Fluke
Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
by Brian Klaas
We control nothing, but influence everything.
「偶然」はどのようにあなたをつくるのか
すべてが影響し合う複雑なこの世界を生きることの意味
人生は自分次第だなんて、大嘘である。
ブライアン・クラース (著), 柴田裕之 (翻訳)
私たちは何もコントロールしていないが、あらゆることに影響を与えている。
Fluke
Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
by Brian Klaas
We control nothing, but influence everything.
「偶然」はどのようにあなたをつくるのか
すべてが影響し合う複雑なこの世界を生きることの意味
人生は自分次第だなんて、大嘘である。
ブライアン・クラース (著), 柴田裕之 (翻訳)
私たちは何もコントロールしていないが、あらゆることに影響を与えている。
Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
by Brian Klaas
In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas deep-dives into the phenomenon of randomness, unpicking our neat and tidy storybook version of events to reveal a reality far wilder and more fascinating than we have dared to consider. The bewildering truth is that but for a few incidental changes, our lives – and our societies – would be radically different.
Offering an entirely new perspective, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and random events. How much difference does our decision to hit the snooze button make? Did one couple’s vacation really change the course of the twentieth century? What are the smallest accidents that have tilted the course of history itself?
The mind-bending lessons of this phenomenon challenge our beliefs about the very workings of the world. From the evolution of human biology and natural disasters to the impact of global events on supply chain disruptions, every detail matters because of the web of connectivity that envelops us. So what if, by exploding our illusion of control, we can make better decisions and live happy, fulfilling lives?
Perhaps we can finally accept that we will never be able to fully understand our own existence. Nonetheless, Kurt Vonnegut gives us good advice on how to live fully within that uncertainty: “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
When we consider the what-if moments, it’s obvious that arbitrary, tiny changes and seemingly random, happenstance events can divert our career paths, rearrange our relationships, and transform how we see the world. To explain how we came to be who we are, we recognize pivot points that so often were out of our control. But what we ignore are the invisible pivots, the moments that we will never realize were consequential, the near misses and near hits that are unknown to us because we have never seen, and will never see, our alternative possible lives. We can’t know what matters most because we can’t see how it might have been.
This is the paradox of twenty-first-century life: staggering prosperity seems to be tethered to surging rates of alienation, despair, and existential precariousness. Humans have constructed the most sophisticated civilizations ever to grace the planet, but countless millions need to medicate themselves to cope with living within them.
By chasing control, we trap ourselves. By letting go just a little, we may liberate not only ourselves, but our best ideas.
If we want to maximize the chance that our actions will matter even more, then the best pathway comes from one of the finest innovations our species has ever evolved: cooperation. Humans who work together create change together.
Embracing the beauty of uncertainty means a bit less emphasis on how your individual action in the present can produce an optimized future, and a bit more emphasis on celebrating the present that has been created for you, the symphony of our lives that is being played by an orchestra of trillions of individual beings hitting their respective notes across billions of years, culminating in this utterly unique, contingent moment.
あなたの人生は偶然が支配し、この世界は成り行きの産物である。
成功や失敗も、進化も歴史も、小さな偶然の積み重ねに左右されている。
なのに、なぜ私たちはそこに理由や目的、秩序があると信じてしまうのか？
このような世界を生きることに、どんな意味があるのだろうか？
あなたのすべての行動は、たとえそれがどんなに些細なものであっても、
常に世界に影響を与え続けている。
世界はカオス的であり、人生は偶然によってつくられるからこそ、豊かで価値があるのだ。