Random chaos. Or reason? It’s a mystery.
The couch tried to do some actual “research” on chaos and randomness, but the physics, science and numbers burst its brain, I’m afraid.
The subject popped up while thinking about serendipity and “lucky escapes”. You know the sort: “If I hadn’t done such and such and been five minutes earlier/later, I would have been smack bang in that (disaster).”
Or “the doctor said if I hadn’t taken such and such/arrived x minutes later, I would have died”.
It got me wondering: How many times do we do/not do something and it has sent us on a route through a parallel universe without us even knowing it? What if, like a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world led to disaster in another, our action or non-action had an effect on the world? Where would I be now if I had chosen Plan B 30 years ago?
Which brought me to an irksome phrase: “These things happen for a reason.” Really? No, they don’t. If they did, we’d eventually experience that reason. Understand it and have a moment of clarity about what it was for.
It’s a well-meaning phrase normally used in an attempt to comfort a person who has suffered a major life smackdown, and the comforter has nothing else to offer.
Having pondered this dilemma for a while, and having many “things” happen and needing analysis, I found just one personal possible “happened for a reason”.
The world is indeed a better place for it. Generations of parents and pupils can celebrate that my appendix burst in my matric year, keeping me out of action for so long I couldn’t take up the bursary I’d been given to become a teacher. It would have been the worst job ever for such an impatient person with no time for people who choose to remain ignorant and incurious about everything.
So that’s one reasonable action from the universe. Everything else was just as it seemed ‒ a smackdown to learn from.
If there were reasons for bad things, the world wouldn’t feel like it was ending, literally and as a place for which we need reasonable, intelligent adult leaders.
One contributing factor is coming from one of our most in/famous exports, who clearly has, among some other startling deficiencies, an absolute lack of irony.
Having bought Twitter for $44 billion and unleashed his hellscape hounds, this week he whose name shall not be mentioned tweeted that people should vote Republican in the US midterms because the presidency is in the hands of the Democrats and unbridled power is dangerous. This from a man who axed his board and staff to single-handedly control one of the largest and most influential social media platforms in the world.
Most terrifying, there have been widespread calls to deport him. Imagine another megalomaniac madman on our home soil where we already suffer the consequences of the actions/inactions of a long line of them. You keep him, ’Merica.
Plots, plans and policies set us on paths that have unforeseen consequences, some for years, others for decades and still others forever.
I’m randomly terrified and searching for boring old reason.
- Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor
The Independent on Saturday