This Is Not A Random Post
Most Sunday mornings you'll find me sat in the car, for an hour or so, in the car park of the local Catholic church. Today was no exception. As usual, after disgorging my passengers, I inserted my earbuds and spent the time listening to a random selection of tracks on my cell phone. I do that for a couple of reasons. Partly because I find listening to random tracks from my music collection variously relaxing, inspiring, emotionally charging, exhilarating, etc. etc., and partly because it blocks out the the goings-on inside the church, so thoughtfully amplified and broadcast through externally mounted speakers.
The very first track, which the randomizing algorithm 'chose' this morning, was Joan Osborne's One Of Us. I'd bet that some of those inside the church would deem it a sign, even though Joan Osborne has never made, as far as I can tell, a definitive statement about the meaning of the lyrics. But whatever the lyrics mean, the fact that it was the first song today has absolutely no meaning whatsoever, other than the randomizing algorithm is working reasonably well.
One Of Us by Joan Osborne
Listen on Posterous
Randomness. The process by which something happens for no other reason than it is one possibility out of many, constrained only by the circumstances in which it occurs.
Or, to put it another way, One Of Us was one of many possible tracks which could have been played first, but the possible tracks did not include Bette Midler's From A Distance, because it's not in my collection*.
Now, if From A Distance had been the first song I heard, then that certainly would have been a sign. But not necessarily a red heifer kind of sign - just a sign that some investigation was needed. But I digress.
Getting back to randomness, people assigning meaning to random events has been going on for a very long time. Accepting that 'shit happens' seems to be very hard for some people, and an opportunity for others to take advantage of that fact by asserting causation where only correlation exists.
For me, randomness explains the bad things that happen to good people much better than any assertion that 'things happen for a reason' or 'it was God's will'. The latter approach inevitably ends up with self-proclaimed spokespeople claiming that this or that event, which was injurious to a group of people they don't like, happened for a reason, and the reason was that the people they don't like are bad or evil, or if not actually bad or evil, then 'possessed' by badness and evil. Sigh.
The 'will of the gods' approach also gets bogged down when reasonable people try to propose acceptable reasons for why bad things happen to good people (or innocent people, or just average people who haven't really done anything which marks them out as particularly good but haven't done anything particularly bad either, or other animals, or [insert other groups here who don't appear to deserve the bad things which happen to them]). Thank god for theologians, eh? Or perhaps we should thank theologians for gods?
Just in case you didn't get it...
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* It's one of those songs I like the sound of, but not the lyrics. Sorry Bette, love your voice but I think you are mistaken.
One Of Us is a track from the album Relish, available from Amazon UK
