Nothing is Random

Below is an excerpt from a Winter's Tale. Something about this, many years ago, caught my attention. I might not agree with everything said, but some of this resonates even now.

‘I have been to another world, and come back, listen to me’

Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the chrystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishingly frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one can be certain.

And yet there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks a tunnel into which he will dive when the train comes rushing down the track from afar, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer is simple.

Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined.

No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given- so we track it, in linear fashion, piece by piece. Time, however, can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.

The universe is still and complete. Everything that was, is; everything that ever will be, is- and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine it is in motion, and unfinished; it is quite finished, and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and,

When all is perceived in such a

way as to obviate time, justice

becomes apparent not as

something that will be

but as something that is.

Nothing is Random – Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin