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The Butterfly Effect

What Is It Anyway

By John WhyePublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 6 min read
Top Story - July 2022
31
The Butterfly Effect
Photo by Alfred Schrock on Unsplash

The Butterfly Effect is the theory that the smallest things can set a whole chain of much larger events into motion. It is a metaphor, an illustration that everything is interconnected and that the smallest thing, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can have an effect on much larger events.

We need to look no further than all the recent talk about the international supply chain crisis, and how a shortage of parts, labor, and lack of docking space is affecting the whole world. In our fragile world economy of today, we are dependent on the fast, reliable movement of goods from one end of the globe to the other on a reliable, timely basis.

When something, anything, happens to put a crimp in the supply chain, we are all affected. Products made in China or Japan, for example, can no longer be counted on to arrive in this country in a timely fashion.

We have all seen pictures on the media of gigantic container ships backed up outside of ports because of a shortage of dockworkers to unload them, or truck drivers to haul away goods already unloaded.

This not only produces a lack of goods arriving in a timely, predictable fashion but also causes inflation that drives up prices on such staples of modern life as computer chips for electronic toys, new cars, certain foods, and even coffee.

The demand is there, but the supply is missing. The items we need and want are “on the way” but not here yet.

I was visiting the Fisherman’s Wharf area at Pier 39 with my daughter and grandson recently and right before we began our visit on the S.S. Pampanito, an actual United States navy WWII submarine, the butterfly effect hit home.

The submarine is a genuine artifact from another time and place and a popular tourist attraction. When random fate struck down our plans, it was a manifestation of the butterfly effect.

At the exact same moment, the actual minute we were buying our tickets, we were shocked and unexpectedly denied entrance to the sub because of a sudden inexplicable total power outage in this heavily traveled tourist area.

Pier 39 and the Fisherman’s Wharf area is one of the most famous and heavily congested tourist attractions in San Francisco. It is world-famous, and people from all over the globe routinely visit there when they are visiting the city.

I have been going there, on and off, for over 40 years, and this had never happened. It was a total blackout of the entire Fisherman’s Wharf/Pier 39 complex.

Luckily it was mid-afternoon, so there was still plenty of daylight, but shop after shop, block after block, the stores that sold souvenir tee shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, and refrigerator magnets with the “I Love San Francisco” motto all had to close down.

No Wax Museum. No Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. No Alcatraz Gift Shop, Cable Car Store, no restaurants. Nothing.

There was no electricity to keep the lights on in the shops, no power to enable the merchants to process credit cards, ring up purchases, or make change for the customers, and no security cameras unless they were battery-powered.

And as it turned out, the whole weird incident was triggered by a totally freakish, completely unexpected source. The entire outage was eventually determined to be caused by a helium Mylar balloon that somebody, probably a small child, had released, most likely by accident.

The Mylar balloon then floated freestyle until it came into contact with overhead power lines several miles away from Fisherman’s Wharf. The local power company, PG & E stated that roughly 8,000 people were affected by the unexpected outage, which lasted for several hours.

It just goes to show you how the smallest things can set into motion a whole larger chain of events. This was a perfect example of how the butterfly effect works. A single small incident changes and influences the normal flow of a day, affecting the lives of thousands of people.

To me, this positive example of the ramifications of the butterfly effect just reinforce my long-held belief about the interconnectivity of all things on this planet earth we all share.

Everything is related to and has a significant effect on everything else.

You can apply this logic to the food chain and it stands up, from the smallest plankton on the ocean floor all the way up to the whales. You can apply it to the weather system and it holds up. All the naysayers who scoff about the negative impact of greenhouse gases affecting the very air we breathe are all being willfully blind.

The English physicist Sir Isaac Newton said it years ago: “For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. The evidence is right in front of all of our eyes, with all the bizarre, non-traditional weather patterns that have affected the entire planet over the last few years.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and forest fires are all falling upon us like some Biblical plague. They are occurring more frequently, with more intensity than ever before.

In California, forest fire season is now all year round. On the East coast, hurricanes are coming faster and hitting harder than ever before. Tornadoes are ravaging the Midwest in record numbers

Profits can never be excused as an excuse to upset the ever-so-delicate balancing act of Mother Nature. Yet the greedy, obscenely rich members of the 1%, who control 99% of the world’s wealth, will never admit anything is different.

They respond with homilies like “You can’t change the weather,” when the truth is they ARE changing the weather. And decidedly for the worse.

Because everything is truly connected. We cannot let these environmental idiots ignore results and reactions in the name of profits to make them even richer.

What kind of world are we leaving for our children? What kind of world are we already living in?

What happened to me and everybody visiting Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39 that day was a one-time temporary blackout caused by a freak accident with a Mylar balloon, one that seldom ever happens.

But that is just the point, it did happen. And it also proves the larger point, that anything can happen to anybody at any time because we are all so interrelated and connected that it is not the exception that proves the point; the exception IS the point!”

And to tempt fate by intentionally messing with planetary-wide systems like cutting down huge swaths of the Amazon rain forest, (sometimes referred to as the lungs of the planet), the release of industrial pollutants contributing to the greenhouse effect on worldwide weather patterns, messing with the food chain itself by dumping pollutants into the oceans is beyond foolish.

This is not only suicidal, it is downright criminally insane behavior.

It reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s quotation of an old medieval proverb.

For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost,

For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost,

For want of a horse, the rider was lost,

For the want of a rider, the battle was lost,

For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

We are all in this together.

Humanity
31

About the Creator

John Whye

Retired hippie blogger, Bay Area sports enthusiast, Pisces, music lover, songwriter...

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Comments (8)

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  • Diane Doraabout a year ago

    Very well written!

  • Excellent!

  • Toby Heward2 years ago

    Very well thought out and it does hold great amounts of credibility. Without the base, the rest of the tower of life comes crumbling down and causes problems for all. Keep up the great work, I loved this piece. Here is something you might find interesting if you have the time to read it. https://vocal.media/poets/run-of-the-river-army

  • Angela Shiflett2 years ago

    Amazingly KEEN perspective! Loved this piece! EXCELLENT work! Thank you so much for sharing!

  • Govardhan Pinni2 years ago

    Great one, John. Well, the ending with a beautiful poem. :)

  • Thank you for sharing this, John. Your personal account blended with the realities of our world epitomize the butterfly effect perfectly. May we collectively and mindfully flap our wings.

  • Della Lonaker2 years ago

    Well written. A vicious cycle we fight.. The beauty of the world in butterfly effect.. Exceptional talent.. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and thoughts.. -Della🦋

  • Jennifer True2 years ago

    Thought provoking and well tied together with the butterfly effect theory.

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