The Unpredictability of It All

"Brother, I said a 'hello' on the radio for you tonight." 
-Danilo, Radio Heliópolis FM

Looking backwards, the story of this Whatsapp text, translated from its orginal Portuguese, is completely logical. For Danilo, it was natural to welcome visitors to his neighborhood and to promote his brand of clothing to an international community. He lives in a favela of São Paulo called Heliópolis, and professionals in marketing may want to take notes on what he is up to. He has leveraged his pride for his home into a neat little clothing line, coupled with a radio program. He beamed as he showed me photos of folks all over the world wearing his brand's swag. He also does a local radio show, and I have no doubt he puts in plugs for his brand whenever he can. You could argue that the radio "hello" was less than ordinary, perhaps unexpected, or even unnecessary. For Danilo, it was not uncommon, who from our brief encounter seemed to have a beautiful balance of both genuinely friendly and cleverly economic motives. For me, it was as though Madame Unpredictability waltzed up behind me, tapped my shoulder, slapped me with a Nadal backhand, and skipped away into the night with a mischevious grin as she peered back at me over her shoulder. How in the world did I arrive at this moment? I kept wondering as I rubbed my left cheek (Nadal is a lefty). I just got a shoutout on a radio station from a favela in São Paulo.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards."
-Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005

Even a week ago, no amount of research or guesswork could have connected the dots going forward. There is a taste of unpredictability in each and every moment. It is the salt that goes into everything we make of ourselves. On Friday night I crunched down hard on a fat hunk of its unground variety. Extreme circumstances like these allow us to see the mundane with extreme perspicacity. Once we acquire the taste of, say, unpredictability, it suddenly becomes palpable in nearly every situation life cooks up. Looking backwards, though, the connections are there. Unpredictability does not exclude understanding.

"Will, think of what could happen if I throw this glass on the ground over there. Maybe it breaks and cuts a woman, and she has to go to the hospital. And while she is waiting there, she looks up and sees a man who will be her husband. That is how crazy it is." 

-André, São Paulo friend

There is a shadow of helplessness that accompanies this realization. It is a bit like watching kids without quarters sit at the driver's seat of the arcade, twisting the steering wheel and slamming the gas, pretending that *demo-mode* is not flashing yellow before their very eyes. On a daily basis I happily admit to catching myself playing, too. Exacto-knifing out a neat corner of the world just big enough to think that you are in control - this ownership of free will is ingrained in our psychologies and has been shown scientifically to benefit us. Not only that, but its opposite suggests unseemly consequences: "Believing that free will is an illusion has been shown to make people less creative, more likely to conform, less willing to learn from their mistakes, and less grateful toward one another." (see previous link). Following this line of reasoning, some thinkers like Saul Smilansky even argue that free will is an illusion that must be upheld at the expsense of truth. Back in the day, I imagine a similar study could have predicted that the discovery of the earth not being the center of the universe causing equally damning social upheaval (Catholic Church pun intended). 

Here are my two bits. In the "saltiest" of situations life cooks up, the dots may seems helplessly scattered around and misnumbered, and the connections between them beyond prediction. However, unpredictability on the outside does not stop us from thinking deeply on the inside, nor should it stop us from doing great things. It adds flavor, even when the smallest of decisions are not fundamentally ours to make. This truth - that decisions happen, rather than are made - should encourage us to tune our minds in to the mental mechanisms that lead us to their happening. In a word: self-reflection. We should not agonize over this disillusionment. Rather, we should ask ourselves: what triggers, emotions, words, whims, and hopes affect our decisions the most? These decision making processes appear to reside deep within our nature and our nurture, waiting for us to understand. I find power and inspiration in this potential for understanding how we make decisions. Its opposite, a belief in an entirely free will, is another happy illusion that, like the idea of earth's central importance in the universe, must be cast aside in the wake of better explanations for how things truly are.