On Ehfarism

Does everything, in fact, happen for a reason?

People may say "everything happens for a reason", but I tend not to. But its not like I've never said it. The subject came up recently when corresponding with a friend who had experienced some recent personal tragedy. As often happens in such situations, one of the things people said was "Everything happens for a reason" (hereafter ehfar). This was interpreted by my (agnostic) friend as "God does things in people's lives as part of his (somehow ultimately fair) plan". Here are some adapted thoughts from our correspondance about it.

First off, "everything happens for a reason" is not an equivalent statement to "life is fair.". Not even the deeply devout believe life is fair. That's not what anyone means when they say ehfar, at least not in my experience. Here are some things that ehfar might mean instead, depending on the speaker and the circumstances:

1) in the strict sense of physics and chemical reactions, every thing that occurs does so because of some other thing having occurred previously. There are those who take this to it's deterministic limit and believe that the paths of all atoms, from distant black holes to the photons coming through your screen to your thoughts and mine, were written in the initial trajectories of the Big Bang. I believe in free will, because I believe in a thing called a soul, so I don't go that far. But even though I believe I and you and lots of other forms of life make choices, those things still happen for 'reasons'. As you might expect from me, I take a phrase like ehfar and immediately think;
a) Well, what is everything?
b) What is a 'reason'?
c) I'm giving you a free pass on 'happens', but I wouldn't have to.
Here's as simple as I can make it: At some level, every occurrence (thing), however small or great, occurs (happens) because it was enabled, caused, or otherwise influenced by the occurrence of other things (a reason). Vague, and perhaps over-reliant on sophistry, but probably true.

2) another thing that is sometimes meant by ehfar is akin to my friend's above interpretation but subtly different. Sometimes people who believe in a personal God actually do mean to say that everything that occurs does so because He either causes it to do so or allows it to do so. It is difficult to reconcile the idea of a loving God with a being who would stand idly by while women are raped, children are killed, and people generally commit grevious injustices to each other. Each religion attempts to reconcile this apparent paradox in it's own way, with varying degrees of logic or success. Let's just leave it at that. The details of those reconciliations vary, but even the strongest "it's all part of God's Plan for you" advocate wouldn't go so far as to say that all plans are equal (at least during mortality - some reconciliations depend on the balancing effects of a judged afterlife experience).

3) another, less spiritual meaning that is sometimes expressed by ehfar is the idea (or perhaps more accurately hope) that one day, after the present experience is gone, one will be able to look back on what has transpired since and at least accept that the destination achieved by traveling that road is an ok place to be. This hope does not always hold true; many lives take a tragic turn from which even a partial recovery is impossible. However, someone who says ehfar in this way isn't actually trying to state a fact: they're expressing a hope. That hope is that the listener will have future experiences and that these future experiences will be acceptable in place of whatever might've been that now cannot be. This is, I think, the usual meaning of the phrase.

Anyway, as you well know, ehfar does NOT mean that everything that happens happens for the greatest possible good or happiness of the most people possible. We would live in a very different world were that so. I don't think that's what anyone who says ehfar means.

Furthermore I don't even typically say ehfar so I don't know why I've just spent so long defending those who do. But it was nice to spend some time thinking about it, and maybe it helps you deal with the ehfarists in the future.

A British American in America, part 1

I was rather dismayed when my recent poll indicated that I ought to write more about what's actually going on in my life; that's the sort of thing that is a real chore for me. So much so that there have been times when I wished I never even mentioned it as an option in that poll. My reticence notwithstanding, its clear that some of you have not taken the spirit of this blog's title into account, and actually DO care. Generally speaking, that is enough to make me rather uncomfortable, but individually I also care about most of your lives in one way or another, and that the feeling might be mutual is both obvious and understandable.

I consider myself a pretty good reader (though I read less often than I feel I should), and not altogether a bad speaker, but the effort of writing takes considerable focus and effort for me. I shamelessly envy friends like Jeff who are able to compose long, interesting blog entries with little apparent effort. No doubt that is the fruit of years of practice and applied willpower, while I've been busy doing whatever it is I do instead of learning to write easily.

But once in a great while, I have something I want to articulate, and this is the forum I've established for it. You may find this to be more of a philosophical meandering than a personal update, but I hope you can see how the two are bound together.

After living here in the UK for more than a year now, I recently had the opportunity to visit America again, for the third time since moving to England. It was clear to me on numerous occasions during this visit just how very much England has started to change me. Of course, stuck inside my own frame, it is to my benefit to see these changes as positive; your perspective may vary considerably. Here are a few of the musings I remember along this vein of thought.

* I remember being entirely shocked my first day back at just how FAST fast food really is. This was at a Wendys in Maryland near the West VA border with my parents and daughter. I ordered, paid, and by the time I got my change my tray was halfway full of the items I'd requested. OK, so being used to slow service is not really a beneficial change. I sort of leaned over the counter to see the employees, and there were maybe 4 or 5 of them, methodically fulfilling orders as fast as they came in. Here in Harrogate at least, even at fast food places like the Subway we occasionally visit, there is usually only one or two employees, and they are not in any particular hurry. At my favorite sandwich shop in town, if I order a panini, I know it will be perhaps 10 minutes before it comes to me, even if there are three people working. But nobody seems to mind much. As is their way, the English customers calmly form a queue and wait patiently, knowing they will be served when their time comes. Which brings me to...

* Queues, or "lines" if you must. I remember reading about their importance in Watching the English before we came and being comically amused by just how true it all was when we arrived. They really will form orderly queues without verbal communication in almost any situation, and will glare or even actually speak out (which is a BIG deal) when queue protocol is broken. I don't have any issue with that, and have grown a bit British in that I have come to expect that behavior. So when, for example, H and I arrived in the US (in Detroit of all places) and had to pass through customs, I was a little taken aback when we had to sort of join a mob of people that slowly filtered into the line dividers. After the physical markers were in place, people had no trouble keeping in line, but outside those sentinels of order, chaos reigned.

There are a few more, but let's not get carried away for now. More later.

Philosophical Meandering: a conversation remembered

In honor of the fact that Philosophical Meanderings placed second last behind Monthly Mixes in my constituency poll, here's a philosophical meandering for you.

A while back, I was talking to a lesbian friend of mine (actually, she is my favorite lesbian including celebrity lesbians if you care to know), and we had a conversation that went sort-of like this:

Her: I exclude you from this question I'm about to ask, Dave, no offense meant to you personally.

Me: Oh?

Her: So, as far as I know, every girl I know has physically been taken advantage of by men in some way. For example, I would have no concern at all for a girl that passed out drunk in the company of other women, but I would be gravely concerned for a girl who passed out drunk in the company of men. Can you tell me why I should have anything at all to do with men with this being the case?

Me: Well, even if what you say is true that doesn't mean every man is a potential assaulter, right?

Her: Are you trying to say that it is only the actions of a very few men that account for these sorts of things being played out on every single girl I know?

Me: Well, here's my counterexample. Every adult man here [gesturing around at the crowded venue we were in] probably has either been propositioned by a prostitute, or else has been to a strip club, or has in some other way been exposed to female lasciviousness, right?

Her: Yes, probably. Right.

Me: Would it therefore be acceptable for a man to assume that all women he meets are therefore prostitutes or strippers? Because a man who assumed that based on the fact that at least one woman had revealed herself to be in that category would be following the same logical path that you're following now. Granted his following that logical path leads him to the kind of abhorrent behavior you're describing, whereas your following your logical path leads to no such thing, but I don't like the fact that either of you is applying the specific case back onto the general.

Her: I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I am not entirely convinced.


So. I think about this conversation from time to time, and think about whether my example is sound, and whether it made sense to her or even whether attempting to dissuade her from her logic is even something I would want to do. I did feel like she was asking me to defend my gender, and I'm not sure I did what I was supposed to there. Anyway, I thought this might spur some thought or comments from you, even though studies show 75% of you are not particularly interested in philosophical meanderings.

On parenting and support networks; a theory

So, I have this thing I keep thinking about, because I had a little inkling about it once upon a time and then I kept seeing situations that reminded me of it. Over time it's matured into a theory, but there are probably aspects of it that I'm not considering. Maybe you'll point them out to me in the comments. The gist of the theory is this:

Presently, our society is set up in such a way that most [American] families are living with one set of parents (or just one parent) in a household raising their kid(s) essentially by themselves. Contrast this with at least millenia (all of recorded history, and conceivably much further back) where households were usually multi-family or multi-generational, and where raising children was of necessity a more communal affair. It is only in the last couple of centuries that any sizeable proportion of households anywhere ended up in a situation where a mother (or a mother and father, or a father) ends up being the only adult spending time with their little kids for most of the day, most days. And frankly, I don't think we're built for it.

In particular, I've watched my sisters and other women I know and care about struggle with the challenge of having multiple preschoolers or infants at the house during the day with them. They find it difficult to make time for themselves, or to have their own friends or social contacts. The price of our privacy and personal domain is that a caretaker left with the children faces isolation and sometimes depression. Even so, it is a price many are still willing to pay (or risk paying). Society expects that if you have the means to do so, you will live in a dwelling with just your family during childrearing years except in unusual circumstances.

In the past, many families wealthy enough to have their very own households would also have been wealthy enough to have servants or other help to see to the raising of children or the affairs of running a house. Most farms (again, my supposition; feel free to dispute) have been multi-family or multi-generational, and until the advent of the automobile towns and cities were places where everyone walked everywhere, meaning you encountered the people you lived next to and a household member who 'went to work' didn't go all that far. Contrast that with a society where people commute to work alone in their cars, while young children stay at home with just one parent, or (like our kids) go to a care facility where they may get the chance to socialize with other children and to a certain extent adults, but not in a home and not with a member of their family or household.

For the next six weeks, Michelle and I will have a third child in our own two-adult household. A friend of ours who is a single mother has to return to the States for some military training until November, and may not bring her 5 year old daughter (Isabel - expect pics soon). So since she goes to the same school as our daughter and the same before-and-after care, we decided to volunteer as possible guardians for the time being (other options involved her being out of school and travelling to the states to stay with family). Tonight is the first night she's spending in our house. As a realist, I know there will be hard moments for her, for our kids learning to share with her, for her mom while she's away, and for Michelle and I. But of course I also know that it will often be a lot of fun, and she's a sweet kid that we are looking forward to spending more time with. Other friends have stepped up too, offering to help transport her to or from school if her bus pass situation doesn't pan out like we hope it will, or having her over for a few nights. It all makes me think about this same thing; the necessity for community in childrearing. Nobody ought to try it all alone - we're just not wired that way. You need family, or a village, or a supportive church or playgroup, or good friends, or something to make it work and let you keep your sanity and expand the kids' horizons.

I am by no means advocating a return to multi-family or multi-generational housing. I very much like having the privacy and space that living in a single family home provides. But when I see a woman struggling to raise children by herself for hours out of every day, and see the strain that produces for even the most sane and well-balanced people, I think about this idea and wonder how different it would have been only a few hundred years ago. Not that the women of the 1500s or whenever had lots of, y'know, freedom to go have book clubs or opportunities to advance themselves or whatever, but they at least had other women to talk to and probably didn't have too much trouble finding someone to watch the little ones for an hour or two while they ran a few errands at the market. Or, going back millenia to when humans settled exclusively in family/tribal groups, you have to imagine that prettymuch everyone in the village takes responsibility for raising the little ones in one way or another. I think we're still programmed that way (and so are the kids).

Sorry to go all "It takes a village..." on you. Let's hear your thoughts on the matter.