Chaos Theory and Happiness?

Back in July, 2003 the British Medical Journal published Sars and Decompression Sickness: the butterfly effect?. The account was written by Dr. Colin Wilson of Oban and is one of the most interesting accounts of the chaos theory or butterfly effect that I've ever come across.

Very succinctly and elegantly, Dr. Wilson argued that SARS had led to an increase in decompression sickness in scallop divers around the West Coast of Scotland.

A man sneezes in a crowd in China. SARS becomes a health problem. The people of Japan stop going out socially. Japanese restaurants have a downturn in their trade with a reduction in the demand for the delicacy razor-shell fish. Razor-shell fish divers in the West Coast of Scotland no longer have a market so start diving for scallops. Scallop diving is much deeper. Divers get decompression sickness (DCS).

With the end result being that Dr. Wilson and his colleagues were dealing with more cases of DCS than usual.

I was reminded of this when working with the children and carers in a recent workshop. The children spoke across a wide range of topics, from their best friends and what they might have for dinner through to alarming snippets of information that they had picked up from news programmes, and the concerns of some of them that they were too fat or not good-looking. These were children between 2-4 years old, some of whom had obviously seen trailers for the radical make-over programmes that are on television: some of which seem to be on during the day. Some of the adults and children were talking about both Bird Flu gloal warming and what the impact of that might be. Adults were also talking about their own concerns and apprehensions about the future.

I recently wondered how we might put a dent in FEAR or False Experience Accepted as Real. And, like with the above account of SARS and DCS, it seems that events with no obvious links can combine to cause unanticipated effects. The cumulative effect of local and global events can lead to a sense of apprehension about safety and undermine self-confidence. However, in the same way as events can combine to have these unintended negative effects, it must be possible for events to support positive emotions. We can remember that in the same way that most of us need to work at maintaining our physical fitness and stamina, we need to work at cultivating our mental resilience and emotional stamina.

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project