TLDR: Everything happens for a reason, and identifying the reason why something happened often necessitates analyzing the order of cause and consequence.
Cause-Effect; Things Happen for Reasons
Most of my life I wandered through this world believing that “life” was just a chaotic fun-house where everything happened for no rhyme or reason. I was wrong. Everything happens for a reason– just not in the lofty, intangible, metaphysical, “mysterious ways” perspective that most people adopt. After years of observing myself, carefully examining my behavior and decision making, along with observing the people around me– I’ve come to realize and accept that not only does every “thing” happen for a reason, the reasons that things happen are actually firmly grounded in reality.
The “reason” is the cause, the “thing that happens” is the effect. Take a flashlight for example (heads-up: I’ll use a flashlight analogy repeatedly, so pay attention). You’re holding a flashlight in your hand and you want to use it to illuminate a dark room. What do you do? Simple, press the “on” button. The cause or rather, the “reason why the thing happened”– is pushing the flashlight’s “on” button. The effect or rather, the “thing that happens”– is illuminating a dark room. Push the “on” button to illuminate the dark room; cause and effect. But is cause and effect really that simple? Of course not. The example only works when it operates on several assumptions.
Let’s expand the analogy and make it a little problematic. Pretend you just lost power, and the only option to illuminate the dark room is a flashlight. You push the “on” button (the cause of your anticipated effect), but the flashlight doesn’t turn on. Now, wait a second, the “on” button is supposed to turn on the flashlight…but it’s not working. The cause isn’t generating the effect. Why not? Well, you pressed the “on” button expecting light while operating under several assumptions, things like…
>>The flashlight has a battery with enough energy to power the lighting element.
>>The flashlight was manufactured for longevity, and the internal components (like the on/off switch, circuit board, etc.) should not be subject to failure.
>>The flashlight has never been exposed to conditions or situations that might cause it to sustain damage that could result in component failure.
The reality of the flashlight analogy is that there are in fact several causes, several “reasons” that contribute to the effect, the “thing that happens” – the flashlight turning on, or not. When something doesn’t work you do one of two things
accept it and move on with life, exploring other options
figure out why it’s not working and then figure out how to make it work.
There is no “right” answer in this decision, the option that makes the most sense changes on a case by case basis.
Pretend for a moment that you decide to figure out why the flashlight isn’t working. The first thing you’re most likely to check is the battery, does it have enough energy? Well, turns out the battery is dead. So what’s the next logical step? Use a battery with enough energy to power the lighting element of the flashlight. That’s fine, you have plenty of extra batteries in a kitchen drawer. But, wait, as it turns out, the battery is a permanently installed rechargeable battery, and it simply ran out of charge. So you can’t replace the battery, the only option is to plug it into a charger, and if there is no charger available you’re simply stuck in a dark room not being able to use the flashlight. And so you huff and puff that you’re stuck in the dark (or maybe you just sigh and take a nap).
The reason the flashlight didn’t turn on, the cause, was because the battery was dead. Right? Well, maybe it was a broken switch. Maybe it was the lighting element. Maybe it was something else entirely. At any rate, the anticipated effect, the outcome, the “thing that happens” didn’t happen because pushing the “on” button wasn’t the only cause that was contributing to the effect. There were other influencing variables at play.
Backchaining Cause and Consequence
I’ll come back to the flashlight analogy in a bit, but first– a primer on orders of cause and consequence, starting with orders of consequence. Within the paradigm I’m presenting, it is important to make a distinction between effects and consequences. An effect and a consequence are both events (things that happen), the difference is (at least within this paradigm) “consequence” implies that an event occurs with a discernible connection to other events, and in a specific order; whereas “effects” are events that occur in a vacuum, and are chaotic with no discernable connections (or so it would seem).
Let’s lock-in on order of consequences. If you are unfamiliar, order of consequences is a concept that is used to identify a series of events that happen as a result of a single initial cause. The first order consequence is the most immediate outcome generated by the initial cause. The second order consequence is an event that occurs as a sort of “side effect” of the initial cause. Third order consequence and beyond are events that occur on a long-term time horizon, and in a broad scope of influence, both of which increase as the order of consequence progresses. Here’s a story about Jim to illustrate this…
Jim has a sugar addiction. He starts his day with 3 donuts and a caramel mocha frappuccino. He slams a sleeve of oreos with his lunch, and chases it with a liter of cola. He gets home and snacks on snickers bar, pops a can of soda, and after dinner he wraps up his night with half a pint of ice cream. That’s a lot of sugar. But then one day, Jim goes to his doctor and the doctor says, “Jim, if you keeping eating sugar the way you do, you’re gonna get diabetes”. After thoughtful contemplation, Jim decides to prioritize his health and cut out sugar from his diet entirely. He throws away everything that has processed sugar, commits to not eating sugar, and actually follows through with it. Here’s is a possible order of consequences he could experience…
First order- Lethargy, low mood, and brain fog
Second order- Reduction of blood sugar spikes and crashes
Third order- increased energy and vitality; inspires more active lifestyle
Fourth order- weight loss and healthier metabolism
Fifth order- Higher self-esteem as a result of “health gains”
Sixth order- Meets dream girl at the gym and they falls in love
Seventh order- Gets married, has kids, and coaches them in sports
All of this as a ripple effect of consequences yielded from one initial cause– Jim made the decision to quit eating sugar when his doctor told him he was at risk of developing diabetes. But if you take a closer look, you can also see that one event in the order of consequences is also a causal influence for another event. Enter– backchaining cause and consequence.
The typical conception of cause and consequence involves two data points, the consequence and the most obvious and apparent cause. In Jim’s case, quitting sugar was the cause, losing weight was the consequence. But when you begin backchaining cause and consequence, you expand the scope of analysis to consider more than just two data points. Beginning with the final consequence, and tracing the series of events back to an initial cause.
The final consequence in this example, Jim had kids with his dreamgirl wife, and coached them in sports. Approaching her in the gym was an influential cause of them falling in love, and a consequence of Jim having greater self-esteem. Having greater self-esteem was an influential cause of approaching the dreamgirl at the gym, and a consequence of “health gains” that came from an active lifestyle. The active lifestyle was an influential cause for greater self-esteem, and a consequence of increased energy after quitting sugar.
Had Jim not made the decision to quit sugar, he might not have ended up in the gym where he met his dreamgirl wife. If you zoom out far enough, and back-chain the series of events for certain life experiences, you’ll see a very clear picture of the reason why some “thing that happened”, happened the way that it did.
Thanks for reading, I hope the was a good use of your time and attention.
I’ll catch ya on the next one…
-David
ps: This is an excerpt from a larger piece of work. You can find the whole thing by clicking [this link]
pps: you can find the video companion to this article by clicking [this link]