I am endlessly fascinated by causal chains.
The opening lines to Carl Menger’s treatise on economics, “Everything is subject to the law of cause and effect” gives me chills.
It’s easy to get lost in mystery and complexity and turn every search into a competition between ideologies and emotions, prophecies and predictions, wishes and delusions, optimism and pessimism.
The perpetual presence of cause and effect underneath it all is reassuring. It gives solidity to an otherwise topsy turvy world.
This doesn’t mean they’re easy to discover, but the more you can identify causal relationships, the better you get at planning and navigating the world.
Much easier than discovering causal relationships is activating them in your life.
You can never know all the variables that will enter the picture. But you can become the kind of person who better deals with any kind of variable.
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” — F.M. Alexander
You can’t plan every step in your causal chain. But you can build causes that lead to desired effects. You can’t control from the present the end-state in the future. But you can control the seeds and water that will grow into that end-state.
When you plant apple seeds and water them, you don’t know the exact size and shape the tree will become, let alone its fruit. But you do know that apple seeds, if given decent soil, nutrients, and protection from pests, grow into apple trees.
If you create a store of good habits – good causes – you will see good effects, even if the details remain a surprise.