Do you think it is perhaps ironic (?) that on the day of the New Hampshire primary, a new book called FLUKE by Brian Klaas about "Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters" is being published? In addition to being a contributing writer for The Atlantic, Klass is a professor of global politics at University College London and host of Power Corrupts podcast. In his new book, he writes rather philosophically about views on contingent (stuff happens) and convergent (everything happens for a reason) actions, and argues that "the world is uncertain, unexplainable, and uncontrollable." In fact, he cites a German sociologist who feels that the modern increased feelings of despair are "because of the futile yearning to make the world controllable." Klaas advocates a freer approach, where "the lesson is that, sometimes, life's best flukes come not from ever-more-precise analytics of a seemingly stable past, but an exploring a fresh, uncertain future," like providing grant money for mRNA research which made a huge difference in Covid vaccine development. With greater appeal for the mature, reflective reader, this text can seem rather dense and confusing at times. Roughly fifteen percent of Klaas' text is devoted to endnotes and references.

Brian Klaas makes a case for randomness in his book Fluke. He explains how most people want to feel they are in charge of their lives, but maybe we cannot always control our lives. Randomness really does make a difference to all of us. There is an old saying “man makes plans and God laughs”.

Klaas makes a good case for how little control we really have over our lives by using examples and logic. Chaos or randomness is definitely a factor. He tells a story of a man who loves Monet ties. He was giving a seminar and before it started, someone gave him a lovely Monet tie. He wanted to wear the tie, but it would clash with the shirt he was wearing so he went back to his hotel to put on a different shirt. Meanwhile, disaster struck at the seminar location.

It may be hard for some people to accept, we tell our children their lives are the results of their choices. Make good ones and life is good. I think both can be true. Sometimes “bad things happen to good people”.

Fluke is an interesting and worthwhile discussion of our role in our own lives. We have control to a great extent, but Klaas writes that we are really just able to do and be what we do and are because of all that came before. If the events of previous times had not happened as they did, our lives would be forever different maybe in small ways or maybe in major ways. That is where the Fluke comes in.

People play a role in what happens to themselves and others, we believe. This is how we form narratives, including the narrative of our own agency.

But anything can change the course of our lives. A cloud moves, and a plane doesn’t take off or changes its flight path. It matters who is or isn’t on the plane, whether the plane crashes, or where the airmen drop the bomb.

We know that chance occurrences make a difference in the outcome, yet we resist this notion, partly because it seems unfair. Some people live, others die, due to luck? We might as well say they were saved or destroyed for no reason at all.

“We want a rational explanation to make sense of the chaos of life,” Brian Klaas says in Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. And to a large extent, we tune out what we believe is noise. If we can't slot an event in our broader narrative of life, we ignore it. “Nobody tiptoes around with extreme care to make sure not to squish the wrong bug. Few panic about an irrevocably changed future after missing the bus,” Klaas observes.

Yet how else, he asks, does the future get made?

The little, non-rational reasons seem to be the real reasons.

If your parents hadn’t met, you wouldn’t be here. The same is true for your ancestors, all the way back.

"We are the offshoots of a sometimes wonderful, sometimes deeply flawed past," he writes, and "our existence is bewilderingly fragile, built upon the shakiest of foundations."

Could we have acted differently? Did we have free will then? And do we have free will, right now, to change anything at all?

When we look for a cause, we often see a fluke. The fluke isn’t nothing. It’s just not the meaning we originally hoped for. It’s unexpected and unrepeatable, and we can embrace it.

This book is elegantly readable nonfiction, revolving thorny philosophical dilemmas with ease. Its framing is productive. Especially if we start with no assumption of a god running the show, "Fluke" helps us approach the question of how we small humans are standing here under the big sky. We can start by letting go of commonly understood “reasons,” and we can try out different kinds of explanation.

The book poses the question: What theory makes the most sense to you?

You get to choose what you believe.

Or do you?