Probability
Oct 8 2019
An
asteroid slipped by the planet,
passing
between the moon and the earth
in
a near-miss
the
scientists scanning the skies
failed
to notice.
As
the dinosaurs, too
never
knew.
And
if not asteroids
then
a supernova
to
end it all.
We
go about our business
walking
purposefully, eyes front
while
fate randomly falls
like
drops of rain
pelting
down.
So
you can be touched by grace.
Or
intersect, face-first
with
foul stuff
hurtling
earthward,
hair
plastered, eye covered
with
free-falling guano,
the
stink of half-digested fish
stuck
to you for days.
Contingency
rules,
and
coincidence is neither reward nor conspiracy
but
what it is,
statistics.
Because
shit happens,
and
extra-terrestrial rocks
that
have ricocheted around the galaxy
for
billions of years
will
one day land,
a
city immolate
and
the rest of us nod knowingly
as
Sodom and Gomorrah
reap
their just desserts.
Who,
we are smugly assured, deserve their fate,
all
sodomites and sinners
no
different than the reptiles
who
were cleansed as well.
Those
terrible lizards
who
are now reduced to birds,
their
distant descendants
darkening
our skies.
Like
looking up
at
that damned ring-billed gull,
circling
overhead
with
us in its sites.
Coincidence
isn't given enough credit. Statistics are not intuitive. Rather, we
are magical thinkers, pattern-seekers, and great rationalizers ...as
well as moralizers. I think of the mountain climber who survived the
avalanche and credits prayer. Trouble is, the ones who died are no
longer here to tell us that they, too, prayed. Or the millionaire who
attributes his success to hard work and creativity. Trouble is, we
never interview the loser – because why would we? – who worked
just as hard and was just as creative, but somehow failed.
Contingency,
coincidence, and the random machinations of fate determine our lives
as much as our own agency, virtue, or best intentions.
We
want to ascribe meaning where there is none. We desperately seek to
imagine a moral universe, when all there is is an arbitrary one.
When
I heard about this potential killer asteroid and what we might have
made of it, had it ever landed, I had these thoughts. And there will
be an asteroid, eventually. But no one could survive, constantly
looking up. We live our lives. We deny. We hope for the best. What
else can one do?
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