"Everything happens for a reason"

[R_P_A_S]

ever hear people say "everything happens for a reason" I used to hear this all the time and not really care. BUT NOW, I take a difference stance towards it. I don't really know why. It just doesn't sound right anymore. after reading marxist theory. hmm...

It just seem very conformist to me. and i guess i don't believe is true, yet im having problems elaborating thoughts as to what kind of attitude Id like to take towards this sentence, that so many people are so conform to say and just leave it at that with out any research for understanding why things happen.

maybe im looking too deep into it.

what do you guys think about it?

"Everything Happens for a reason"

[MrDoom]

It depends.

Godsuckers imply that the 'reason' is because of an invisible wizard's totalitarian programme.

Materialists (and Marxists by extension) view the universe in terms of cause-and-effect. Nothing 'just happens'. Every ocurrence is the sum of the previous states of the system.

[The Bitter Hippy]

it's pretty materialist, i'd have thought.

Every event has concrete material causes, each of which had material causes of their own.

If, however, it is taken to mean "there was a reason why doggy had to die, which will become apparent later" or "it may not seem like it now but it's probably for the best"...Then that is presupposing a concious planning of events. This in turn either supposes a huge conspiracy of New World Order proportions, or a God. Not good!.

[R_P_A_S]

I'll give an example as to when i most hear this sentence being used..

-you met a girl who you fell in love with, yet she didn't fee the same way for you. you suffered a lot and now you are reflecting on your failed love

"everything happens for a reason"

wow im thinkiing too much

[MrDoom]

Again, your example is dependent on the speaker.

Idealists will say "it happened for a reason" blathering on about 'fate' or 'god' or whatnot.

Materialists will say "it happened for a reason" simply because the proposed relationship was a one-way compatibility.

[gilhyle]

I think there is an important issue for the individual here. Yes,in the round, everythin happens for a reason - but not for the individual. An individual is really just a small cog in the social wheel - so insignificant that things really do happen to us entirely by accident. Events can take on a disproportionate significance.

I knew a man once who slipped on a small piece of mud placed just on the edge of of a tiny step in the garden of a hotel. As he fell the back of his neck hit off the previous step. He lay still on the ground. Hotel staff rushed out and lifted him by the shoulders and legs back into the hotel, in the process cutting thrugh his spinal column. He spent the rest of his life lying down, paralysed and died much younger than he probably would have.

This didn't happen 'for a reason'. Of course it was open to him to give reason to it by the way he lived the rest of his life, but that is a different story.

Everything happens for a reason - except at the microscopic level, and individuals live at the microscopic level.

[ExpansiveThought]

Everything happens for a reason' is a phrase often employed as a cop out by the ignorant.
However, in a more practical sense, i feel it's better to think of things as happening for a PURPOSE.=p
really though, such and such terrible things happened to me and as a result i learned such and such lessons that ill carry with me forever. In this sense, does it not seem that events really can happen for a deeper purpose?...Now im no 'Godsucker', but discussions of this nature can usually best be summed up as speculation regardless of who's point of view they embody. And as such, if the events in our lives make up who we truly are, who's to say that this is categorically not our 'fate'.
Even still, I feel a much more Plausible statement would be: every action has an equal and opposite reaction...and i cant even remember who said that.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This cannot be right, unless one believes everything is controlled by Mind.

Hence it is Idealist.

There is no one single cause of everything, so the question itself starts in the wrong place.