"Everything happens for a reason."

What an infuriating phrase. People say it at the worst times, too: at a funeral, during a tragedy of any sort, when you're fuming or distraught and unprepared to get into the finer points of philosophy, like "Did the Holocaust happen for a reason, Janice?" And what's more, they seem to say this as comfort. Like it's helping.

But why?

I think some people like the sound of their own voice, and will just trot out the first nostrum that comes to mind, regardless of occasion. But that alone can't explain the utter domination of our culture by this phrase.

Is it said out of ignorance? I've heard it out of workers and bourgeois alike, so if it's ignorance, it's some element of false consciousness that the bourgeoisie swallowed wholesale itself first.

But because the workers can't afford the luxury of utopian thinking, if it's believed by widespread numbers of workers, it has to at least not be hurting them, or even perhaps helping them, if they have believed it for any length of time. Predestination and magic as memes involved in religious practice reoccur over and over again over the millennia, both of them demonstrations of some kind of belief that random chance does not ordain the cosmos.

But why?

What is so useful about the belief that everything happens for a reason?

I'll address the quantum immortality aspect here quick, that's not my real point here but it's not big enough for its own article and it deserves mentioning so here we go. If QI reals, everything in your universe does happen for a reason: to not kill you. Death can happen to other people, but since it's not their universe it isn't really happening experientially to them. All that's happening is that access to new information from that person is severed in your universe. You can never access the echoes of their own home universe in yours any longer. But you yourself can't die, and your universe will conspire to shunt you into the most probable events that continue your existence. If QI reals.

That out of the way, why might it be useful for workers to believe that everything happens for a reason?

The day I wrote this article (I'm publishing it months later), I lost a solar panel in another windstorm. I wasn't driving, they weren't strapped to the roof. They were propped up on the ground, and the wind blew them all over hard enough that one of them, which caught the edge of a tire, busted straight in two. So I'm down to three, and one's cracked already. I'm just leaving them lying down from now on, and damn the efficiency.

Why did that have to happen?

The notion that it was just freak chance is a sort of cold comfort, enough so that most people smart enough to wonder if tsunamis happen for a reason seem to embrace this option to explain the morality of bad luck. God didn't want that solar panel broken, it's just we all roll the dice everyday and occasionally someone rolls a natural one, sucks for me today. In general, this is the intelligentsia's answer to the problem, as well as the more grounded and scientific among the bourgeoisie. That doesn't mean that they're right; they generally take it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist. I think the open possibility of QI, and the logical implications of it if you think hard enough, leave the existence of divinity open enough a question to not take it as a given that it doesn't exist. But religious faith isn't really in the value set of the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie in the way it is for the workers.

So let me just humor the notion here, for argument's sake: I lost a solar panel today for a reason. What reason might that be?

Well, I didn't lose all of them, because then I'd be proper fucked. With the electrical problems I've been having, I kinda rely on them to keep my car charged. It's a stopgap until I can fix it, but if all the panels died I would have a hell of a time getting home and possibly even surviving. So that didn't happen to me, whether because Jesus, because QI shunted me into a reality where there's a Jesus that won't let that happen to me because it's the most probable way to make sure I don't die, or because freak chance, it doesn't matter. I can be upset I lost one, or grateful I kept three.

So right there, by forcing me to look on the bright side of life, this idea that the solar panel broke for a reason lowers my stress levels about my solar panel breaking - if I let it.

But I can also look at other things. Less electricity means I have to use what's left more wisely, work in more marginal weather for working. That sucks personally, but it will certainly compel me to be more productive. That means I might have a saleable harvest next year, if I can finish the greenhouse this year. (Future Kent's note: I didn't, but I got close enough I might be able to finish it first thing next spring.) So maybe a gentle financial nudge towards the personal Magnitogorsk praxis isn't the worst thing, if it actually works. And if it actually works, I can easily afford many more solar panels to replace the broken one.

Not saying I'm a slacker, I couldn't have gotten anywhere near this far if that were true. But I'm going from this one silly phrase to thinking about how I can be more productive, redouble my efforts. That's not a bad thing.

Finally, I was going to remount these panels to my van roof eventually, but I was straining to figure out how. Four panels require a 2x2 configuration, which leaves the middle wobbly and unstable no matter what I do. (I'm not drilling holes in my roof - too much water comes in when it rains as it is.) But if I have only three panels… then they can all go abreast in a single row, I already know the strips of steel salvaged from downtown Tobar that I'll drill to secure them together, and if they're all in a single row, they can get mounted at the single most convenient mounting spot on my van. What's more, they'll be easy to unmount too, in case I need to strap some pallets to the roof or somesuch. That will significantly simplify a running problem for me, because mounting these panels to the roof has never gone smoothly. (And if you look to your right, you'll see that this actually happened, and my solar panels have never been so securely mounted.)

So, instead of cursing my luck, I have a renewed appreciation for my dependence on the three remaining panels, a renewed dedication to finishing the greenhouse quickly, and a solid plan to never lose another panel again, as soon as I can buy the necessary drill bit and parts.

"Everything happens for a reason" may be difficult to explain morally without reference to QI, which is something most people, even most of the intelligentsia, haven't heard of. But on an organic level, if you ignore the moral implications altogether, it seems to spur the sorts of decision-making and creativity that allows for better outcomes in the end, which makes for a more moral world for everyone in the end.

Just be aware that you say the phrase out loud to anyone grieving, or within two hundred feet of a college, at your own mortal peril.