The Descendants (2011: Alexander Payne) With his wife Elizabeth on life support after a boating accident, Hawaiian land baron Matt King (George Clooney) takes his daughters on a trip from Oahu to Kauai to confront Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), the man who was having an affair with Elizabeth before her misfortune.When we saw it the first time, I don't think I particularly noticed the brief interchange when Hawaiian King confronts Speer to try to find out what happened between Speer and Elizabeth:
King: "How did it happen?"I'm sure I noticed it this time because of having read Free Will, by Sam Harris. (I wrote about the reading Friday.)
Speer: "It just happened."
King: "Nothing just happens."
Speer: "Everything just happens."
The exchange between the two men isn't striking just because Speer summarizes Sam Harris's thesis. Look at the preceding line of dialogue:
Nothing just happens.I think that the George Clooney character says that because he's suspicious that Speer, who is a realtor, started the affair to try to gain an advantage in a huge land deal the King family are involved in.
But out of that context "Nothing just happens" is another way of stating the theistic position:
Everything happens for a reason.That is, God's in control (or perhaps your guardian angel or angels), and they have a plan....
Well, if they have a plan, then apparently it calls for quite a few people to believe it...and for the rest not to, and for a good number of the former to believe so strongly that everything happens for a reason that they simply refuse to entertain the possibility that it might not be so. (At any rate, it's people who believe that sort of thing from whom I hear the statement, "You can't make me change my mind.") What a plan.
But seriously, why do people believe that nothing just happens?
The material world of evolution and "everything just happens" can be very unsettling, as can the facts that people suffer, everyone dies, and justice is not done in this world. Beliefs that deny these realities provide solace. Suffering is for our own good, and it will be made right. We'll be resurrected and live forever (if we follow the right prescription for salvation). God will right the balance of justice at The Last Judgment.
Solace is the Number One Reason for such beliefs (in the cases where it's not simply that people are paying lip service to the beliefs they've been taught and have never questioned).
Actually, though, there's a sense in which it's true that nothing just happens—the sense in which happenings have material causes. Believing "nothing just happens" in that sense can inspire a person to try to find out the causes. It can lead to insight, and to science.
And actually, believing "nothing just happens" in the theistic sense can also inspire a person to look a little deeper into his or her spiritual and moral life, to try to discover why something bad, or something good, or something problematic happened. Insights can be found that way; people can (but may not) become better people as a result. Believing that there's a god and he (usually it's he) has a plan isn't necessarily the end-all of such a believer's life. Life can still be good for such believers (besides the solace). (Hey, I think I really am becoming more accepting of others, just as I said on Friday.)
The main thing seems to be that we keep looking and seeking and trying to find out. As long as our beliefs inspire that, we're still alive and ticking.
By the way, it would seem from the considerations above that Harris believes both that nothing just happens and that everything just happens. But it's based on an ambiguity.
He believes that nothing just happens, because everything that happens has causes. And he believes that everything just happens, in the sense that it's an illusion that our free will is one of those causes.
I'm tempted to say that everything just happens because nothing just happens. That is, so many phenomena are so shot through with complexity that they give the appearance of having no causal basis.
ReplyDelete(I think I said it after all.)
Ken, I am tempted to commend you for that provocative formulation (or to commend the causes that led you to formulate it), but my brain is still playing with it, so that whether I actually commend you will depend on the results of the play, whether I remember this promise—and the vicissitudes of the causal complex operating at the time, all of which probably amount to the same thing.
DeleteInconsequential disclosure in passing: When I saw the email notification that you had commented, I suffered the usual brief panic of attack that your comment might be critical and the usual practical quandary whether to look immediately or to delay looking.
Your present comment I'd categorize as neutral, so looking immediately on this occasion provided quick relief and release from the worry (had I delayed) that your comment might lambast me.
I see release from this in the near future, as I process the implications of the "no free will" thesis and come to accept better that your critical comments are usually accurate and that my response to them need not be defensive but can be forgivingly accepting of myself and generously appreciative of your correction.
Another by the way: Do you have a Nook? I learned this week that when you purchase a Nook book, you may lend it one time. So, in case you do have a Nook and would like to read the Harris book, I'd be able to lend it to you. I'd be honored for my first Nook loan to favor you, my esteemed friend of so many years.
Thanks for the generous impulse, Morris, but I have no Nook. Nor do I have a Cranny. I'm naked to the world with nowhere to hide.
ReplyDelete