Lamb and Frog

random: seeming to be without purpose or direct relationship to a stimulus. non sequential. (from the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition)

Shannon the Textile Goddess is going through a rough patch similar to the one I went through last summer (documented here and here). Life and technology would seem to be running amok. This morning she asked “Does this much RANDOM CRAP happen to everyone else?” I responded, “It’s not random.” She responded, “What’s that supposed to mean?” and I responded with a pile of crabby ass ranting that probably didn’t make much sense. Almost like I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say it. Wrong! I just needed to think about what I was actually trying to say a little more calmly (it has been a crabby couple of days for me, in case the tortilla rant didn’t give you a heads up). I managed, in the process of spinning quite a bit of Dagmar’s beautiful hand-dyed roving, to both calm myself down and to corral my stampeding thoughts long enough to start writing.

Sometimes, when crap piles up on you, it can seem random (without purpose, causeless, non-sequential), but it isn’t. Often, what it is is either unexpected (you weren’t paying attention to the root cause) or beyond your control (someone else wasn’t paying attention to a root cause and you got stuck with the consequences). 

When your roof leaks because the upstairs neighbors had a plumbing problem they did not attend to (or which they tried to attend to, but got zero response from the property manager) that is not random. It is, however, beyond your control. When your smartphone dies for the 10th time in the last 6 months that too can seem random, but someone, somewhere made choices that put either a bad product, or a bad batch of a decent product, out for sale to the public. When your tires go flat or your car battery dies it is not random either. Unexpected, yes. Random, no.

Often stuff, especially bad stuff, appears random because we have chosen to filter out its cause(s). Take my car battery, which seems to die at will, and much more frequently than I think it should. Batteries have a lifespan. I don’t pay much attention to how old mine is. Batteries have a voltage threshold below which they do not work. I have the technology to check this regularly, but I choose not to do so even though checking the battery voltage regularly would prevent surprises in that department. I also know that “with batteries you get what you pay for.” (A direct quote from a former client and battery professional.) Yet, I still let Bill buy cheap ass batteries at WalMart because that’s what’s easiest for him and he’s usually the guy stuck replacing the battery. It’s the same with light bulbs–they aren’t dying at random, mostly they’re dying at the end of their useful life we just tend not to pay too much attention to that. Sometimes they’re dying because they’re defective (again, not without cause). Because light bulbs are cheap, easy to replace, and their deaths are of low consequence, we tend not to take this particular form of perceived randomness as seriously as we would the car battery or the smartphone or the tires.

To a large degree it is within our means to control the unexpectedness of battery and tire failure and other not really random bad stuff. It is up to us to decide if the time and effort involved are worth it to avoid the unexpected consequence. I pay attention to my tires (worth it), but not to the battery (more hassle than it’s worth, I’ll just suck it up and deal with the dead ones). Sometimes, however, we incur consequences that are the result of actions beyond our control: the smartphone, Bill’s golf thingo, the leaking roof caused by someone else’s plumbing. Sill, these things do have causes; they are not random.

Why does it matter? Because when we say that such things are random accountability for the consequences gets thrown out the window. We are accountable for the stuff that’s within our control whether we want to be or not. If we choose to ignore root causes, then we must accept the consequences. Hey, some stuff is worth monitoring and some isn’t; everyone has different priorities and a different tolerance for the unexpected. Watch or don’t watch, maintain or don’t maintain. But don’t say it’s random.

What’s more, when we say things are random, we are not only throwing our own accountability out the window (like I just said, that’s up to you, sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not) we’re letting the people and businesses who knowingly sell us shit they know is substandard off the hook with one little word. Oh, it was just a random thing. Shit happens. No! Shit usually happens for a reason. If you don’t want to pursue the matter, fine (again, you have to pick your battles). But don’t let yourself get played by calling crappy workmanship, product misrepresentation, and other forms of carelessness, deceit, and negligence ’random’ either.

True randomness is rare and powerful. When you witness it, show some respect.