Things Turned Out as Usual

This was written in response to a friend opining that she didn’t believe in coincidence.

 

I think accident is a possibility that must be considered. I also believe in a theory called 'Emergence.' Emergence was originally a mathematical theory that states that small, simple actions can interact to create more complicated systems and that it is impossible to predict them by studying the small actions, no matter how much you try. This has been used to explain the emergence of things like prime numbers, constants, and later things like atoms from quarks and strings, the organization of beehives from individual bees, minds from neurons, and perhaps someday from transistors. Try as you may, you cannot derive the grand organization of a beehive by studying an individual bee or the personality of a Shakespeare from staring at a single neuron on a microscope slide.

In Russia during the Crazy Nineties, while Moscow politicians were trying to create a new government and everybody had his thumb in the constitutional pie, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was quoted as saying, “We hoped for the best, but things turned out as usual.” I know that FDR said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” Still, I believe it is limiting to think this way. You are throwing away one entirely legitimate possible explanation for a thing: Accident, serendipity, chance, and plain dumb luck.

This also opens up one to the belief in so called ‘Conspiracy Theories,’ even though you can be arrested, tried, and sent to jail for the crime of Conspiracy without ever committing the actual crime you are conspiring to commit. Labeling and dismissing something as a conspiracy theory is hollow at best and a club to silence legitimate questions at worse. I prefer to think that an idea is true, false, or unproven one way or the other. I’m open to hearing the evidence. Boom. No appeal to the dialectical IED of ‘Conspiracy Theory.’ (BTW, some Conspiracy Theorists believe that the term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ was coined and popularized by the CIA in the 1960’s to delegitimize questions about the JFK assassination. Possible? Of course. Proven? No.)

There are many examples in history of, ‘Shit happens, and people suffer.’ The successful, but accidental, assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, which became a flint strike to a powder keg of consequences, almost didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, all of the factors that brought about WWI were gadflies of serendipity, accident, unintended consequences, and the confluence of events (Emergence.) No-one wanted a war in 1914, least of all Kaiser Wilhelm, who had been lauded for decades as a diplomat in Europe and was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in March, 1913, wherein he was declared, ‘Peacemaker.’ How cruel turns fates stony wheel.

And things turned out as usual, anyway.

That’s not to say that people don’t plot, plan, conspire, sabotage, overthrow, act according to nearsighted selfishness, greed, and the disregard of consequences, and cause colossal tragedies to occur for no good reason which historians debate for centuries and new generations fail to learn from. We still can’t agree on the causes of the American Civil War. Slavery?  States Rights? Economic struggles between the agrarian south and the industrial north? Meddling by the British Empire in the south’s economy, from which they derived great wealth? The psychopathic one percent on both sides playing a game of chess with the poor on both sides as pawns? 

Fun fact, did you know that Alexander II of Russia, who had freed the slaves there, sent troops to support the Union? The presence of Russian sailors in San Francisco and New York City prevented the British from attacking those crucial but vulnerable cities. Lincoln and Alexander were in close contact and President US Grant was officially received by the Russian head of state in St. Petersburg later. He was hailed as a friend of Russia. We returned the favor by sending US troops to fight alongside White Russians in Siberia during the 1917 Revolution. What happened to US/Russian relations since then? Was the deterioration and utter downfall of that fraternal bond accidental or intentional? Qui bono or bad luck? Or conspiracy? Each age has its fake news. Its propaganda.

People want reasons for things, so we grasp at strings of meaning where none exists, creating a pleasant fiction we call history.

Ultimately, I have no clue how things turn out as usual, but they do.