knows better. This generation knows that the ultimate value is that which widens the circle of this diverse, multifaceted, confusing but blindly beautiful spin of stuff we call humanity.

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* I highlight this distinction because it is really what separates someone with a strong opinion or value – in this case me – from someone who would support something like Prop 8. I too, of course have values that I would like to see propagated in the wider society – I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t. However, I aim to advance those values through rational argument and political activism – not by advocating a law which denies equal treatment in any category at all to those that disagree with me. I was accused recently, somewhat to my pleasure, of being “totally intolerant of dumb people.” Well yes, I am guilty as charged. But I certainly have never legislated against dumb people.

My two favorite scences from “John Adams.”

As someone rightly says in the comments section on YouTube, this scene captures the spirit of the Enlightenment. And I don’t think you need to say much more than that.

And this video is just hilarious; and I suppose captures the immensity of the Declaration and, Jefferson’s awakward defensiveness, which was one of his characteristics.

I have to say as I’ve said before, I never imagined Jefferson quite like this. If this is more accurate than what I already had in my head, I have to say, I like him quite a lot more than I thought.

But really, the delivery of the line “Well it’s what I believe,” is just fucking hilarious, and I love it.

What a sea change it has been.

In college, I used to blog. I would blog nearly every day, often several times a day. When I was out studying, I would collect all my clever or thoughtful concepts of the day and package them away for publication – the moment when I was sitting in front of the computer and pouring it all out was oftentimes the best part of my day, the activity I looked forward to more than any other.

It was a therapy that was needed – in the midst of finding out I was an intellectual, I had very little outlets to express this. What friends I did have weren’t the sort that talked about such things, and you usually didn’t run into that at house parties either. But by the end of the four years, I had hashed out an identity and a meaning – I was to be a conveyer and preserver of ideas, in all their purity. The subtitle to my blog, a quote from Emerson, summed up my faith: “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

This was all good and well, until I found out that “principles,” as I so conceived it, didn’t really apply very well to humanity. And I didn’t find it out because someone hurt me – in fact, it was because I had been reeling from getting hurt a couple times over from a couple of people in my college years that I had run to such a hard line in the first place. No, I taught myself that principles weren’t really applicable to humanity, not even my humanity. Yet I had known, already, that I was self-righteous – despite all my socially liberal beliefs, that is what kept me identifying myself as a conservative. I understood at the time, as well, that much of that spite was based on an internal, completely personal bitterness – but I couldn’t think how to change it and, to somehow attempt to felt like conformity, or worse, defeat. So I remained defiantly puritanical, unable to give up the system of logic that made sense of what had happened to me during those years.

But what I didn’t know was how deeply fallible I was, or more importantly, how lonely. And so I did a lot of stupid stuff. Most of it just harmful to myself, but a lot of it really, really harmful to others. And the story is so common it is not hard to tell; it all comes down to isolation and desperation, and we all know what happens once those two things combine. My early blog in graduate school quickly developed into a space completely dominated by despairing, postmodern laments. I was losing one basis for how I understood my value in this world, and it was a difficult and painful loss.

And now we jump ahead in the story abruptly and without much explanation. But somewhere around the beginning of my second year, I could feel a switch slowly and consistently being pushed in a new direction. I tried mediating for a bit. I found it useful; it taught me to stop worrying about the future, and to value merely the experience of being alive, rather than having to pound everything into pure, philosophical propositions. Life included meaningless suffering but also unexpected happiness; it was what it was, and I didn’t have to secure myself against it with logic anymore.

With this fundamental change in my metaphysics – or more accurately, lack thereof – came an element of sympathy which I had never known before. Not the type of sympathy that makes you want to give money to a charity or necessarily reduces cynicism, but a thoughtfulness that kept in the front of my mind that I was a part of a society where others have experiences that could mean something to me – that I could relate to or, find compassion in. Whereas before I was met with situations that would have made me uncomfortable and resentful, now I saw the tenderness and fragility of the human condition. And at times it seemed heartbreakingly beautiful.

And then came this election – then came this physical, empirical proof that sometimes things can change for the better, and that one day there might be a larger sphere for nerdy folks like me in the larger public discourse. Maybe not within my lifetime – but nevertheless, I realized, I do care about which way this society goes. I do think there is value in trying to participate in that discussion and always enlarge the circle where people feel welcomed and equal within their society. Perhaps the most deeply held reason for this belief, however, has always been with me – as someone who has been described with the adjective “eccentric” more than any other, I have an affinity for the earnest outcast, and I know what it is like to live in a society you cannot imagine taking you seriously. I handled that much better than some – indeed, I used it to buttress my sense of self – but what a wonder if we could decrease that sensation, and increase instead, that greatest thing in life, the sincere conversation.

So here I am, and no matter the stress or current crisis I feel an unprecedented sense of calm and grace. I’ve emerged into where, I think, in a way I was always heading – I don’t feel too much anger anymore, I don’t spend my time making lists of what’s wrong with the people who are or used to be in my life, or what is wrong with me. I walk through life and feel hope; and I don’t care if that is cliché. It’s a lot better than the cliché of feeling bitter.