Many Factors, Not Just One

  I have found out that whenever there is news that is shocking to me, my immediate impulse is to try to find an answer to "why" that most reflects my bewildered state of mind. Perhaps it's no wonder that in the early days of the corona virus, people were posting a lot of interesting theories about how and why this virus came to be. Had the "answer" been a more or less simple or random explanation, such as a mutation in nature, people would have still floundered looking for explanations that match their states of mind. This is similar to how, when I was a young boy in the early morning, I would often try (or not try) to freak myself out by staring at the shadows under the furniture, and try to guess what those shadows happen to be, until enough daylight would show these things for what they are. The "reality" always felt more disappointing, because they lack the feelings of mystery, wonder or suspense that my initial fear had entailed.
    More recently, I have noticed that a lot of the so-called explanations --and seeking of explanations, for that matter--are starting to die down, in replacement of predictions as to "when this will end" or the more mundane and practical contingency plans, lest it never quite ends. What I notice is that the kinds of answers people seek are often reflections of the stages in which they are collectively grieving. The "answers", whatever they may happen to be, matter less than the power these explanations may grant in balancing a person's emotional and spiritual equilibrium.
    To say that things have many reasons and not just one, turns out to be a bit of a let-down, because a) it fails to match the shock and bewilderment; and b) it fails to admit of any single root cause that can be pinned down in any precise way. But if a person stops to reflect that things have multiple causes , similar to a weather map that shifts with each new current or wind pattern, the "reality" of things appears more understandable ---even a bit less outlandish. This is because one is not trying to deliberately create shadows by excluding certain bits of data, or by distorting some bits of data to look more remarkable than they really are. Things work together in nets of causes and conditions, which means that no single cause is to blame. Although this way of looking at things seems mundane and even bland, it can go far in de-escalating states of anxiety as well as preventing the anger that comes from thinking that one thing is operating on purpose to de-stabilize other things.
    Conspiracy theories are examples of cases where something is enlarged to the point of having an omnipotent power over things. We attempt to weave stories as a way of bringing to justice something that may never have a single root cause. But the satisfaction of defeating or subduing the imagined cause is perhaps the counter to one's fear and sense of things being "out of control". The problem with these theories is that they end up intensifying the anxiety that they are designed to quell, because the enemy is always lurking somewhere in one's psyche, ready to be projected outward onto some new cause or problem.