Without us realizing it, we ask this question often, whether we actually say it or not, every time we do things or merely contemplate on doing something, or even just saying something to somebody, or anybody. And, for that matter, does everything we ever do really matter. Before we go on let's just for a moment revisit the one famous fable about the "butterfly effect". We find that it is more than just a fable because, while hypothetical in every sense, it is profoundly and sensibly within the realm of loosely correlated causality; keeping in mind, however, that there is a big difference between correlation and causation. The embellishment to the little story is all mine.
"Out in the plains of the Serengeti, a lone butterfly was going about its business from flower to flower. Not too far away is a pride of lions patiently waiting for a herd of wildebeest to come closer. The butterfly, as it flutters its wings, hovering and landing on several flowers, causes some of the disturbed pollen to be carried away by the wafting air. A few of the pollen went into the nostril of the lead lioness, thus causing it to sneeze uncontrollably and loudly - loud enough to spook the ever alert and nervous wildebeest. They turned, saw the lions, and they panicked. The resulting stampede of a several thousand wildebeests soon after, caused a cloud of swirling dust to ascend with the rising warm air. The dust clouds joined the Jetstream up above, which somehow changed its density and air speed. In a matter of three days, the global weather pattern had changed considerably and by the seventh day, a typhoon had developed on the Bay of Bengal. In a few more days, Bangladesh was devastated by strong winds and flooding that followed. All that was caused by one butterfly."
Can one event from the activity of a single butterfly really cause that much devastation?
Or, how about the decision of one Dutch family during the German occupation of their homeland when they decided to hide an entire Jewish family in their basement until the end of the war. Had the Dutch family not done it an entire lineage could have ended right at the moment of their capture. Instead, the Jewish family survived and later emigrated to the U.S. at the end of the war. The family's children went on to excel in school, one became a doctor and another an engineer. Two generations later the Jewish family's descendants continue to contribute to the betterment of the community of people around them wherever they settled, always acknowledging the remembrance of a distant debt of gratitude. That was just one story. Just imagine many more stories from just that one global tragedy of a war that raised so many acts of courage and sacrifices that in the words of Winston Churchill, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".
Richard Feynman, acclaimed theoretical physicist in his lecture on the chain of probabilities asked and answered, "Why one small decision changes everything". With anecdotes he went on to tell how one decision, large or small, changes the outcome that affects all outcomes that followed. Of course, his discussions were from the points of view of a physicist. That is true but then I ask, "Where did it all begin?" You see, from the question and from every example, before every decision or choice was made, there were conditions that already existed that were also products of decisions, choices and events prior. It is as if the decision maker was merely being part of a continuous chain of events and decisions that he or she may have little to do with.
Decisions begin as mental processes, assuming that the decider did take the time to think everything through. A 3-1/2 pound mass of tissues and nerves and blood vessels sit atop the shoulder of every human decider. Inside that mass of tissue are approximately 100 billion nerve cells or neurons that are capable of making billions upon billions of connections from neuron to neuron at any one time. Is that where we begin? How about family upbringing, inherited genes, mental trauma, even nutrition, etc. Of course not. But just for fun, let's go back to one specific point prior to but somewhere that is simple enough - the early universe.
Eons of time had elapsed before the universe had its first atoms. Then everything was made up of hydrogen and a little bit of helium and nothing else. It took more eons of time before there was oxygen because massive stars (all made of hydrogen) at the later stages of their existence that took millions of years needed to explode to create the other elements, one of which was oxygen.
That was crucial because only then that the combination of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen gave the universe its first water. How is it that neither hydrogen nor oxygen may exist as a liquid at room temperature, yet when the two of them combined we have liquid water? Perhaps we do not want to begin there although as far as we know only our earth has water that makes life possible, significantly human life - able to ponder and wonder about these things.
Where do we begin? Well, we can go back to where one hundred billion neurons reside - in each individual human brain.
One U.S. president at the beginning of 2008 did say that elections have consequences.
We find out, of course, that all the neural activities of all the voters combined in one election decided all past elections. Elections that had consequences. Does that explain the butterfly effect? It will be one massive undertaking to explain, well beyond one blog.
Suffice it to say that everything begins where everything is still small. Did a career criminal begin with one stolen candy bar from a grocery store? But then what was it that caused one man to hunt down early Christians only to turn his life around the opposite way and write several gospels of the New Testament? His writings are now known as Paul's Letters to various recipients - from to the Thessalonians to the Hebrews, and nine others in between.
So, now we may begin anywhere. The question is whether anything that occurs anywhere and everywhere has a consequence that is worthy of consideration as to have any effect on everything, or just anything. As a general rule, yes, when taken from the point of view of cause and effect. But it is always from someone's point of view, or is it? This takes us to another common if not purely parlor-esque question as in a cocktail party setting that asks, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound"? The question always recedes back to "from whose point of view" is the consequence being assessed. We don't want to go there because we are not prepared to dig a bottomless pit into which we may end up dumping an infinite number of scenarios no matter where we start. You see, from the butterfly effect story, would it have mattered if, say, it occurred in ancient times when there were no people living then in the present day country of Bangladesh?
Well, here we are. Back to the one hundred billion neurons again.
For conclusion: Yes, every decision we make does indeed matter. Just by believing that, can mean that from here on in, you and I will take great care in every little or big decision we make, convinced that it will have one small or large difference, however inconsequential it is.
One thing to keep in mind is that consequences do not just add up. They actually multiply.
Let me end with a portion of what I wrote in Dec. 2016, "What's Fishy With Human Nature":
"There was a B-movie that reminded me of how one little trickle of a white lie could cascade into an unstoppable waterfall.
A guy called in to his boss with a little lie for not coming to work one morning. He lied that he was taking care of a sick daughter at home. Granted he was quite unhappy with his job he didn’t exactly want to quit. He doubled up on his excuse next time he felt like not showing up for work again by telling that his sick daughter was now at the hospital. So the one simple lie has taken a life of its own as he lied to his wife as well, doing his routine task of taking his daughter to a baby sitter every morning, but never said anything about not going to work. The third time he called in for not coming to work his boss fired him over the phone. Then, again bereft of any thought process, he doubled up his lie further by telling his boss that his daughter just died at the hospital.
His daughter was perfectly fine but his boss softened immensely by asking him back to work the following day; his boss spoke kindly to him and later took up a collection for him from very willing co-workers to help him out. One morning a kind co-worker went as far as to bring a home-made quiche to his home. His wife opened the door to greet the co-worker but his quick maneuver saved the day for him as he shortened the visit without alerting his clueless wife but to the bewilderment of his co-worker. Of course, as always with cases like this, things unravel rapidly with devastating consequences. This was fiction but how many have we seen in real life where one simple lie intensified to more lies and ultimately to a disastrous resolution, shattering lives and reputation or sometimes resulting in violence?
Remember, in real life consequences don't just add up; they multiply.
