Cause and Effect: Where Does It Begin?

Chris is driving his car down a side street when, without warning, a dog runs into the road a few yards in front of him. There is no way he can stop in time without harming the animal. In an effort to avoid killing the dog, he swerves to the right, only to notice that there is a group of small kids directly in his new path. In a frantic effort to avoid hitting them, he swerves further right where he eventually smashes his car into a fire hydrant. Nobody is killed, but Chris is left paralysed from the waste down due to these events.

The owner of the dog that caused this accident is so distraught about hearing that the young man is now paralysed, and after being consumed by feelings of guilt decides to take her own life the next day. The dog becomes stray and is eventually picked up by a shelter. The new owner treats the dog very badly and constantly abuses him. While taking the dog for a walk, the dog attacks and kills a young child. The parent of the child is so overcome with rage and disbelief, that he picks up a brick and throttles the dog and the owner of the dog to death.

The parent is charged with murder and sentenced to 20 years prison. The wife of the husband sent to jail becomes so distressed at the whole situation that she develops a serious alcohol dependency. While out drinking one night, she ends up getting behind the wheel, crashing her car into a lake and dying. The police officer that discovers her car in the lake is a widow, his wife having died in similar circumstances a few years earlier.

Pulling her body from the wreckage triggers deep wounds caused by his PTSD condition. He snaps. After locating the address of his deceased wife's former boyfriend (who first introduced her to alcohol), he heads over and shoots the man in cold blood before turning the gun on himself. The former boyfriend is the father of Chris (the driver at the beginning of the story). Upon hearing the news of his father's death, Chris falls into a deep depression from which he never recovers.

Now I expect most people would say something like "an unfortunate series of events where no single person should be blamed, but all those who did something bad should still take personal responsibility for their actions." This appears to be the most reasonable and balanced commentary on the events. But this is boring and doesn't encourage us to think deeply about life and the existence of cause and effect phenomena.

What I am interested in doing is exploring the different sequences of cause and effect moments that led to these unfortunate series of events. Could this unfortunate series of events have been altered in some way by differing actions of each person in response to the negativity they were experiencing? Could everything that followed have been avoided had the owner of the dog kept the dog securely in her property? After all, Chris would never have had to swerve his car if it were not for that dog running in the road.

Or did the fact that Chris became paralysed cause the owner of the dog to take her own life? After all, if he did not become paralysed as a result of the accident, she would have not taken her own life. In addition, if those children were not there, Chris would have escaped the ordeal with minor injuries. There are so many angles to consider!

Is there a causal link joining all of these events, or do they appear that way due to coincidence and hindsight?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Or did the fact that Chris became paralyzed cause the owner of the dog to take her own life?

No. She was looking to kill herself anyway, only needing someone or something else to blame.

If a dog causes Chris to crash his car thats cause and effect due to happenstance. It isn't by chance that someone ends their own life.

a reply to: intrptr

I can appreciate your perspective, but it was not my intention to make this a thread about suicide and the complexities that accompany wanting to end one's own life. This is more a thread about finding where cause and effect starts and where it ends.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

This is more a thread about finding where cause and effect starts and where it ends.

It ends with the crash.

Or did the fact that Chris became paralyzed cause the owner of the dog to take her own life?

No, the car crash did not cause her to die. She caused her to die.

You're talking about the Butterfly Effect, where there is no happenstance, but a progression of events caused by the one before it in a chain of reaction. Her choice was her own.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Now I expect most people would say something like "an unfortunate series of events where no single person should be blamed, but all those who did something bad should still take personal responsibility for their actions." This appears to be the most reasonable and balanced commentary on the events. But this is boring and doesn't encourage us to think deeply about life and the existence of cause and effect phenomena.

Is there actually anyone who can be responsible?
Are you responsible for your next thought even? Do you even know what your next thought is going to be?

Take a really close look at how things happen.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Are you responsible for your next thought even? Do you even know what your next thought is going to be?

Yes. Hopefully people think before they act. That video claims that thinking isn't our own. To some extent, depending on conditioning, yah. But hopefully we review our choices before acting upon them.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

In a practical sense, Chris was a bad driver. He should have simply jammed on the brakes and stopped short.

Or, we can approach it from another direction: You are working with a version of the so-called "butterfly Effect." Which, I suppose, can work just as easily stemming from thought processes that eventually have physical repercussions in the real world if carried to that extreme.

So in a final, off-the-cuff analysis, Chris' mother shouldn't have given into that urge for intercourse that one particular time that caused him...or the Sun shouldn't have ignited way back when....

a reply to: Dark Ghost

If you add the possibility of retrocausality, effect can precede cause.

Maybe Chris was depressed because he noticed that his father had introduced alcohol to his girlfriend hence causing his initial drive that set everything in motion.

a reply to: intrptr

Yes. Hopefully people think before they act.

You are not getting it - when you realize that there is no you doing anything you will find that this is what happens.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

You are not getting it - when you realize that there is no you doing anything…

Thats an excuse to justify ones behavior, sorry.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

The first cause is where a chain of events begins. And all chains of events lead back, in some fashion, to the beginning of the universe, at which point out understanding of cause and effect in the subatomic world is bought in to try and plug the gap in our knowledge of things.

The Big Bang, or something very much like it, would appear to be the cause of all of these things, is an event without which none of them would be possible.

a reply to: TrueBrit

That woud seem to eliminate randomicity though, dont you think?

a reply to: EternalSolace

I think that is a very black and white view to take of the universe and the progression of events. Just because an event can be traced backward through the interactions on both the macro, and subatomic scale, to the beginning of the universe, does not meant that the event was not in many ways random.

It is predicting random events which is tricky. Once they have happened however, it is possible to bring to light the chain of causality which lead to them in most instances.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Sometimes things are going to happen no matter what decision is made and somethings can change the way a person decides to react and sometimes if you left the house one second before or after, the thing that did happen might not have happened at all.

Why did Chris leave? Where was he going? Why did he choose that exact moment to leave? Those people involved can be asked the same questions?

There is synchronization involved and some is random, some were intended to be affected that day and some were by free will choices of others.

Then there is the aftermath, we do not always know the reason right away. Individuals each have different lessons to learn in life and not everything that happened was bad, sometimes what we think is bad is a very valuable lesson to learn.

We may not like the lesson, but it is up to us to figure out what we gain from them.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

it begins where it ends

originally posted by: TrueBrit

I would almost think that a random event that occured 100 or even 1000 years ago, removes all randomicity from the following chain of events. Though, any chain of events in progress could be broken by a random act which would cause another chain of events. But is that random act really random, or was is predicted from the preceding chain of events.

No idea if I'm making sense, but it is what it is.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

It's all in the "plot" of this virtual reality construct, you can't change something over which you have no control. Therefore there is no happenstance, no coincidence... There is only enemy action. "Ride the bus" and play/observe your part in the movie, it's all you can really do.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Very interesting thought provoking topic. Great early Sunday read. Thank you.

Are you familiar with theoretical physicists David Bohm's work?

en.wikipedia.org...

Any way, he proposed a theory years ago called: The Bullet That Killed Lincoln

The Bullet That Killed Lincoln.

If you asked someone what caused Abraham Lincoln's death, they might answer that it was the bullet in John Wilkes Booth's gun. But a complete list of all the causes that contributed to Lincoln's death would have to include all of the events that led to the development of the gun, all of the factors that caused Booth to want to kill Lincoln, all of the steps in the evolution of the human race that allowed for the development of a hand capable of holding a gun, and so on, and so on.

Bohm conceded that most of the time one could ignore the vast cascade of causes that had led to any given effect, but he still felt it was important for scientists to remember that no single cause-and-effect relationship was ever really separate from the universe as a whole. ~ Holographic Universe By Michael Talbot - published 1991

Is there a causal link joining all of these events, or do they appear that way due to coincidence and hindsight?

Yes, there is always a hidden hand...weaving synchronicity (often unnoticed). I believe it is the Subconscious Mind.

A kabbalist is able to perceive the fluidity (synchronicity) of seemingly random events where others cannot. To answer your post: It was the development of the human thumb that was the cause of it all...when viewed from Earth perspective.

Could this unfortunate series of events have been altered in some way by differing actions of each person in response to the negativity they were experiencing?

Perhaps....but, it did not happen. So, what is the cause(s) of this event and what are the effects?

Effects often become Causes...and Causes often become Effects....

a reply to: TrueBrit

I agree. The law of cause and effect clearly demonstrates that there is no such thing as chance, nor can randomness be proven, not even mathematically. It is a superficial concept (X) that helps scientist and mathematicians fill in gaps in theories and equations.

OP, I think you are reading too much into this.

Example: If I smoke cigarettes, I might die of lung disease. (Cause and effect)

If I go outside at work to smoke and am hit by a bus that runs up on the curb, that is just a random event.
Most things are random events.

You can try to deduce every little thing that happens to cause and effect, but it would never be clearly established, and you would drive yourself crazy in the process.