The Atacama.
So I’m heading up the coast for Valparaiso. There’s maybe 90 minutes before sunset. I suppose I should stop, but I’m so close. If the road goes where I think it ought, I might reach the freeway within an hour. In which case, I could roll into Valpariso at dusk. I press ahead.
The traffic disappears. The road narrows and it turns into a crazy twisty coaster ride. There are gated driveways here and there, but you can’t see the houses. Out of nowhere, I’m passed by a Mercedes convertible, and then I meet a Porsche, both of us jerking sideways in surprise. There’s a clearing at one point with a couple of unusually funky restaurants, but they’re closed. I begin to suspect that I’ve stumbled into an enclave of wealthy hipsters. Sure enough. Just as I’m beginning to worry that this road goes nowhere, the coast opens before me, and below me. There’s expensive hillside retreats and a stunning bay. Everything sparkles in the fading light. I ride an insanely steep road to the beach below, and just as the map shows, the road goes back up the other side, only by now it’s clear I’m not going to make the highway before sunset. I’m not excited about riding this twisty little road after dark, but at least there’s no traffic.
Several miles later there’s a fork in the road. The map on my tank bag doesn’t show any utensils here so I pull over to check another. Before I even get it out, two motorcycles ride up behind me; there’s a Honda and a Renegade (a largish roadster made in China). The guys are wearing biker vests; one says Berserkers, the other Postulantes. I ask them which way to Valparaiso. They smile and invite me to follow. I ride into Valparaiso safe and sound with an escort. When we get there they wish me a good trip, and they’re gone.
I’m still a little stunned by this turn of events. I saw no large bikes in Argentina, and only a couple handfuls in Chile. Were I inclined to believe in the meaningfulness of events, I would recognize the hand of God, even disguised as bikers. As it is, he smacks me upside the head, and I proclaim it a mighty fine coincidence.
Look, I wasn’t in any danger (that I was aware of), and I’m (nearly) certain that I would have made it into Valparaiso on my own. Moreover, if it was really God, he’d have put the angels on Harleys. (Unless he thought that would make it suspicious.)
Wow… OK, I can admit when I am wrong. Obviously there is a God, and he lives in Valparaiso. Not two hours after writing the paragraphs above, I’m walking in the city. I remember that I’ve been thinking I should have some business cards with the name of my website so that I can give them to people I meet. I’ve wondered if I can buy blank cards and print them by hand. I notice a store that looks like it might have office items. I enter, and I realize that this is mainly an electronics shop, but I’m here now. I don’t really know what to ask for, so I cobble together some words: Cartas de empresa, pero no que dice nada? Literally I’ve asked: Cards of business, but it doesn’t say nothing? I have no idea what this sounds like to a Spanish ear. The clerk doesn’t bat an eyelash. Sitting on the counter not ten inches from her hand is a single small box, the size of a deck of playing cards, but twice as thick. She slides it in front of me.
My eyes grow wide, I stare at her. I pick up the box and look inside. It’s a box of blank business cards. I look behind me; it’s just the two of us. I feel awe and a tiny bit of fear. Maybe I’m naive about the world of office supplies, but this should not have been so easy. Who the hell buys blank business cards? And why is there a single box on the counter? I search my mind for answers, but there is only one plausible conclusion: Divine intervention. God exists, and he wants me to have business cards.
I pay about $2 for the cards. I study the face of the clerk. She seems oblivious to the miracle that’s just taken place. Just to be sure, I ask: Do you know the secret of existence? She gives me the quizzical expression I’ve come to recognize; it means gibberish has just come from my mouth. I apologize and thank her for the cards.
I find it hard to maintain faith. Over beer, I am haunted by doubts. Where was God earlier this afternoon when I was looking for a hotel? A gray mist encompassed the world, just enough moisture to turn the dirty cobblestones into buttered marbles. I can’t even get traction with my boots. A taxi cuts me off, I brake quickly and feel the rear wheel slide out from under. Somehow my right foot kicks the ground, and I jerk the bike upright before we go down. I suppose you want credit for the save, God, but that was me. True, I don’t actually know how I did it, but in a rush of adrenaline, my body resists the horizontal. At any rate, because of the circumstances, I take the first hotel I find, a dump that doesn’t even have wifi. So thanks for the business cards, but I can’t put faith in a God who doesn’t understand the importance of a good internet connection.
Does everything happen for a reason?
What is your answer? I invite you to stop and consider the question before I mess up your intuitions. Seriously.
I had great hopes for the Atacama desert. I’m less than half way cross it, and it has already exceeded my expectations. It’s not the sand, it’s what you do with it. Do you pile it to the sky? Stud it with boulders? Paint it shocking pink with wild flowers? Bleach it white? Strip it bare of every trace of vegetation and dye it chocolate brown for miles? Pour it into the ocean?
I’ve ridden in Nevada and Utah on several occasions, lonely roads through dramatic landscapes, sweeping and desolate, reverberating with existential import. The Atacama is the same and more. The earth is more barren, the mountains more yearning, the sky more desperate, the vistas more infinite………..
And then the whole universe is devoured by the ocean. Barren endless desert set upon by random endless waves. Nothingness battles randomness for supremacy. The chaos produced is more awesome, more beautiful, more heart-wrenching, more strange and sad and eternal, more quiet and strange, more strange and obvious… It has always been this way, and it always will.
Today, for the first time, I attach the iPhone to the speakers in my helmet. I’m roaring across the universe with a soundtrack. Heroes; I am. Free Bird: I am. Are You Experienced: I am. To Sir with Love: Yes, yes, yes, a million times, yes. The world is right, and good, and perfect, and it and I are one. We soar together. Tears well in my eyes.
And then Foreigner comes on and ruins everything. (Ha! That’s a joke for my brother, Michael. There’s always room for a joke. Existence is nothing, if not funny. Hi, Mike! By the way, dead horse and The Plus and Minus Show also played; it was great.)
I like riding for many reasons, including many that I probably don’t understand. But one is a sensation of awesome rightness that only occurs when everything comes together in near perfection; the road, the vista, the weather, and most importantly, my sense of what I am and what I’m doing. I suspect it’s the same experience surfers describe when they catch a perfect wave. It’s a moment that feels transcendent.
One of the first and most intense experiences like this that I ever had on a motorcycle was on the coast in Oaxaca, Mexico. Sometimes I wonder if every trip since has been chasing that particular afternoon. I don’t think that’s true, but it’s a moment I self-consciously attempt to recreate. It’s an accident of my personal history that I associate this experience with bull fighting. I attended a couple bull fights in Mexico, and I didn’t really see the point, but something I read helped to explain. It said that most fights are relatively clumsy affairs, but every once in awhile, a fighter will work a bull with such poise and perfection that the audience is swept away in the matador’s mastery of himself, his danger, and the world itself. The crowning achievement is ending the bull’s life in a single, immediate thrust, violent, but artful, swift and merciful. I never saw such a fight, but the description made sense. I also saw that my moment in Oaxaca was similar, but I didn’t just watch it, I lived it. I am the matador of the highway; occasionally, I achieve mastery of the beast. It’s as much luck and circumstance as skill.
It’s part of the nature of this experience that’s it got to be somewhat hard, somewhat unpredictable, somewhat dangerous, somewhat extraordinary. The Atacama fills the bill, and today I got as close to Oaxaca as I’m likely to get.
The reverse side of the coin of transcendence is unquenchable thirst. I know riding doesn’t get better than this. The fear creeps in: What if there are no more awesome mountains after this one? What if I don’t remember this vista? What if I am missing the essence of this moment? Suddenly I’m outside the experience, and I can’t capture it. I can’t hold onto it. This moment is glorious, but it’s going to end. I want to take a picture of every mountain. I want to take a picture of every god damn grain of sand. One by one, let's line them up and give each a session with Annie Leibovitz. Or maybe, I’ll just ride up and down this one stretch of highway for the next two months, back and forth, breathing it in, absorbing the nuances, imprinting its curves on my soul... And boring myself to tears. I know that each mile is unrepeatable, and the largest part of the magic is in the continual revelation of the new.
It’s the same in the towns. This afternoon I stop in Taltal, a nowhere in the desert on a beach. I am utterly smitten by the small bay, the moored boats, the single quaint hotel on the water, the fantastically attractive plaza. I want to know this place. But wondrous as it is, I’ve digested it in a couple hours. I sat on the plaza and admired the trees. I sat on the shore and watched the sea lions. Now what am I supposed to do? Where do they sell the beer?
I worry sometimes that I have become an experience whore. Newer, bigger, grander! More better now, please. There’s never one perspective. It’s never settled. Never say never.
But what if you could teach yourself to maintain this perfect sensation? What if you could occupy the psychological space of transcendence even as you floss your teeth? What if you could realize that every moment of every day is hard, and unpredictable, and dangerous and extraordinary in its own right?
Actually, I don’t buy it. At best, you get hipster Buddhism. You can adopt a sort of analog of what you think experiencing that special moment is supposed to be like. And there’s something to be said for the principle that encourages cheerfulness and equanimity in the face of all things, but shopping at Whole Foods in a feigned state of ecstasy is not the same thing. If you raise all the land, you have no mountains. Special moments are only special when they are unique.
To be sure, I rather suspect that there are those, perhaps in particular, buddhist monks, who can access a sort of beatific joy through practice. Is that the single unique right goal we should all strive to achieve? Don’t be silly. My guess is that even the Buddha had his moment in Oaxaca.
I’m in a restaurant watching the pregame show for the big fútbol match. We’re in the second stage of the tournament–if you lose you go home, and no ties are allowed. We’re playing Uruguay. They’re not exactly a brand name country, but they’ve got the most wins in the history of the Copa América, moreover, they’re defending champions.
We’ve watched the bus take the team from the hotel to the stadium; we’ve watched the families of the most famous players arrive. We’ve watched the president of the country come in through the back door. This is bigger than the Super Bowl. Now that I’m watching my fourth game, I recognize many of the players; I’ll be disappointed if we lose.
I’m in La Serena. It’s a good size city on the Pacific coast. It’s the most modern city I’ve seen, and they have the best, most accessible beach in all the coastal towns I’ve visited (which is quite a few). I’m drinking a Pisco Sour; it’s the national drink of Chile. It’s similar to a Margarita, but it’s more sour, sometimes much more sour. It’s made with pisco, which is a type of alcohol similar to brandy, made from grapes.
This restaurant is fantastic, it’s a bit like The Spot in Galveston, with a complex layout, and everything made of wood. But this place is definitely funkier, with all sorts of memorabilia and oddities stuck to the walls. Unfortunately, my guess is that it burns to the ground within five years. They’ve got a huge fireplace, and candles on every table. I’ve already charted the route to the nearest exit in case it goes up tonight.
It’s 8 minutes to kick off, or whatever they call the start of a fútbol game. I just noticed that this whole thing is being broadcast without commercials. How will I know what beer to enjoy?
The restaurant erupts in applause after the national anthem, at least I suppose that’s what they were singing, sounded like an off-key chant. They’ve blown the opening whistle.
This is awesome. The audience is awesome; they shout and groan in unison. But can I be honest? I don’t like Vidal. He’s our star player, but he’s an ass. I dislike his attitude, and his mohawk. Smug, snot-nosed brat.
The first half ends: 0 to 0.
Finally, some commercials: Powerade, Lays, a lot of things I can’t figure out. Wow, I think I want to join the Chilean army... O.K. back to this business of kicking the ball around.
I’m beginning to get kind of bored, but at least nothing has burned down…
And in the 83rd minute; the moment we’ve all been waiting for: Goooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaal! Out of the random chaos on the pitch, the ball finds its way in front of a lowly midfielder, he gives it a kick and it rolls into the net. The restaurant roars; the nation cheers. For the next two hours cars drive up and down the beach blowing their horns. I think they’re thanking God for the victory. God is a big fan of loud horns.
I take the belief that everything happens for a reason to be a popular expression of the idea that existence is fully structured. If everything happens for a reason, then there is a connectedness between all that exists. Because if everything happens for a reason, then everything is ultimately explicable whether we can know the explanation or not.
When I teach intro to philosophy we talk about this idea explicitly. But it normally gets expressed by students long before I raise it myself. My informal polls suggest that in the right circumstances at least 80% of students will affirm the statement.
But what does it even mean? It’s disconcerting how many students will offer an anecdote as evidence. Oftentimes it’s second hand: My mother’s third cousin was supposed to be on a plane to x, but her alarm clock didn’t go off because of a power failure. The plane crashed. She knew that God had saved her life.
I ask hesitantly: And why did God let everyone else die? The reply is silence. Could it really be that you never raised that question for yourself? It is of the essence of critical thought to turn a question against yourself.
To be fair, the vast majority of the class understands this, but in a section of 50, it is virtually guaranteed that someone will assert a variation of what I’ve suggested. I try my best not to embarrass them; I thank them for offering such an illuminating case, but I don’t let it go unchallenged.
Another student will mention karma. A surprising number of students vaguely embrace some concept of karma. For most of them, the underlying idea seems to be that good deeds and bad deeds will be appropriately rewarded, but that leaves a lot of open questions:
1. When do we receive karmic rewards?
a. In this life.
b. In the afterlife (heaven or hell?).
c. In a subsequent life via reincarnation.
2. Are karmic rewards guaranteed?
a. Always.
b. Usually.
c. Only occasionally.
3. What's the mechanism behind karma?
a. God maintains the system.
b. It's a natural phenomenon, something like a universal force that brings balance to the moral world.
c. It's the result of our own internal psychology. For instance, it might be that when we do good it makes us happy, and when we do bad we feel guilt and stress.
I suspect the ambiguity of the concept fosters the attraction. I don’t believe in karma, except possibly in a 1a, 2c, 3c sort of way.
But back to the original question: Does EVERYTHING happen for a reason? What if there’s even one thing that’s just a stupid, random coincidence? What if that bug that just exploded on my windshield wasn’t hated by God? Or what if some events have no effects? What if there’s a butterfly that flaps its wings, and it doesn’t cause a goddamn thing to happen? Does this open a gap in the structure of reality?
Here’s the most important point: When I ask, does everything happen for a reason, people reply from at least two very different perspectives. The more common perspective, illustrated by the examples above, takes reason as a synonym for purpose. A yes answer is an assertion of both meaningfulness and morality within existence. But for a significant minority, a reason is a cause, an antecedent state that explains its occurrence, in other words, a scientific explanation.
Reason = Purpose.
Reason = Cause.
Both purpose and cause are structural frameworks.
That existence is not structured in terms of either is my thesis.
….
I enjoy talking about God, and making jokes at his expense. It’s not because I have vestiges of faith I’m struggling with. Thanks to my parents’ disinterest, I was never indoctrinated in a school of elaborate false belief.* (Thanks, parents!) Nonetheless, I recognize that in popular culture, philosophy is principally addressed in religious terms. For instance, virtually the only way popular music comes even tangentially close to philosophy is when it talks about God. The word “god” is a stand in for meaning and morality and truth and everything that’s bigger than we can articulate.
I’m OK with this usage. In the 21st century it shows a striking lack of reflection to embrace a literal or fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity–at a bare minimum, if you’re going to believe in God, you’ve got to recognize that he doesn’t give a fuck if you’re a Christian–but there’s another aspect to my frequent appeal to God. Western philosophy has deep roots in monotheism. Much to the consternation of the most capable contemporary philosophy students, minds as great as Descartes and Kant profess faith. How can such brilliant thinkers be so misled? Notoriously, Descartes claims that he will set aside belief in everything that can be doubted, and then he discovers that he cannot doubt the existence of God! Jiminey cripes, Descartes, to contemporary students your Meditations read like a farce. They are tempted to suspect that you only avow belief to placate authorities of the church.
But I think your belief is sincere, and I think it has its roots in the argument articulated most honestly by Kant: If there is no God, nothing (morality most significantly) makes sense. We can’t embrace the belief that nothing makes sense, thus we are compelled to believe in God. Kant fully recognizes the fallibility of the argument, but he is as sincere about its force as a philosopher can be.
Those bright-eyed students who laugh at their fellows because they express faith in God do so on the grounds that religious belief doesn’t make sense. But they have a conception of sense which is at best half that of Kant and Descartes. They care only about a type of rational consistency. That Christianity is not rationally consistent is trivial to argue. Traditional belief is deeply frought with contradictory nonsense; virgin births and miracles, infinite divinity incarnated as mortal, a perfect creator who condemns his creation to the shit of Earth, an incomprehensible heaven created for an incomprehensible goal. From the grand perspective of rational consistency, Christianity makes no sense. Religion is stupid.
But why do we exist? And why should we be moral? From the perspective of science, these questions are nonsense. Science repudiates religion for it’s nonsense, and yet contemporary science makes nonsense of reality on grounds that Descartes and Kant and thoughtful contemporary people of faith likewise repudiate. That reality has no meaning or purpose or moral foundation, is as abhorrent as the idea that it lacks rational consistency.
This was Descartes' and Kant’s reason to believe in God. God is the thing that gives answers for both cause and purpose. God is the ultimate principle of structure. Historically, it was as important that there be a structure of purpose as a structure of causation. Everything must happen for a reason, not merely in terms of cause, but also in terms of purpose.
St. Thomas Aquinas offered five “proofs” for the existence of God. There’s an extraordinary symmetry between his proof from efficient causation and his proof from design or purpose. In both he argues that there must be some ultimate origin, and that we know as God. Of course, his thought has roots in Aristotle, and echoes in Daniel Dennett’s distinctions between descriptive stances, so it’s not like I’m noticing something new, but the symmetry here is the thing I want to emphasize. Thoughtful, reflective, serious thinkers have abandoned an insistence on meaning and purpose, but they are nonetheless convinced that the world must make sense in terms of causes. Science is the grand framework of explanatory reasons.
I stand outside both religion and science. Existence doesn’t have to make sense in terms of meaning or purpose or even causal structure.It needs none of these. It owes us none of these.
********
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, German philosopher of the 1700’s, inventor of calculus (independently, simultaneously with Newton) is the most staunch believer in metaphysical structure in the history of Western thought. He articulated the principle of sufficient reason. Variably expressed, it’s basically the idea that everything happens for a reason. Contemporary philosophers would never concede simple-minded adherence to the principle, and yet, it lies behind all Western thought.
Leibniz’s metaphysics is the most brilliant, if perverse, reality you could never imagine. Without even a motorcycle for inspiration, Leibniz saw that to have a completely structured reality every entity in existence would have to reflect every change, every property, every state, of every other entity in existence. In his reality there could be no room for an event which serves no purpose for every other being. Nor could there be room for an event that had no contribution to the ultimate state of existence. For Leibniz,every dead bug is a scar on every monad, and every flap of every winged creature is a step closer to the ultimate purpose of the divine.
How can you not love Leibniz’s vision? My own is his antithesis.
*True story about one of my very few encounters with religion as a child: One summer my mom signed up my brothers and me for two weeks of bible school. The first day we talked about ridiculous miracles, and then they gave us a snack: A single vanilla wafer and a dixie cup of weak Koolaid. Geez, the jokes write themselves. Much to her credit, my mom did not make us return for a second day. I trace my atheism to Koolaid. Well, not so much. In fact, I was 18 before I had the religious experience that settled my (lack of) belief. I was in Yosemite National Park lying next to Sandi, in the back of the red Chevette. I was looking at the sky, and I suddenly realized that there didn’t have to be a God. I woke her up and told her. She said she already knew that.
This evening I sit in a restaurant, sort of. It’s the front room of a house, and there’s no menu. I have coffee and cazuela, the generic name for soup made from whatever you’ve got. The bowl is enormous, the soup is good, and she only charges $2. I give her $3, and feel awkward about it. As I leave I hear her tell her daughter about the extra money.
They told me about this “restaurant" at my “hotel.” The hotel is a garage behind a house, converted into three rooms. I got directions at the gas station. (OK, full story, I still got lost, but I asked a taxi driver who happened by, and he escorted me to the location.) The hotel's a little awkward because you have to walk through the owner’s living room to come and go, but the price is right. I complained about a hotel a couple weeks ago because I could hear the family below, but this is completely different. That was a bait and switch; from all appearances it was a standard hotel, and they charged like they thought it was. But in this case, from the moment you knock on the door, you know what you’re in for, and they charge accordingly. Moreover, they think it’s cool that you’re from the U.S., and they move the laundry to make room for your motorcycle.
Today at the gas station children asked me for money, and an elderly woman gave me the begging eyes.
In case you didn’t notice, there’s a theme here: I’m getting closer to poverty. Northern Chile is poor Chile. Memories of Mexico are flooding back in more ways than one. But to be sure, it turns out there’s a good reason that the only hotel I can find in Chañaral is so basic. Four months ago a devastating flood washed down from the mountains and wiped out the center of town. The woman at the hotel tells me that at least 25 people died, and some were never found. It doesn’t rain in the desert, but sometimes it floods. I don’t ask her if she thinks everything happens for a reason.