"What you're doing is what you're becoming, and what you've done is what you've become."
-- Rex Pickett,
author of Sideways
Saturday, February 05, 2005
WHIMS OF FATE
Let's assume:
That there is a God. That he monitors what he has wrought down here on what we call Earth. That he has a certain plan in mind. That there is a rhythm to his seeming indifference to our relentless suffering.
We look at what happened on September 11th, 2001. We look at the tsunami. We see the devastation and death and human suffering. We tilt our heads skyward and ask: "Why?"
No answer.
But let's suppose that there is a plan.
For example:
More than three thousand people died due to terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Hundreds of women lost their husbands, their life partners, the loves of their lives. It's reasonable to assume, if not inevitable, that some of those widows have remarried in the years since that terrible day. Some of these women have, undoubtedly, borne children.
Here's the awful question: What if one of those children grows up to be the person who finds the cure for cancer, or AIDS, thereby preventing the deaths of millions of people every year? Would that historic, marvellous result justify what happened on September 11th? If the terrorist attacks had never happened, the mother of that child would never have lost her husband. She would never have remarried. She would have never given birth to, literally, the savior of humanity.
Or let's look at something as senseless as the tsunami. Hundreds of thousands of people's lives, shattered. Husbands losing their wives on their honeymoon. Husbands that will remarry, bear children four, five years down the line. One of those children grows up to be the future president of the United States, the man who will, at long last, truly unite the world in peace.
Ideas like this are horrible even to contemplate, because they trivialize what takes place; they reduce death to the level of speculation and what-if, when it is all too real, brutal and cutting.
And yet, this is what we do. As humans. We ask questions, raise our fists to the sky, ask God for answers (if you have even a smidgen of religious sensibility.)
I've always felt that, even if there is a God, his authentic form and shape and origin and ultimate reality are so far beyond the realm of human comprehension that there will never be any means by which we could even begin to contemplate his true nature.
All we can do is guess.
So, for the sake of argument, let's just assume that he exists.
Who's to say he is what we think he is? Maybe he sets things in motion. Maybe he calls up plays, like a coach, with an idea of what he believes will happen, but has no ultimate say on the final execution of those plans. Or maybe he has a view of time and history that is endless and finite, but out of his control. He can only interfere at key points in time.
He knows that a cure for AIDS will be found. He even knows the identity of the person who will discover the relevant medical information. But that person will not be born unless the tragedy of the World Trade Centre bombings takes place. He knows this, and can only watch as the world mourns, its citizens not knowing that this day that will live in infamy is necessary for the survival of the human race a hundred and fifty years down the line. Perhaps what we call 'God' is merely a component of a larger, denser mechanism, not omnipotent at all, able only to tweak our lives in order to manipulate certain events for future gains.
William J.Blythe gets in a car accident in the 1940's, never seeing the birth of his son. That son grows up to be Bill Clinton. For reasons that will only be known a century from now on, God needed Clinton in office. So on that proverbial dark and stormy night over fifty years ago, the night Clinton's biological father dies, an act of God took place; a death that had to take place to align events essential for humanity's development.
How else can we look at it?? A ludicrous idea perhaps, but aren't all our notions of what a God is, should be, could be? Perhaps he's not as omnipotent as we believe; perhaps he's a role-player. Perhaps there are layers of God, each unknowing what goes on above, only that the above exists.
Our lives are littered with the debris of accident and coincidence. Car accidents, missed exams, unreturned calls. These are what shape our existence -- these random acts of blindness.
To be a cog in the machine can be a depressing thought. It can also be revelatory. Our own, individual sense of 'will' is what makes our own lives, but perhaps, just perhaps, all of those daily 'events-beyond-are-control are, in fact, quite literally, whims of fate.
Who's to say that it won't all make sense two, three hundred years from now? Every single one of us on this spinning blue orb known as Earth may be merely players in the ultimate existential game, where our juvenile concepts of 'chance' and 'luck' are found, in the end, to be nothing more than code-words for 'destiny'.
That there is a God. That he monitors what he has wrought down here on what we call Earth. That he has a certain plan in mind. That there is a rhythm to his seeming indifference to our relentless suffering.
We look at what happened on September 11th, 2001. We look at the tsunami. We see the devastation and death and human suffering. We tilt our heads skyward and ask: "Why?"
No answer.
But let's suppose that there is a plan.
For example:
More than three thousand people died due to terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Hundreds of women lost their husbands, their life partners, the loves of their lives. It's reasonable to assume, if not inevitable, that some of those widows have remarried in the years since that terrible day. Some of these women have, undoubtedly, borne children.
Here's the awful question: What if one of those children grows up to be the person who finds the cure for cancer, or AIDS, thereby preventing the deaths of millions of people every year? Would that historic, marvellous result justify what happened on September 11th? If the terrorist attacks had never happened, the mother of that child would never have lost her husband. She would never have remarried. She would have never given birth to, literally, the savior of humanity.
Or let's look at something as senseless as the tsunami. Hundreds of thousands of people's lives, shattered. Husbands losing their wives on their honeymoon. Husbands that will remarry, bear children four, five years down the line. One of those children grows up to be the future president of the United States, the man who will, at long last, truly unite the world in peace.
Ideas like this are horrible even to contemplate, because they trivialize what takes place; they reduce death to the level of speculation and what-if, when it is all too real, brutal and cutting.
And yet, this is what we do. As humans. We ask questions, raise our fists to the sky, ask God for answers (if you have even a smidgen of religious sensibility.)
I've always felt that, even if there is a God, his authentic form and shape and origin and ultimate reality are so far beyond the realm of human comprehension that there will never be any means by which we could even begin to contemplate his true nature.
All we can do is guess.
So, for the sake of argument, let's just assume that he exists.
Who's to say he is what we think he is? Maybe he sets things in motion. Maybe he calls up plays, like a coach, with an idea of what he believes will happen, but has no ultimate say on the final execution of those plans. Or maybe he has a view of time and history that is endless and finite, but out of his control. He can only interfere at key points in time.
He knows that a cure for AIDS will be found. He even knows the identity of the person who will discover the relevant medical information. But that person will not be born unless the tragedy of the World Trade Centre bombings takes place. He knows this, and can only watch as the world mourns, its citizens not knowing that this day that will live in infamy is necessary for the survival of the human race a hundred and fifty years down the line. Perhaps what we call 'God' is merely a component of a larger, denser mechanism, not omnipotent at all, able only to tweak our lives in order to manipulate certain events for future gains.
William J.Blythe gets in a car accident in the 1940's, never seeing the birth of his son. That son grows up to be Bill Clinton. For reasons that will only be known a century from now on, God needed Clinton in office. So on that proverbial dark and stormy night over fifty years ago, the night Clinton's biological father dies, an act of God took place; a death that had to take place to align events essential for humanity's development.
How else can we look at it?? A ludicrous idea perhaps, but aren't all our notions of what a God is, should be, could be? Perhaps he's not as omnipotent as we believe; perhaps he's a role-player. Perhaps there are layers of God, each unknowing what goes on above, only that the above exists.
Our lives are littered with the debris of accident and coincidence. Car accidents, missed exams, unreturned calls. These are what shape our existence -- these random acts of blindness.
To be a cog in the machine can be a depressing thought. It can also be revelatory. Our own, individual sense of 'will' is what makes our own lives, but perhaps, just perhaps, all of those daily 'events-beyond-are-control are, in fact, quite literally, whims of fate.
Who's to say that it won't all make sense two, three hundred years from now? Every single one of us on this spinning blue orb known as Earth may be merely players in the ultimate existential game, where our juvenile concepts of 'chance' and 'luck' are found, in the end, to be nothing more than code-words for 'destiny'.
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