On the Nature of Fate

Now, there is Murphy's Law and there is Maloney's Law. Maloney's Law is rather less known than Murphy's Law but is actually the more useful since it has predictive power. Maloney said that the probability of something happening is inversely related to its desirability. Murphy is variously phrased as, 'if it can happen, it will', or as 'the buttered side always falls butter side down'. But there is no neat formulation of that observation that reveals its power as a natural law. Murphy's Law sounds like sour grapes, a bitter aside at the malevolence of the Universe that takes any opportunity left it to wreak havoc among expectations.

Whereas Maloney's Law states the unavoidable problem of life in a nutshell. The more you want it to happen, the more it is unlikely to happen for you. You have no trouble taking your car keys from where you always leave them, jumping in your car to go to work everyday for a thousand days, but on the day when you are late for your daughter's graduation ceremony, you won't be able to find your keys. Maloney's law is telling us not to work ourselves up into a lather about things, not to expect too much, and never expect on the basis of yesterday. If you take things lightly, casually, then the worst is unlikely to happen to you. If you care deeply that you turn up at a PA meeting looking like a person of substance who needs to be listened to then your child will be sick all down your suit. It's the principle of returning to the mean. Go out too far on a limb with your particular expectations and you will be destroyed.

Maloney's law is a clean neatly formulated law. It came out of the peaceful quiet realm of pure heart and disinterested science. Maloney, an academic who invented communication theory, had the time to penetrate the maelstrom of human life and discover the levelling law of Nature that bears his name. Murphy, of course, was also Irish, but obviously saw things from a different perspective. His law seems a rather muddied expression for the tired hopelessness of the conditions he was experiencing. But both laws have uncovered the key to the same experience. Murphy's Law and Maloney's Law have captured what it's like to be a parent.

Now Maloney's Law suggests a way in which you might be able to cheat fate. Say to yourself you don't care, and bingo! The worst won't happen. All you have to do is say to yourself, you don't care if the school bus is late and you miss your appointment, and then it won't be late. But Nature is not so easily fooled. Trying to submerge your anxiety with a self-conscious hopefulness isn't the same thing as not having it. Nor does deliberately thinking the worst make the good happen. Nature is unfolding in it's own way in spite of you.

Maloney's Law may say that your selfish interests are of no concern to Nature, but it also implies that if you expect little, Nature will look after you. Maloney speaks with the Taoist voice of Eastern resignation. Murphy, on the other hand, speaks from the ghetto and the slum and from the heart of the dispossessed poor. His law, found in a multitude of proverbs and maxims the world over, says that it doesn't matter what you expect, Nature has it in for you. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first give hope.

So my question is this. Which of the two law givers had no children?

ank 3 March 2003

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