“Butterfly effect” directly references the study of weather: the beating of a butterfly’s wings can be the force that ultimately determines a hurricane. The general concept—that a perturbation so small it almost can’t be measured can determine the large-scale behavior of a system—applies to a host of other physical and social phenomena. It is sometimes called sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
The earth is dying and authoritarianism is ascending to make the absolute worst of ecological/climate collapse for the maximum number of people. The outcome of struggles being waged in our lifetimes will determine, in the most fundamental sense, the prospects for human and all other life in the conceivable future. Simultaneously, the conjoined global ecological-economic-political-system has never changed so rapidly on account of so many complex factors.
Butterfly Effect is of course so-named for the premise that actions by small numbers can have large impacts on our societies. However, it is also a general shout-out to complexity/chaos/systems theory, which searches for high-level descriptors to understand the behavior of systems so massively complex all their parts, and the interaction of those parts, can’t be described.
This is precisely the situation we find ourselves in. For instance, climate chaos threatens life and the time for meaningful intervention of any kind is miniscule. Climate chaos is also the product of interrelated forces which can be analyzed from infinite perspectives. The appropriate response is not to hastily contrive the perfect theory which correctly perceives every vicissitude of energy system feed-in tariffs and coal export economics in absolute detail. Nor is the appropriate response to ignore the mechanics altogether and organize our response solely on matters of principle and vague intuitions—we’ve seen far too much of this kind of politics. The appropriate response is to find the right details, to search for those points of intervention, those beautiful descriptors, which are adequately mechanistic to function but sufficiently abstract to characterize and influence the end behavior of the system.
It doesn’t matter if it’s ancient Greek pottery or punk rock: anytime we attempt to define something, we begin to constrain it, change its shape, and risk its destruction. Let us nonetheless attempt greater clarity at the particular system interactions, and subset of details, that Butterfly Effect assesses. These are: 1) The infrastructural and economic realities responsible for our current climatological-ecological crisis; 2) The institutional paradigms for responding to this crisis; 3) The responses to this crisis available to less concentrated forms of power, such as directly participatory democratic movements; 4) State suppression of people’s movements specifically, and also state violence generally. Obviously, these four themes are inherently and interrelated.
At the moment this description is being written, there are two texts being produced for this blog. These serve to characterize key elements of the overall approach.
One is on the use of decentralized emergency response network technology like Cell411 to respond to the rise of violence by white supremacists and the like in the US. It posits that the crisis of Trump may have mobilized sufficient numbers of people that they can be organized by immediate neighborhood; that strong local units of egalitarian political organization have a potent capacity to transform society overall; that technology like Cell411 can provide a mechanism for organizing and actualizing people’s general desire to defend vulnerable people from violence; and finally that in order for such technology to be adopted on a wide scale a social marketing campaign could be undertaken that is specific to our current political reality.
Note that their are infinite other details that can and should be addressed in organizing a response to street violence against vulnerable people. What numbers are necessary for unarmed people to intervene in a given scenario? How do we make sure to leave an attacker an exit when we confront them? When do we acknowledge a situation simply won’t de-escalate? But the assumption is that there are a few variables concerning the formation and functional deployment of networks which will have an outsized impact on the ultimate effect all our other efforts. Given limited time and infinite work, it suggests the very tangible project of disseminating information about Cell411 as a particularly useful set of details to focus on.
The other text currently underway is an introductory text to a larger series of documents relating to emissions reductions trajectories in the Pacific Northwest. The argument is essentially that those who concern themselves with the details of the mechanisms of “carbon management” possessed by governments and corporations, such as nonprofit organizations, have little capacity to fundamentally challenge the power of institutions, while those who do make fundamental power challenges often fail to be explicit enough about their decarbonization frameworks.
Whereas coalitions and even small groups often seize up in terror at the thought of having a detailed platform of this sort, the argument is essentially that movements should consider it healthy that there be a heterogeneous patchwork of different and detailed demands and visions. The focus then becomes on using the resources of a coalition—the time and expertise for specialized research for instance—to create rich frameworks from which different groups can present as strong of positions as possible which—even if they explicitly contradict one another—strengthen our collective goal of shifting the scope of conceivable action on climate, both within the halls of institutional power and without.
Again, rather than focusing on any given set of details about climate, the assumption is that there is a specific set of details, concerning how people organize and strategically orient, of disproportionate significance in giving us the capacity to do further work, and in determining the effects of that work. And again, the focus is on tangible, immediate efforts which have long-term aims of encouraging coherent decentralization, pluralism, and self-organization.
These are current projects and provide some measure of insight into what Butterfly Effect is; ultimately, however, it is undefinable because the work of fighting for a liveable world is fundamentally unknowable. Future materials could be related to direct action training or could be literary critique. This is not an effort to indulge scientific hubris and created a fixed schematic for social change. This is an effort to know what can be known, to be as rigorous and creative as possible, as we scream back at the darkness consuming our world and work urgently for ecologically grounded democracy.