Randomness, Luck, Circumstance - Life As Ricocheting Balls On A Pool Table, A Troubling Prospect

The Chris Wilton character in Woody Allen's movie Match Point says:

The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose.

 

The movie's seminal scene is when Wilton, who has killed his lover and her landlady and taken the landlady's jewelry to make the murders look like robbery, throws the incriminating evidence into the Thames. Walking away from the river he realizes that he still has the landlady's wedding ring, so throws it towards the river, turns away, and walks off.  Unbeknownst to him the ring bounces on the railing, could go either way, into the river or back onto the pavement, and bounces back. 

A drug addict finds the ring, and when he is murdered by an unknown assailant, the police find the ring, engraved with the landlady's name and wedding date.  Police attention is drawn away from Wilton as the murderer and placed squarely on the addict.  

Tolstoy in his Second Appendix to War and Peace expounds on his theory of determinism.  Napoleon lost the Battle of Borodino not because of a loss of his usually canny battlefield strategy, but because his valet forgot to bring his gum boots on a cold, rainy day. As a result the Emperor caught cold and on the day of the decisive conflict was congested, feverish, and not his sharp, perceptive self.  As a result he made a series of errors which led to Russian victory.

Tolstoy does not stop here.  The valet forgot to bring the Emperor's foul weather gear because he was distracted by his wife's infidelity.  The wife's infidelity with a sheepherder was precipitated by her long frustration with her husband.  The sheepherder, himself in an unhappy and unrewarding marriage sought comfort and pleasure with the valet's wife.

In other words, each action was determined by a previous one in a chain that dates back ad infinitum. Events are not random, but conditioned by the past. 

The two arguments for randomness and determinism when taken together dispel and dismiss the notion of divine or secular purpose.  John was not 'meant' to find Mary, Bob did not die a miserable painful death because he deserved it, Amy did not discover a life-saving drug because she had been chosen to do so.  All were propelled by the ineluctable influences of the past altered only by random bits which do not change the equation but only alter its mathematical direction. 

Discussion about such things is not new.  Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over them.  The disquisitions have never been just academic.  It matters to everyone.  A world without meaning is unconscionable, unthinkable, and frightening. 

Aquinas in his Summa Theologica spent a thousand pages trying to prove the existence of God; but of course, despite the efforts of this, the world's greatest theologian, he had to rest on faith and faith alone.  At the same time he built the foundation for the Catholic Church which contends that true belief is a function of both faith and logic. 

 

The philosophers of the Enlightenment were logicians, but the application of intellectual rigor was not a willy-nilly exercise.  Logic, objectivity, and exegesis were the handmaidens of faith.  Logic was to be used to better understand divinity and the mysteries of the universe. 

Frederik Nietzsche was a nihilist for whom there was no meaning in the world; and the only validation of the individual was the expression of pure will.  Sartre, far less harsh and peremptory hedged his bets, and suggested that doing good could alter the existential emptiness of the world. 

Marfa Potter woke up in a cold sweat every morning, bolted awake by the same nightmare she had every night.  She found herself alone in a cold, dark, empty place with only a thread of light on the horizon. There was no sound, the air was frozen and still, the earth was featureless and flat. Everywhere she turned she saw the same emptiness and stillness and felt the penetrating cold.  It was the end of the world, the end of existence, and there was nothing left.  No life and no God.  She screamed and woke up. 

The George Pal 1960 movie made of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine evokes the same desolate view of the end of a world approaching entropy, the complete absence of energy.  The sea has no movement, no ripples, no tide.  The air is still. The landscape is shapeless, bare, grey, monochrome. 

Wells is neither determinist nor nihilist, but there is only one way to interpret his chilling ending of the book.  All human enterprise, good, evil, morality, love, and feature will ultimately end in nothingness.  Given that, what is the purpose and meaning of life? Nothing at all. 

The Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men explores this theme.  The psychopath Shugur is a nihilist for whom the only arbiter of value is the flip of a coin. Heads, you live; tails you die.  No value at all. 

'If the rule you lived by has brought you to this', Shugur says to Carson Wells before killing him, 'of what use was the rule?'  Rules like any standards and guideposts of behavior are meaningless, temporal, artifacts created to confer order but without any inherent, absolute value. 

Marfa Potter conflated two of man's greatest concerns - that he has done nothing significant in his life and will die without legacy; and that nothing he has done or could have done has any meaning at all. He will die soulless, neither condemned to hell or ascended to heaven but simply extinguished. 

In Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, Kurtz's last words are, 'the horror...the horror', for at that moment he realizes that the tribal savagery he has witnessed in the darkness of the jungle was universal.  Human beings by nature are savage, brutal, and soulless. 

Conrad believed in traditional good and evil, morality, ethics.  Lord Jim spent his whole life atoning for his sin aboard the pilgrimage ship Patna which he abandoned when he thought it was about to sink, abandoning 800 souls to drowning and certain death. 

In his novel Victory, the main character flees the world and seeks solitude and refuge from evil; but of course, says Conrad, this is not possible; and he is visited by men without a scintilla of moral justice.

As horrible as this human evil is, it is preferable to a world without meaning.  Evil gives meaning to life just as good. 

It was the total absence of meaning, the complete aloneness that made Marfa's nightmare so frightening.  Danger, pursuit, threat, violence would have been better than this complete abandonment to a meaningless, horrifyingly empty existence. 

Marfa was an old woman, so her dreams were no longer intimations, but reality.  She like Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich would soon be facing death, a black, empty, cold, and unremittingly dark place of eternity; and so her nightmares not only persisted but worsened in fright and intensity. 

Nihilism, stoicism, existentialism were of no use.  Perhaps had they taken hold much earlier in her life, she would have incorporated them as a foundation on which she would take her last breath; but she had been schooled in religion, propriety, good taste, and enterprise all of which were the ingredients of the final, desperate horror of death. 

Perhaps she will have Ivan Ilyich's epiphany. 

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it.
‘Where is it? What death?’
There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.

 And then, 

“So that’s what it is! What joy!” 

Marriage In America - Lace Curtains And Orchids Until The Wheels Come Off The Bus, A Wives' Tale

Bettina Marks had married badly, a 'What was she thinking?' marriage built on unrealistic expectations, unreasonable hopefulness, and a ticking biological clock. The marriage was dreary on most days, antagonistic on others, and full of suspicions for the rest.  

Henry wasn't a bad sort.  He meant well, pushed the right buttons, was dutiful and respectful, helped out in the kitchen, and was reasonable in bed, but it didn't take long for 'the real Henry' to emerge. The pupa and chrysalis had offered promise, but the butterfly was disappointing. 

'What do women want?' is the question asked only by clueless men. A little attention now and then, a good listener, a shoulder to cry on, a modicum of understanding during bad times of the month, a little patience in bed. Not rocket science, more the ABCs or McGuffey's Reader; and still men scratched their head and wondered.  

  

Henry's good intentions turned out to be nothing more than suppositions, bit and pieces he had picked up en passant but not worth the effort. He failed the kindergarten of marital relationships. 'I should have known', Bettina said, kicking herself for vetting like a hopeful child, ignoring the telltale signs, and rushing into a space where she didn't belong.  

Bettina had given it her all, especially when she saw cracks in the foundation and leaks in the roof.  'I will make this work', she said as much to justify her mistake as any respect for the sanctity of marriage. 

She prettied up the house, gave it frills and attractive appointments, had fresh bread baking in the oven on Saturday mornings before her husband went out to play eighteen holes, filled the vases with fresh flowers, plumped the cushions on the divan, straightened the crockery, and polished the silver.  This all before and after a professional week not without its own headaches and need for order and discipline. 

To be fair, Harry was no wastrel and seemingly not even interested in straying, 'Working late at the office meant exactly that'; and to be honest, Bettina could have done with a little more spicy intrigue.  An uxorious man who pays the bills is OK but only up to a point. 

The dissolution of a marriage should not be based on trifling issues, and theirs was far from coming apart at the seams.  She had married an uninspiring man who was not far off the apogee of the bell curve for men - decent, ambitious, but clueless when it came to women. 

Neither a Lothario or a saint, but as boring and tedious as they come. Their marriage was a far cry from George and Martha in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a slugfest, a brutal, bloody, savage affair in which they flayed each other to the marrow.  No, by comparison, Bettina and Henry were an ideal couple. 

'You're still a young woman', said a close friend. 'Get rid of him'.  The dismantling of the marriage would not be that bad - no children to fight over, a fair and reasonable pre-nuptial agreement, a small mortgage thanks to a windfall and large down payment, and most importantly, no tears to be shed.  She never really loved him, and for him she was little more than a convenience.

In America over fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, so while it is not expected, given the odds, one must certainly plan, act, negotiate, and compromise assuming the worst.  This is not good for intimacy; but good for business, and as Engine Charlie Wilson, former President of General Motors once said, 'The business of America is business'. 

Petrarch invented the idea of romantic love in the Fourteenth Century, ushering in a long period of chivalry, knights in shining armor, maidens, and head-over-heels romance.  Romance was nothing more than a perk of wealth.  Most people before then married purely for economic reasons -  strong arms, fertility, overall good health, and generous dowries; but once the idea of pure, romantic love entered the scene, there was no end to frivolous, senseless, and useless marriages. 

Eros, Philia, and Agape were the three types of love proffered by the Ancient Greeks - erotic love, brotherly love, and charitable, altruistic love.  They had no name or room for romantic love, and that took many centuries to take form and gain currency.  

There was no romance in the relationship between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.  There was plenty of jealousy when the brought home Cassandra as bounty from his victory in the Trojan War - this tart would upset a going concern she had with her own lover and king pro temp Aegisthus. 

'Perhaps arranged marriage is not such a bad thing', Bettina thought as she watched the pillars of her marriage crumbling.  Enter into it with no idealistic expectations whatsoever and stick with it as long as contractual codicils are fulfilled.  In today's AI world, a convenient, suitable match could easily be made.  Risk and doubt would be removed or at least minimized.  Love might or might not follow, but that was not the point. 

At the same time no woman brought up with Barbie dolls, castles, princess outfits, romance novels, and girly advice from Cosmopolitan and Elle, not to mention tearjerker television serials and movies about lost love, could be indifferent to love and marriage.  The idea of Mr. Right was still out there. 

At the same time there are more movies about bad marriages than good ones.  In Woody Allen's Match Point and Crimes and Misdemeanors characters in desultory marriages take lovers whom they eventually have murdered and then get away with the crime. Andrew Davis' movie A Perfect Murder and Adrian Lynne's Unfaithful also feature murderous husbands.  Turkish soap operas all center on family jealousies, ambition, and violence. 

 

'Happy families are all alike.  Unhappy families are all unhappy in their own way', wrote Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, and what would world literature be without bad marriages, infidelity and worse? 

The fifty percent American divorce figure seemed low to Bettina who, thanks to her inherited wealth, seven-figure salary, high-class education, and marriage to a similarly well-off mate, was part of a divorce-heavy cohort. Anyone of similar means could easily afford a divorce, move on to the next marriage, divorce again and still be happy and solvent. So why not her?

Yet when she tried to formulate a shopping list of grievances to present to her husband, she came up only with snack food.  Their marriage was good, except for the fact that they didn't much care for each other.  Could they conscionably dissolve it with such airy pretenses?

Of course they could.  This was America, and the pursuit of happiness was ingrained in the Constitution.  Happiness was a function of wealth, opportunity, and advantage.  Even the slightest excuse was good enough for divorce court. 

The Catholic Church frowned on divorce, whatever the reason or justification.  Marriage was a sacrament, and failure to abide by it meant eternal damnation; but nobody believed in that these days and Catholics were getting divorced as much as non-believers, so the last brake on marital separation - a moral code - was now a thing of the past. 

So enough with frills, orchids, lace curtains, and bread baking in the oven,  It was time to go, and good riddance. 

 

Bettina's story is not meant to be either illustrative or apocryphal, just a brief look into an institution that might be better off retired.  Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage sums it all up. Persistence, longevity, dependence, bad judgment...What else to be expected from the random association of two unknowns thrown into a locked cell with No Exit, as Jean-Paul Sartre called it.  Hell is other people, Sartre said, so watch out for what you wish for. 

Bettina did well after Henry. She coasted along, muddled through, had her ups and downs and missed the benchmark of marriage.  Edward Albee said that marriage was the crucible of maturity - without the hothouse, hermetically sealed environment of marriage with all its expectations and restrictions, we would never grow up. 

Amen. 

Diversity In America - Cults, Wackos, Food Freaks, Armageddon, And The End Of The World, What A Great Country!

 Marfa Potter stood over her blender, unsure of what to make this morning.  She felt well but bowel tremors had awakened her during the night, so a good onion-parsnip infusion would be just the thing. 

At the same time her nerves were a bit on edge because if the kerfuffle at the pharmacy where she worked - a woman demanding, absolutely demanding a medication that had long since been discontinued and taken off the shelves.  Near hysterical with anger and frustration, the woman banged on the counter with her cane, and demanded to see the manager. 

'It's Mrs. Goldblatt', Marfa informed the manager who was in the middle of compounding a drug.  Lexington Pharmacy was one of the few independent, family owned pharmacies in the Washington suburbs, and one of even fewer which still compounded drugs, so the manager took special care and pride in his skill. 'Tell her I'm busy', he said to Marfa and went on with his business. 

Now, Mrs. Goldblatt was demented, that much Marfa knew, and her condition required patience and consideration, but she caused a ruckus when she came in every Thursday and upset the applecart.  It took infinite patience and some diversionary tactics to calm the old lady down, 

Stirring in some bone broth along with tincture of bloodwort and anise blossoms, she very much needed the infusion's calming, restorative properties. 

Marfa's kitchen shelves had as many potions, tinctures, powders, grains, and seeds as an ancient Egyptian apothecary. Despite working in a pharmacy - or perhaps because of it - she eschewed any of the concoctions brewed up, bought, and sold.  Every day she prescribed more anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, ADHD drugs than she thought the leafy suburb's residents could possibly consume.  It might be God's will, but this corner of the globe had some serious problems. 

Problems which she took home with her, requiring the bone broth mixture.

Every morning after a healthy, well-proportioned, and carefully balanced breakfast - like every other meal, it was comprised of foraged plants - reeds, sea grass, lichen, moss, algae, and fox burr - mixed in with rugged, unhusked, organic grains and goat milk.  

Whole Foods of course carried none of these items, but Bruce Davidson's shop did.  Davidson had spent years in the northern forests of Humboldt County and the deep woods across the Oregon border, and he with his fellow refugees from the city concocted brews from Yakima and Aleut Indian herbal recipes, bottled them, and once a month made the trek south to the city to sell them.  

When the cold damp weather finally go to him with a bad case of rheumatism, he decamped, left the business to his colleagues, and headed East where from his small confectionary tucked away in a back alley, he tended to the ailments of people. 

This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg.  America is filled with people like Davidson and Marfa Potter, men and women who have found ways and means of surviving in the impersonal world of today, turned their alternative life style into a religion, and became cadres of belief. 

Marfa did not really believe in djinns and evil spirits, but did not disbelieve either.  Her amulets, sprigs of honeysuckle and birch, inscriptions, and engravings were 'just in case', but the truth of the matter she was as disoriented and mentally discombobulated as Mrs. Goldblatt. 

Bruce Davidson, the dispenser, before moving to Humboldt County had lived with other members of the Church Glorious and Resplendent, a large congregation of over a thousand souls tucked away in a broad valley of the Mountain West.  The Church was millennial, apocalyptic, and charismatic and had moved to the mountains from California, convinced that it would be hived off from the mainland in a cataclysm of existential proportions.  

The relocated church, far from the coast and from any big city would thrive and when Armageddon would come they, burrowed deep below the mountain in shelters, would emerge to repopulate the earth. 

The Church was just the place for Davidson, for he was a seeker, discontent with the platitudes and homilies of organized religion, and hungry for spiritual awakening.  At the Church and in the hands of its charismatic leader, he found what he had been looking for.  The Reverend Blanton A. Parsons invoked the Inca gods of the Peruvian altiplano, the spirits of the Mesoamerican Mixtecs and Aztecs, and the souls of the departed Mauryan saints.  He was the incarnation of the descended masters in whom the energies of all holy men before him resided. 

 

Every day Davidson and his fellow congregants prostrated themselves before Master Parsons and begged the many gods, saints, and spirits of the past to watch over them, give them spiritual sustenance and eternal life. 

When the Church was raided by the FBI in a notorious episode not unlike that of the Texas Branch Davidians but without the carnage - they simply rounded up Parsons and his inner circle, handcuffed them, charged them with money laundering on a Bernie Madoff scale, and carted them off to federal prison. 

Accounts in the New York Times whose reporters had had access to Madoff and Jeffrey Skilling, the infamous Enron con man, said that both men were impressed with the scale and intricacy of the Church affair.  'Rank amateurs', Madoff was reported to have said. 'Hayseeds; but impressive to say the least'. 

Nothing new here either, nor anything surprising.  America is full of credulous seekers and the snake oil salesman ready to take them for a ride.  The financial empire of Parsons and the Church was impressive, all the more so because it had so long remained anonymous and undiscovered.  'Along the way', said Parsons to an FBI agent in the paddy wagon taking him to Helena, 'I did some good'. 

Things have a way of revolving in a 'what goes around, comes around' kind of way, and so it was that Davidson's colleagues who had stayed in Humboldt County after he had left, had joined the Ken Kesey-inspired cross-country caravan and on January 6th marched on the Capitol.  It was quite an event, for Davidson's crew and their associates, the heart and soul of the neo-hippy, Great American Circus, cavalcades picked up every sort, variety, and species of crazy along the way.  By the time they got to Washington and marched on Congress, they were a doo-dadded, Viking helmeted, face-painted, fright-wigged, barnstorming mob. 

Although the political Left howled 'Insurrection!', it was nothing of the sort.  It was just America being America, as wacko, unhinged, and freaky as can be. It was a show of solidarity and character.  For once and for all the stuffed shirts of Washington would see what America was really made of. 

Much is made these days of 'diversity', a catch-all phrase meant to assemble people of color, the disabled, the alternately sexed, the poor, the marginalized, and the homeless into one large, accommodating basket. 

Yet the real diversity is not that politically-driven, narrowly focused, self-interested category.  It is the cultists, the uber-vegans, the foragers, seekers, nonsensical believers, millennialists, and naked Humboldt County holy men.  It is the scammers, the con men, the fraudsters, the make-a-buck tricksters and modern-day snake oil salesmen. 

It is the hilarity of Congress, the nicky episodes of grilling witnesses, the fraudulent ankle-biters from the inner city, loudmouths, pretenders, and buffoons. It is the store-front churches packed to the gills, televangelists, and spiritual hucksters.  It is lockstep neighborhoods with electric cars and COVID vigilantes, Hollywood tarts, Las Vegas tinsel, La Cage Aux Folles transvestites....The list is endless. 

'What a great country', say patriots who are thinking of money, opportunity, warfare, and the world's biggest economy; but real patriots recognize the absolutely irredeemable bourgeoisie that gives the country its cheap excesses, the clown shows, the soapy serials, the gunracks, bass boats, and tobacco chaws of the swamps. 

'Pomegranate juice and flax seed', said Marfa.  'Just the trick'.