Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason

Everything does not happen for a reason. The notion that it does is a self-centered human fantasy based on limited, exclusionary knowledge. It helps people deal with immense uncertainties beyond their powers of perception. They’re staggering through life blind to their actual nature.

The concept of “a reason” only exists for humans. When you remove us from the picture, the pursuit of reason doesn’t exist. If a lizard in the desert catches and eats a fly, did that happen for a reason? Maybe for a few low-order causal reasons, but that’s all. When we’re not present for and unaware of limitless possible daily occurrences, they happen for no reason since no one is inventing a reason for those events.

And almost nobody cares. The idea of purpose only matters in an immediate, selfish way. No one invents bromides for why the lizard ate the fly. This is interesting because there are far more flies than humans. A fly is part of the mostly invisible, random process of universal existence. So are we.

We’re just not that important. Our little cluster of planets, our Solar System, is one of another 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Our galaxy is one of another 100 billionn and counting. The odds suggest that all sorts of other life forms, some much smarter than us, are teeming in this vast expanse. 96% of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, yet scientists don’t even know what either of them is. If anything, entropy, not order, guides universal destiny. Why would a sensible person make any unsubstantiated declarations on purposefulness given these realities? We should learn from what we don’t understand.

Life is a finite guess. We’re all unknowing agents in others’ lives. We shape each others’ destinies in a web of coincidental connections. Then we look back and assume some guiding force, some invisible magician, controlled events. In truth, the will to exist guides everything. We’re just along for the ride. Belief and morality have nothing to do with it. Take our jobs, for instance. They don’t go anywhere. Then, one day we’ll retire, and everyone we work with will die. Then, we’ll die, and there’s no reference, no meaning, and eventually everything we just did is forgotten. If you’re aware of this, at least you’re in touch with reality.

But most people try to forget through whichever distractions they can devise. It’s an absurd dance. All that we have that’s beloved and pleasing will become separated from us. Every skill, every relationship, every accumulation–they will all be lost, for no apparent reason. We’re rocketing around the sun and spinning in space, but we’re not going anywhere, and all our goals and dreams are randomly chosen exercises. It takes some perceptiveness and volition to come to terms with this, like a ghost finally taking material form.