Contingency and Chance.
What is the difference between Contingency and Chance? Does Being hang on Chance like it does Contingency? Contingency is the framework of Being; our Being is draped over Contingency and thus are we formed and our Being’s given a distinctive character that is all our own, and yet caused by Contingency. Chance is a moment, a Grand Contingency, a large boulder thrown into a shallow lake. But Chance does not come about on its own, nor does it arise from other Chance moments or experiences or situations. Contingency is the small stepping stones that lead up to Chance’s big moment, and then quickly leaves it behind.
Chance and Contingency are very closely related as to almost be the same thing. However, Chance is often a word used with a connotation of good or bad. “You have a chance to win $10,000,0000!” or “Even when shooting sober you have the chance to have your head blown off.” Meanwhile contingency is merely possibility, and an unknown one at that. Chance can be predicted, given a statistic, used in baseball games and finances. Contingency is so unknown beforehand that it might never come to Being, even after it has been left behind. Again, Chance is Contingency’s big moment, when the Contingent becomes obvious, visible, there. In a sense Chance is the brute forming of situations, dumb and pedestrian and all too predictable and imaginable. Contingency is subtle and its effects are more powerful the less that Being is aware of its own Contingency.
Contingency is a pebble on life’s way that can make Being fall of either side of the dangerous mountain path. Or Contingency might allow Being to keep walking, but maybe with an altered gait.
