Brain Food #428
The Butterfly Effect
Daily Brain Food.
Thoughts of the day
Which thought is more comforting? That the future is set and circumstances are guiding us towards it, or that the future is ours to create, if only we are rightly poised to do so?
Popular culture often misinterprets the concept behind the butterfly effect, asserting the belief that everything can be eventually traced back to a small reason, a butterfly (or an exotic animal). It is revealing of our nature as humans, to seek to find meaning in everything, to believe, in other words, that the future is predetermined, that there is a why behind every event we experience, no matter how horrific.
Viktor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning while being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
According to Frankl, meaning was ultimately found in showing courage amidst suffering.
What the butterfly effect hints at is the simultaneous randomness and interconnectivity of events and the lives that revolve around them. The smallest of actions affect everything around them. But it is important to remember that one’s response and attitude towards an event can be as important as the event itself.