Chapter Content
Okay, so, you know, chapter two, which, actually, I guess I'm calling chapter seven now… Anyway, it's all about how changing anything changes everything. And it really gets into this idea of individualism, which is… it's kinda a delusion, right? Especially when you consider how entangled we all are.
I mean, think about those moments in your life, those big turning points. Like, maybe you almost got into a car accident, or you, uh, you know, *didn't* get that job you really wanted, only to find something way better down the road. Or maybe you bumped into your future spouse at a coffee shop, completely by chance. You know, stuff like that. These are the kinds of moments we really focus on, because they’re clearly important. And we think, “Wow, what if that hadn't happened?” It's clear there was another path, you know?
But the thing is, we often see those moments as exceptions, right? Like, “Oh, that was just luck,” or, “That was a really rare thing.” We tend to think we're building our lives with these big, conscious choices that we're totally in control of. Like, choosing the right college, working really hard at that first job, finding the right partner. We think, "Okay, if I just nail these big decisions, everything else will fall into place." And, you know, we're constantly told that *we* are the solution to our own problems. Look at, like, any TED Talk or any self-help book, really.
And, yeah, that message resonates because we see our lives through this individualistic lens. It’s like, it's *my* life story, *my* decisions, *my* path, right? It's all about "Me, myself, and I."
But then, every now and then, you get this weird glimpse of how your path kind of collides with someone else's in a way you totally didn’t expect, and have no control over. And, you know, we call that luck, or coincidence, or even fate. But we write it off as, like, an anomaly. We think, “Okay, that’s just a weird thing that happened,” and then we go back to thinking we're mostly in control of our own destinies, like masters of our fate.
And this way of thinking, it's just so common. Like, it's basically unchallenged. It's just, "Yeah, that's how the world works."
But here's the kicker: It's a lie. It's the big lie of our time, I think. It's this delusion of individualism. We cling to it like, you know, like someone clinging to a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean.
Okay, so, to illustrate all this, there was this story. Back in the summer of 2022, there was this tourist, Ivan, in Greece. He was from North Macedonia. And he got swept out to sea. I mean, it was a tragedy. His friends called the coast guard, they searched and searched, but they couldn't find him. They declared him lost at sea, presumed dead.
But then, eighteen hours later, they found him. Alive! It was a miracle. He was telling them that he was about to give up and go under. But he saw a soccer ball floating in the distance. So he swam to it, somehow managed to grab onto it, and clung to it all night until he was rescued. That ball saved his life.
Okay, so, the story gets crazier. When Ivan's story hit the news, this mother of two boys recognized the ball. It was the exact same soccer ball her kids were playing with, like, ten days earlier! And one of them accidentally kicked it into the sea! They just shrugged it off, bought a new one, and forgot all about it. But, get this, that ball drifted for eighty miles and it converged with this drowning swimmer at exactly the right moment. So, without those kids kicking that ball, Ivan would've died. Crazy, right?
And it's kind of like, the real story of our lives is often written in the margins. Small details matter. Even the choices of people we’ll never meet can seal our fate. We just usually don’t see it so clearly. The problem is we think Ivan is some kind of weird exception. But he isn't. He just got a really, really clear look at what's happening around us constantly. We just ignore it, because we're blinded by this delusional idea that we're independent units in charge of our own lives.
The whole thing's like, like a tapestry, you know? A magical tapestry where every thread is connected. You tug on one thread and it affects the whole thing. And, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."
So, back in 1814, this French guy named Pierre-Simon Laplace was really wrestling with all of this. He was asking, "Why are we so bad at predicting the future? Why does the world always surprise us? Can we ever really understand why things change?"
Laplace built on the work of Isaac Newton. Before Newton, the world seemed so random, you know? Just total chaos. But Newton discovered these laws of physics that explained how things moved and behaved in predictable ways. It was a huge shift.
Before Newton, we blamed the gods for everything, right? But Newton was like, "Nah, it's all about the laws of physics." God maybe created the laws, but Newton showed us how those laws made the world tick.
So, Laplace had this idea. If the universe is like a clock, governed by laws, then if we could understand those laws, we could predict everything with total accuracy. I mean, think about it. Before Newton, figuring out how a billiard ball would move seemed like magic. But with Newton's laws, you could actually calculate it. So, could we do that with *everything*?
Laplace figured, everything is governed by these scientific rules. So, if you wanted to know if a billiard ball would go into the corner pocket, you'd need to know the physics, the weight of the ball, the force and angle of the hit. But you'd also need to know the tiny details, like the temperature in the room, or if there was a draft, or if there was chalk on the cue stick. But if you had *all* that information, Laplace figured you could predict exactly where the ball would end up.
And then he took it a step further. He said, "What if humans are just like billiard balls, too?" What if our lives are just bumping into each other, following the laws of nature?
So, Laplace came up with this thought experiment. Imagine this creature, he called it Laplace's demon, that knew everything. It would know every detail about every single atom in the universe, from every grain of sand to every bacterium. If that demon existed, Laplace said, it would see the future just as clearly as it sees the past. With perfect information, the world would hold no mysteries for it. The drifting soccer ball wouldn't surprise the demon because it would *know* the ball was coming when Ivan started panicking.
Now, not everyone bought into this idea. Some scientists and philosophers argued that the mysteries of the universe are just unknowable, that the future will always be a mystery, no matter how much technology we have or how many demons we imagine.
So, which is it? Do we live in a clockwork universe, or an uncertain one?
Well, about sixty years ago, this guy named Edward Norton Lorenz came along and gave us a clue. Lorenz was always fascinated by the weather. He ended up studying mathematics, but during World War II, he joined the army's weather-forecasting unit. He even, by chance, ended up being a key figure in the weather forecasting when Kokura, in Japan, got lucky with unpredicted cloud cover during a bombing run.
Even with the best minds and equipment, weather forecasting back then was mostly guesswork. After the war, Lorenz started testing why things happen, you know, the bigger picture.
In the 1960s, computers were really primitive. Lorenz built this simplified model of the weather, with just twelve variables like temperature and wind speed. In this little digital world, Lorenz was basically playing Laplace's demon. He could always know the exact measurements of everything. So, could he see the future?
One day, Lorenz decided to rerun a simulation. To save time, he decided to start it halfway through, using the data from an earlier run. He figured, if the conditions were the same, the weather would be the same. Same conditions, same outcomes.
But something weird happened. Even though he set everything up the same, the weather was totally different. He figured he must have made a mistake. But then he realized what happened: his computer printouts rounded the data to three decimal places. So, if the wind speed was 3.506127 miles per hour, the printout would show 3.506. When he plugged those slightly rounded values back in, he was always off by a tiny bit. And those tiny differences created massive changes.
And that's when Lorenz had this realization that changed everything. Even in a clockwork universe, with controlled conditions, tiny changes can make an enormous difference. Just by raising the temperature by a millionth of a degree, or lowering the pressure by a trillionth of a bar, the weather two months later could go from sunny to a hurricane. This is the butterfly effect: the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas.
Lorenz accidentally discovered chaos theory. The lesson was, even if Laplace's demon existed, it would have to be *perfectly* precise. Even if it was off by a single atom, its predictions would eventually be totally wrong. So, we now know a lot of systems are chaotic. They're so sensitive to their initial conditions that even though they follow logical rules, they're impossible to predict. Even today, with supercomputers, our weather forecasts are still unreliable. Microscopically small differences can lead to huge changes. As Sherlock Holmes said, "It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." Chaos theory proved him right.
Because of this, the universe will always seem uncertain to us, even random. No matter how advanced our technology gets, we'll never become Laplace's demon. If there's a clockwork universe behind everything, we'll never fully understand it.
Chaos theory also makes you think about your own existence. If a tiny change in wind speed can create storms later, what about your decision to, you know, sleep in for an extra five minutes instead of getting up right away? Are our lives ruled by insignificant choices and random luck? And if someone's vacation plans can affect whether a hundred thousand people live or die, then it's not just our snooze buttons we have to worry about. The snooze buttons and choices of eight billion other people are also influencing our lives, even if we can’t see it.
When you really think about it, we're all connected across time and space. Everything we do matters, because our actions can create ripples in the lives of others. We control way less than we think we do, because huge events can happen because of unexpected interactions that are almost impossible to predict.
It feels better to pretend that we're in control of an orderly world, of course. So, that's what we do. But the interconnectedness of everything is reality. It's what drives everything. We live in an intertwined world. And once you accept that, you realize that chance, chaos, and accidents play a huge role in why things happen.
There's no such thing as "noise," really. One person's noise is another person's signal. That's true for me, and that's true for you. Everything pivots on small details, always. We like to pretend it isn't true, but reality doesn't care what we think. We're all surfing on the ripples of others, like Ivan on his soccer ball.
What's true for individuals is also true for societies. You know, those big, unexpected events that really throw us for a loop? They're happening more and more because the world is becoming increasingly interconnected. A volcano in Iceland can strand millions of people. A ship stuck in the Suez Canal can mess up supply chains in dozens of countries. One person getting a new virus can shut down the whole world. It's a hyperconnected world.
And it's constantly changing, even if we can't feel it. You're changing right now, as you listen. You're aging, and the networks in your brain are changing as you hear each word. And even when you're not doing anything special, things are happening around you that will change your life later on. You just don't know it yet.
Scientists have known this for a long time. In a chaotic system, a small change in one part of the system creates unpredictable effects everywhere else. Nothing is truly independent. Everything is part of a unified whole.
Some people have experienced this in a really profound way: the astronauts who have seen the entire Earth from space. That view shifts your perspective instantly. They’ve been so moved by seeing how everything is connected, and how fragile our planet is.
We're stuck with our limited view of the world, usually. But when you expand that view, like the astronauts did, it becomes really clear that individualism is a mirage. Connection is what defines us.
At first, an intertwined world seems scary. Nobody wants to be told they're not in control, or that someone else's decision could ruin everything. But that's the way the world works. Even the decisions of people who are long dead continue to have an effect.
But that reality, for better or for worse, is not terrifying. It's kind of wonderful. It gives every moment a hidden meaning. It turns the individualist idea on its head. Rather than being in control when we make big decisions, even our smallest decisions matter, and they forever alter the world. There's scientific truth in William Blake’s poem: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.”
It's time to change how we see ourselves in the world. Our chaotic, intertwined existence shows us something amazing:
We control nothing, but influence everything.
Most people don't get this, because we're constantly told the opposite. The idea that we can tame the world is everywhere, especially in modern Western society. Our culture makes us feel like the main character, bending the world to our will. It is the delusion of individualism, amped up to eleven.
But, if that were true, we could ignore the ripples from other people's decisions. But then, every so often, we get hit with a story like Ivan and the soccer ball. For a moment, the myth of individualism breaks down. But then we just shrug it off and keep living the lie.
Western modernity has created simplified myths to explain how change happens, like separating individuals acting on their own. It’s become so normal, that saying, "Actually, we're all completely intertwined" makes you sound like some New Age guru instead of someone stating a fact.
Our modern ideas simplify the complexity of reality, so we can cram it into little boxes that feel manageable. Those boxes replace uncertainty with certainty, chaos with order, and an intertwined world with one ruled by rational people making independent choices. Those boxes comfort us. Humans like simple stories, where X causes Y, not where a thousand factors combine to cause Y. We focus on big changes to explain big events, ignoring the small things that add up. We even put nature in its own box, treating it as a place to hike, instead of seeing ourselves and nature as a unified whole.
Our language even shows this. Alan Watts pointed out that we say we came *into* the universe when we were born, when really we came *out* of it, as a collection of rearranged atoms. Everywhere you look, there are flaws in this paradigm, especially the idea that the tiny things in life can be ignored. Our Western culture has made it easy to ignore how connected we really are.
Not everyone has bought into individualism, though. There's a basic split in philosophy, between the atomistic and the relational view of the world. The atomistic view says we're separate, like atoms that make up matter. Study the parts, not how they interact. The relational view says we're only understood as part of something bigger, that our identities are defined socially and within nature. The connections between things are what matter most.
This divide between East and West might come from zoology. In Genesis, God says humans have dominion over the animals. That seemed true to people in the Middle East and Europe, where animals seemed very different from us.
But in many Eastern cultures, religions emphasized our unity with nature. Maybe because they lived among monkeys and apes. We recognized ourselves in them. They were part of nature, and nature was part of us.
Whatever the reason, the relational and atomistic divide shows up in religion. Hindus refer to Brahman, the total unity of everything, versus atman, the individual soul that only *thinks* it's separate. Hindus call individualism a delusion. Buddhists seek "nonself," which is the opposite of individualism. Many indigenous cultures have similar ideas.
Christians used to think this way, too. Early Christians saw God as part of nature, not separate from it. But by the Enlightenment, God had become a separate agent, someone Newton saw as skilled in mechanics.
Modern Christianity often focuses on the unique self, and on praying for divine intervention from a separate God. And this has influenced American culture, with the idea that anyone can show their godliness through hard work.
Over time, individualism has been reinforced because we've lost our connection to nature. We see ourselves as above everything else. Hunter-gatherers were ignorant of science, but they understood nature better. We have deep, but narrow, expertise. If you were stranded on a tropical island, you'd be better off with someone from ancient Rome than with most modern professionals.
Modern humans only master a tiny piece of the world. But by working together, we've unlocked potential that was unimaginable before. That was the great thing about reductionism, where you break things down to understand them. But the more we focus on the parts, the easier it is to ignore the connections. Reductionism has been useful. It has helped us make amazing progress. But we've focused so much on what is useful, that we've forgotten what is true. Connections matter as much as the components. The more science looks at individualism, the less it holds up.
Even the scientific idea of "an individual" is changing. Some biologists call humans "holobionts," which includes the core host (us) and all the organisms living in and around us. We're a collection of human cells combined with microorganisms, like bacteria and viruses. There are more bacteria in our gut than stars in our galaxy. Viruses affect our clocks, parasites alter our thoughts, and our microbiome can cause mood disorders. So, scientifically, we've never been singular.
This flies in the face of everything we think we know. But this philosopher named Derek Parfit created a mind-bending scenario that shows the flaws in how we see individuals. Imagine you had the world's smallest tweezers, that could grab just one cell at a time. You go into an operating room with someone else. The surgeon starts swapping cells, one by one, between the two of you.
It's easy to see the extremes of this. Swap one cell and you're still you. But if you swap *every* cell, it's absurd to say you're still sitting in the same chair. Someone who looks and feels exactly like you is now in the other chair. But the question is, at what point do you stop being you? When 30 percent of your cells have been replaced? How about 50.1 percent? There's no clear answer.
When you really look at it, individualism is a flawed idea that crumbles under pressure. But thankfully, recognizing this helps us glimpse some comforting truths about how we really fit into the world. Parfit concluded that recognizing our interconnected existence is liberating, even uplifting.
He said his life used to seem like a glass tunnel, and when he changed his view, the walls of the tunnel disappeared. Other people felt closer, and he cared more about their lives. Understanding the relational nature of reality changes how we experience the world, for the better.
Many unexpected things follow from realizing our chaotic, connected reality. We will explore them together, to solve some of the biggest questions about why things happen. Along the way, we may start thinking differently about our origins, our societies, our lives, and even change itself.
So, we're going to ask these six questions:
Does everything happen for a reason, or does stuff just happen?
Why do tiny changes sometimes have huge impacts?
Why do we hold onto a storybook version of reality, even if it's not true?
Can't we just tame chance with better data and models?
Where do these chance occurrences come from, and why do they blindside us?
Can we live better lives if we embrace the chaos of our world?
The answers to these questions show that small, accidental changes, these flukes, are far more important than we think. We're all bobbing on a sea of uncertainty, even when we think we're swimming straight. That means we live in a world that is far more accidental than we want to believe. And this fragility goes all the way back, even, to the biggest fluke of all time, billions of years ago.