Cause and effect

Our brains are storytelling machines. Whatever is happening around us, our minds fabricate stories to make sense of the world. We can’t help it. Most times, these stories are very simple. A happened, causing B. Or: A will cause B.

“The war in Ukraine will cause an energy crisis in the West”

“It’s the fault of the immigrants”

“Veganism will save the world”

“Capitalism caused the climate crisis”

“If we just build more houses, the housing problem will be solved”

Simple stories, easy to understand. But that doesn’t make them true. In reality, nothing has a single cause and nothing has a single effect. The universe doesn’t work like that, except maybe only on a very small scale.

On the human and societal scale, cause and effect are much more complex and often hard to distinguish from each other. I went shopping today with my family. Did we go to the store because we needed to buy something? Or did we buy something because we were in the store?

The world is not linear. There are no simple lines from A to B. But that’s too hard for our brains to comprehend. So they will just continue to see simple stories in everything.

I got the idea for writing this blogpost from reading the news today. At least, that’s the story my brain is telling me. But to be honest, I don’t really know why I wrote this.