Chaos Theory

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This is the first time I’ve published my Chaos Theory although all my family and friends are well acquainted with my ideas.

My theory on chaos is that when it appears that everything is going to pot, it’s usually going to be due to one person or a small group of people.

I first noticed this one Fall evening at San Diego State University.  I visiting a friend there and noticed what sounded like a small caravan of really loud motorcycles.  It wasn’t a sound that was too out of place at a University but I was curious and peeked out to see what was going on.  It was one guy on a Harley.  A few minutes later I heard the rest of the caravan and looked out and it was the same guy.  What I thought was a caravan was just one dude driving around the block, over and over again.

To some degree we are all familiar with this.  Whether it’s the loud obnoxious guy in the subway, the giggling spoiler at the movies, or the irritable co-worker who’s had way too much coffee, one person can alter a much larger environment.  And they do.

I had an instructor during an High Performance Management course during my MBA program, who made a point of this during class.  One of the students kept objecting to watching a video on Who Moved My Cheese.  As we started watching the video, Kurt interrupted,  "I’ve already seen this video at work and it’s stupid.  Do we really have to watch this?"  The instructor told him that he had used the video before and that there is a point to make.  "I can’t believe I’m paying good money to sit here and watch this bad video again," interjected Kurt. 

This goes on for a bit and no one can pay attention to the video with Kurt making a ruckus.  Then Travis steps in and tries to calm him down until Kurt is ready to smash Travis.  Now, I had Kurt and Travis in my class group and know that it’s not too unlike Kurt to get unwound by something like this.  So I believe what’s going on and follow the two outside where they are supposedly going to "figure things out."  Of course it’s just an act.  We let things like that go everyday.  Other people’s bad behavior does affect us.  Luckily, the opposite is also true.

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