I’ve long been interested and frustrated by written philosophy in equal measure. On one hand, the search for more accurate ways to look at reality that may result in a better understanding can be earth shatteringly interesting. On the other hand, the overly intellectual, abstract or often patronising way that it is presented frustrates me. I believe that the value of what is written is limited by how many people can actually understand it.

Demonstrating your intellect to fellow academics may gain the writer kudos, but to me seems self-indulgent and rarely serves to inform the masses, who are unlikely to read or understand what is written. This makes “understanding” an exclusive little club which leaves the masses religion as their opiate. Philosophy aimed at a more widespread audience is often patronising and seems to add a rose tint that I do not believe is required or helpful. You can tell me that I’m a unique and beautiful soul but that doesn’t provide me with many answers, is irrelevant, untrue (both unique and beautiful are relative terms), and only serves to temporarily prop my fragile ego.

So over the years I have read books and thought long about this existence of mine and through applying things that I have read to my own experiences I have, what I believe to be a coherent philosophy that I think reflects the truth. I realise that is a huge unwieldy statement, but I seek your indulgence.  The reason behind starting this blog was to get some of this stuff down on paper, even if it simply helps put it in order.

I would like to start with Chaos Theory, nice and simple! Although I should probably start a little further back by stating that I need proof, or at least I need a theory to be logical and align with my empirical experience. So that rules out God, Fate, Destiny, Santa, the Easter Bunny and many of the other leaps of faith that find their way into the theories of others. Maybe I will justify this in another post but for the sake of this one, I will leave it at that.

So, Chaos! You may have heard of the Butterfly Effect. This, a little tongue in cheek, states that a Butterfly can flap its wing in Tokyo and cause a hurricane in New York that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred. Put another way this explains that in a nonlinear system a small variance in input can, over a large enough distance and time result in a dramatic difference in output. The reason is that there are variables that affect other variables, and this became known in Chaos Theory rather unimaginatively, as “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”. This explains why long term weather prediction is impossible; we cannot possibly take account of every variable, and in fact we are one of the variables in the system we are trying to study. “Nonlinearity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules” (Gleick 1987). Sounds dull but bear with me.

Let’s present this in a way more appropriate to our daily existence. If our lives were linear, then I could reasonably assume that if finding $20 makes me a little happier, then winning $1 million would make me a 50,000 times happier. But our experience does not support this assumption. I know that although payday often makes me happy, there are other influences that can easily result in me being miserable on payday. In fact, there is a chance, and we have read many examples of this among lottery winners, that the $1 million can actually be the catalyst for misery!

This is because our existence is nonlinear. There are multiple influences on our lives and these can all affect our moods, happiness and every other variable. A change of boss could suddenly make a job that you have always previously enjoyed into a nightmare, or falling in love could suddenly make all of your lives ambitions seem meaningless. Just as the butterfly effect indicates, a small change in one influencing factor can and often does completely change the outcome of your life.

Put another way, how did you get here? Generally, and ignoring advances in modern medicine, two people, who you may or may not call your parents got together and had sex. So how did they meet? Was it in a pub, or maybe they were introduced by friends? It’s reasonable to say that had one or the other not met that particular friend or frequented that particular pub, for whatever reason they did, then you would not exist. And logically, we can also deduce that you definitely wouldn’t exist if the set of variables that led to your grandparents meeting and doing the dirty had been different and they had never produced your parents. And if your Great Grandparents had not met, and so on and so on.  When you think about the chain of cause and effect stretching back into time, the only slightly logical starting point from which to study the causal chain that produced you, is the Big Bang! And a small variance in one of the huge number of events in this chain would have very likely resulted in you not being you!

It’s at this point many people reach for their bible or Chakra Beads. This uncertainty is terrifying, and religion or some belief in fate or destiny provides some certainty where it doesn’t exist.

“This is all very interesting, but what difference does this make to my life?” I hear you ask, or I’m talking to myself. Well this to me demonstrates what little ability we have to determine the outcome of our own life. We make decisions, and then we fret and worry about ensuring that those decisions result in the way we planned, while in reality what we are doing at best is attempting long term prediction of a nonlinear system, which as mentioned previously is impossible. This is because you cannot possibly predict the variables that are around the next corner and you also have no idea what the result of the alternative decision would have been. At best we are “giving an extra shuffle to an already-well shuffled pack of cards. You know it will change your luck, but you don’t know whether for better or worse” (Gleick 1987).

But do not despair, there are patterns within this “Chaos” that we can and do use to make short to medium term prediction. I can make a fairly broad assumption based on anecdotal evidence, that if I inject myself with heroin tomorrow and the next day, there’s a good chance that my life will take a turn, and that turn will not be for the better. “Better” in this case is based on my existing set of values, which determine what experiences in life I predict will be of more value to me and those around me. Now that is not guaranteed, I may meet some interesting people among the drug using fraternity and learn some incredible truths that I would otherwise have missed out on. But we have to use something to make our predictions and probability based on experience is as good as any.

There are patterns within the chains of cause and effect that again we can use to establish probability and guide our daily lives. I know from experience, and can logically deduce that if I am rude and obnoxious to everyone I meet then I can expect a similar treatment in return. If I do not enjoy others being rude and obnoxious to me then such behaviour will result in my unhappiness. Again, it must be remembered that these are predictions and the opposite is still possible, my rude and obnoxious behaviour could attract a woman in that “couldn’t care less rock star” way and result in sex.

If we can’t possibly predict the long term outcome of our decisions with any accuracy, then what does that mean for our daily lives? Well for starters, worrying about the future becomes nonsensical. You just do not know, and so stressing out over this detail or that of our life is pointless. Failing Maths at school is one of a huge number of variables that will influence your life and happiness, and it must be viewed in that context. The same as not getting that dream job or splitting up with your partner. Yes these things will lead to short term misery, but they certainly do not mean you will never be happy again and there is value in the short term misery that should be welcomed.

Ultimately this realisation means that attempting to engineer particular outcomes is futile, but the reasoning, motivation or morality behind the decision becomes much more important. The “right” decision is the one which is intellectually and morally correct, not the one which I think will result in personal gain, because the personal gain is in no way guaranteed, but the decision making process, my motivation,  is within my control.

This is part 1 in a series of posts that I intend to write which will add more ideas and context to what is written above.