During a conversation with a friend the other day, the topic of luck or random events came up, and what followed was a philosophical discussion on the existance of randomness. You see… I don’t believe in luck, good bad or otherwise. Strangly enough however I do believe in Fate. ;) More on Fate in a later article.
My friend insisted that events happen randomly, and that a bad turn of events can just be put down to bad luck. I however find this assumption a little nieve, not that I am saying that my friend is wrong with his beliefs, just that my beliefs differ. I believe that everything in life happens through cause and effect, so in effect I believe in the “Butteryfly Effect” The chaos theory that states if a butterfly here in Australia flaps it’s wings, that has the potential to be part of an equation that may eventually cause a heatwave in England. Generally I doubt that the events would be that extreme, but it is an exaggeration that serves a purpose. The way I see it is, that everything happens as a reaction to something else, and this chain of reactions can and does span the world in millions of billions of tiny little equations.
Luck, or chance as a random event, I believe is just lazy way to ignore these equations, to generalise down to an everyday level, giving those who aren’t really interested a means to dismiss. It’s easier for some to believe in Luck, than in the fact that a chain of events caused something to happen. I’m not hear to explain why other believe in luck though, I’m here to explain what I believe in to share it with all of you, my readers.
So how does this work? This chaos theory? Well, in simple terms, think of a domino chain, you know, all the dominos standing on end… Think of multiple chains, criss crossing each other, merging, going around in circles… think of hundreds of these… all set up, all merged, crossed and entangled just waiting for something to tip one of the dominos. Now think of walking into a room (a Larger one) with all of this set up, you have just walked in, and all you can see is dominos standing on end, millions of them, at times you can see distinct chains, in other places it just looks like the dominos are stacked randomly. The fact is each one was placed there, the person who did it knew the intended pattern of it falling. Now think of a mouse on the hunt for food… it inadvertantly knocks one of the dominos before you have had a chance to look closely at the full setup. And the reactions start… domino’s fall… chains head off and start multiple other chains, and in a matter of 30 seconds the whole thing is over. There are still patches of dominos standing though… Ones that didn’t fall.
How does this explain Chaos Theory? Well, the person who set the whole thing up, knew almost exactly what would happen when he tipped the right domino. But! I hear you say, that mouse was a random event that triggered it incorrectly!!! Wrong… The mouse had a purpose, a goal. It was after food, why look for it in that room? Maybe that room, or warehouse floor was previously used to store foodstuffs. the mouse lived locally on those food stuffs previously, and was just out shopping for another meal. Just because the mouse was not part of the equation that the original domino setup guy thought out, doesn’t mean it was a random event.
Think of all the chains of domino’s… They were setup with a specific goal in mind, however when the mouse triggered them to start falling, they did not fall as they were originally calculated to. Some fell against their indended route, and the flow of events flowed backwards. Some cut off other events from happening. the fact is though, if you had the time, and the inclination, you could have calculated exactly what would have happened when that mouse bumped into a domino or two… Domino’s are easy… however physics and biology in life are far more complicated, but that by no mean negates the validity of the equations.
If you had the time and the inclination, you could work out the future. But! Remember the mouse… The event that wasn’t calculated, another equation in itself that externally effected the domino’s… Life has SO many criss-crossing equations running every which way, and ANYTHING will affect the equation you might be trying to work on… So, next time you think of something as random, think of what caused that so called random event to effect your life equation.
