anarchival

My life is one giant statistical anomaly. I try to draw inspiration from that fact, but mostly it scares me. What if I wake up one day and realize that I didn’t get to where I am by defying the odds through intelligence and hard work, but through sheer dumb luck? What if the luck runs out? The math says I shouldn’t even be here in the first place, so what’s to say I can keep going? What if everyone realizes (as I’m usually convinced they already have), that I don’t really belong, that I am, essentially, pretending to be one of them? The higher I reach, the worse the fear. Usually I cope by taking a few steps forward, then retreating into my comfort zone long enough to recover, and then taking a few more steps forward, but the going is slow and I know I’d be more productive if I could just let go of the fear.

Most of what I’ve experienced in life has taught me that achievement is not tied to predictable causation. You work hard, you sacrifice, you’re honest and trustworthy, and life just beats you down harder, while the wicked or clueless still go on prospering. My religion and politics largely stems from my dissatisfaction with this state of affairs, and my desire to change it if we possibly can. This philosophy doesn’t give you confidence no matter how much you achieve, however; in fact it makes you want to check out of life unless you’re one of the lucky few who end up being dealt a good hand anyway (and you don’t think about it too much). I made the choice ten years ago to keep fighting even if I didn’t get anything out of it in the end. It was a crazy decision, but I believe a little insanity is needed to continue living in the face of reality, so I chose to go out with the proverbial guns blazing. So far it’s worked out for me, but I still know in my gut that could change at any moment.

There are strengths and weaknesses to living life without serious regard to consequences. I’ve found a good rule of thumb given any situation is to ask myself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” If I can live with that outcome, then I might as well proceed. It’s not that I don’t believe in cause and effect. Obviously, some consequences are easily predictable, or should at least be expected, but ultimately life is a random mess and we no more earn what we get than we deserve it. Real morality doesn’t happen in the realm of cause and effect, it takes place in the borderlands where rewards and punishments no longer demonstrate a direct relationship to good and bad behavior. Morality is what you do, even when it doesn’t benefit you. It’s also what you don’t do, even if it would.

On the one hand, this equips an individual to respond to setbacks without being overwhelmed by personal failure. It’s an outlook for those at the bottom, who are most often and most deeply subject to the vagaries of existence. On the other hand, it isn’t very encouraging of serious investments and it can lead to a lack of personal responsibility. Americans in particular are in love with the Horatio Alger mythos, of the superman who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps and has total control over his own fate if he but believes and works hard enough. Sometimes, this mythos proves out. I’ve often read stories of immigrants who rose out of the worst sort of violence, persecution, and poverty, made incredible journeys across deserts and oceans, and ultimately realized the American dream, and I marvel that opportunity can build us up just as quickly as it can cast us down. Certainly the stars aligned for these individuals in ways they did not for others, and certainly if they had not invested their own faith and effort they would not have achieved what they did.

The only remedy I’ve discovered for such despair is to actively choose the alternative in the face of it. Faith in this sense is not an idea or a belief, it’s something you must do. One of my favorite quotes is from a Scots author named William Paton Ker, who was quoted at length by Tolkien in his essay on Beowulf. He once wrote, “The Northern gods…are on the right side, though it is not the side that wins. The winning side is Chaos and Unreason; but the gods, who are defeated, think that defeat no refutation.” Dumbledore made a similar point when he exhorted Harry Potter on the difference between doing what is easy, and doing what is right. It’s easy to give in, to check out, to join the forces of evil if necessary in order to live a comfortable life, but what is right is to choose to create a world worth living in even in the face of your own defeat. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a happy ending. If you’re not – like the majority of the humans on this planet – well, at least you’ve lived life on the side of the gods.

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