08/06/10 Everything happens for a reason rant

Everything happens for a reason

A simple and hollow statement. It is a cheap statement and a vain attempt from the agent to award himself that he said something the equivalent of chin up and stiff upper lip old chap to another while the other is going through some type of crisis. Everyone has heard it, it is a pejorative of non sentimentality and ignorance of human social interaction, it does not offer any condolences or reflection for the other party. It is also a suggestion which states that one must not worry or be too distraught, because they had no choice, and will have no choice, the option of freedom has been removed, and that the future has been cast and each person must play their part without pause or question. So in short it is an empty statement that we must all avoid and let go extinct.

Everything happens for a reason. Events do not happen for a reason, but they do happen as a result of reason and also choices made by an agent or, and in most cases, the collision of multiple choices by multiple agents. Primary causal relations with the utmost perfection in accounting. Events happen as a natural result of previous choices made by an agent and all other agents in the same environment, taking into account all possible decisions that each agent could actually make and would make according to their physiology, biology, and psychology.

Everything happens for a reason. This statement exposes another flaw in the fact that it suggests that there is no freedom to the future, the future has already been selected and preordained. It suggests that the current events are necessary for the future. It eliminates all possibility of free will, of any choice in the matter or in the events to come. The speaking agent may not, and more than likely does not, know what the determined future is, but is assured there is one. Instead of accepting the collision of choices that culminated in the other agent’s tragedy. If anything, the only future that the statement can be assured in making is that everything will continue happening to an agent for a reason, positive or negative, until they are dead, and after they are dead everything happened to an agent to lead to their demise.

Everything happens for a reason. The grandest injustice of this statement is that it intends to exempt the targeted agent from any serious and honest introspection. It is meant to glibly shush any grief without offering any advice or consolation for the injured agent. It also directs the hurt agent from introspection and looking back to understand what decisions that the agent made and their consequences, both positive and negative, that they can be held accountable for, and what choices and consequences of other agents impacted them. An agent can only be responsible for the choices that they make as best in their environment according to the environment and other agents in it, naturally assessing what those other agents may or may not do based upon their history, psychology, biology, and physiology.

Essentially it means that everything happens for a reason means nothing from the agent that speaks it to another aggrieved agent. The statement attempts to provide hope in stating that there is a future as a result of the equation of causality, but it implies that there is no free will or choice in what the future is. It suggests that a review of the events is unnecessary even in the case and situation that it would assist the aggrieved agent in recovery and understanding how events fell into place. So in closing do not use this phrase as it inherently does not provide comfort, and only subtly implies insult for the targeted agent.