7 minute read
Randomness as the engine of change
How useless is having a goal in order to live responsibly?
By Francesco Ziveri
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For many of us today it is almost taken for granted, we rarely stop to think about it because at school - since we are children - we are taught as if it were a dogma; as if it were something that, after all, is about science, books, strange guys locked in laboratories or libraries;
it doesn’t seem something about our lives. Evolution, however, concerns us very closely. It was the biggest upheaval in human consciousness in recent centuries, perhaps millennia: there is no project, the world just happens. Everything changes in a sole process, everything changes without anyone having any idea where it is all going, because it is not going anywhere. The absence of a predefined project and direction (which means, among other things, the end of every God omniscient and creator), however, is based on a central element: randomness.
In The Origin of Species, Darwin does not talk about genetics because he did not know it yet, but he discovers with surprising clarity and with a brilliant observation the value of randomness in evolution: why does an individual adapts better to the surrounding environment or other factors from the outside world, allowing it to survive and generate offspring to pass on its genes? Because it was born with a random mutation in its genome for which it has, for example, slightly longer legs thanks to which it can run faster from the predator, or sharper claws with which to clasp better its prey, or even a more dense plumage thanks to which it resists the cold better. By virtue of a small chance, a change takes place, evolution takes place. And no one could have foreseen it.
Why does this concern us closely? In addition to the obvious scientific knowledge reasons, taking charge of the role of randomness in change has brought this disruptive element into our being-in-the-world structures: you will never be able to have definitive projects; your story, your decisions, your plans will be definitive only once they have already happened; only once they have already slipped into the past.
Try to take a blank sheet of paper and write down in detail what you will do in the next week in order to reach your goals, day by day, hour by hour. Probably after a few lines you will realize that it is impossible that what you are writing will come true exactly as you are anticipating it, you will begin to think that it is a useless exercise: we instinctively know that randomness slips into the interstices of our daily life and that, every time, it turns the tables. Of course, one can think that every unexpected change has a will behind it, someone who thought it up and put it into action (and here religion happily marries conspiracy theories); this thought is warm and reassuring, it is an almost
— Ad Lucilium, Seneca, 87,7
maternal and instinctive consolation as much as the awareness we were talking about earlier: it goes like “everything happens for a reason”, “it was destiny”, “it is in God’s plan”. “There is something more, greater, out of my reach, that loves me and decides for me and I cannot understand it, but I can accept it and give it the hope of my existence, passively”.
Is this really a reassuring thought? Isn’t it, rather, an abdication of all true responsibility? We have reached a crucial, almost paradoxical point: in front of the undeniable intrusiveness of randomness, one can be attributed it to our limited understanding of a larger plan in which we are inserted; one can be believe that, after all, what happens has a meaning, which by its nature eludes us. And within this inscrutable plan we will simply call ‘randomness’ what we cannot grasp: in this way we renounce our responsibility.
On the other hand, the logically purest and newest possibility, which emerged with the evolution theory and in the last 170 years filtered more and more into our daily lives, is this: staring in the face of randomness, not postulating the existence of something more and not necessary:
just us, randomness and change. Understanding that, to become who we are, we must embrace chance. This does not mean letting ourselves go to despair or drifting aimlessly: it means doing the best with what we have available, actively taking responsibility for it. Without spreading our arms and sighing “it had to go like this, what can I do?”. “Appreciating with a serene mind all that randomness lends us, without depending on it” (Ad Lucilium, Seneca, 87,7). Adapting – yes -, knowing that there are things on which we have no control, but which can turn into the most fruitful and unexpected opportunities.
And where can we learn all this? Right in a church, the Basilica of San Marco in Venice.
For centuries now, those who enter the Basilica of San Marco, in Venice, could admire four marvellous spandrels adorned with astonishing Byzantine mosaics, representing the four evangelists. A magnificent project. But no: those spandrels and their art are a wonderful opportunity offered by randomness: the architects did not hesitate to take it, but there was no will behind them. When a dome is grafted onto a square base structure, it is inevitable spandrels arise. This observation has served the two scholars Goulding and Lewontin precisely to change the adaptationist paradigm: randomness in evolution is not an engine that generates only small improvements, which slowly accumulate over the millennia. Randomness also leaves structures, just like in the case of San Marco, which are no longer of any use. But at some point, suddenly, they come in handy. Not ad-aptation, but ex-aptation. Evolution is not a linear process of improvement, it is rather a bricoleur who does the best it can with the material it has, rummaging through drawers and cabinets to find unused material to which he can give a function. By chance, that big bone that was there but did not have any actual use, can now be used by the panda to hold the bamboo stick in his paw.
Does this remind you of anything? Adapting – yes -, knowing that there are things on which we have no control, but which can turn into the most fruitful and unexpected opportunities. This completes our circle on how randomness is the engine of change not only in evolution, but also in our daily life: there is no continuous improvement, there is no goal; there is only us and the world, who are the same thing and, in this completely materialistic union, we can even lose all the frustration of the engineer who does not respect his supposed project.
Indeed, one of the extraordinary lessons we can draw from biology: change is inevitable, randomness even more so. But it is not necessary to indulge in the arms of a mysterious superiority, nor in a gloomy despair. Just stay in the world, which is all of what we are made of. Perhaps, it is enough to recognize the creative potential that just randomness releases: it pushes us to make conscious projects, ready to continually reinvent them on the basis of what we have available, ready to start over and change again. Because change is based on the cards that chance gives us - it’s true - but we do create the house of cards every time with our energy.
The responsibility for that energy is all ours. “I have learnt to distinguish the cause of acting from the cause of acting so and so, of acting in this direction, in view of this goal [...]. According to a centuries-old mistake, people are used to seeing the propulsive force precisely in the objective (purpose, vocation, etc.) - but this is only the directive energy, in this regard the pilot of the ship was mistaken for the steam. The ‘purpose’, the ‘goal’ are very often nothing more than a subterfuge to disguise the self-blindness of vanity in retrospect, reluctant to admit that the ship is following the current it ran into by chance? “ (The gay science, Nietzsche, af. 360).
