The Butterfly Effect

With so much going on today, I find it hard to turn on the news. I realize the world has always had it’s problems; senseless killings, racial conflicts, endless amounts of controversy. In all actuality none of it is new. It’s repetition, history on a constant loop and we as society just keep hitting the repeat button.

It seems as though everything these days is on a grander scale. Our need for instant gratification, and the development of the digital age has molded our issues into bigger, unbreakable ones. With each new generation the intensity of our contentions grow.

It’s easy to go about our simple little lives and think, I have nothing to do with this. I can’t fix what others have broken. I’m no one.

Is that true? As individuals are we helpless to stop the cycle?

Every tragedy has begun on a smaller platform than what it ends on. Every negative evolution has been born in a single person’s mind, coming alive by their own particular actions. Their decisions rotate downhill, starting out as a tiny snowflake and eventually becoming a boulder. Others join in and the boulder transforms into a mountain.

I can’t help but wonder; if it only took one mind to create the chaos, can’t it be undone the same way?

The butterfly effect says that each action, regardless of how small, has the potential to set in motion a reaction on a much grander scale. The beat of a butterfly's wings can cause a hurricane a half a world away. Scientifically this is a proven fact.

So if something as tiny as the flap of an insect's wings can inadvertently cause a catastrophic, life altering event, than we as singular humans can surely stop hating each other.

Right?

If I make the effort to teach my children to care for others, if I give a friendly smile to a stranger, or donate a dollar in the checkout line, isn’t that an attempt at stopping the animosity? Imagine if ten of us did that and our children continued, and then taught their children. Love has the potential to breed just as quickly as hate. It only takes as insignificant of an action as understanding what another may be going through, holding back our judgments, or lending a hand where it’s needed.

I know that things are easier said than done.

Wouldn’t our lives be simpler if we continued to tell ourselves that we have no power over the world’s situations?

Adolf Hitler once said “if you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough it will be believed.” Are we just telling ourselves enough lies, accomplishing exactly what Hitler set out to do? He once imagined a world ruled by fascism, a place where violence was not considered negative, and views such as political violence, war, and imperialism were the perfect means to achieve national rejuvenation. Does some of this sound familiar?

Are we just doomed to repeat our past mistakes, or can we break the cycle? I’d like to think that each of us has as much capability to press the stop button, as the masses do to hit repeat. We just all need to look inwardly at what we have to offer, and flap our wings.

It’s actually that simple.