The Exponential Individual: Ripple effects of taking meaningful action

Despite living in a society where we are encouraged, demanded even, to express ourselves individually, through the clothes we wear, the cars we drive and even the people we choose to hang out with, there is a paradoxical tendency to dismiss the power each of us has as individuals to effect change. And yet we must believe in our power as individuals, because individual action is where each of us, as individuals, starts. But more than that, we must also remember that individual does not mean alone. Because there is a growing understanding that we are all interconnected, and the individual is just a point where these connections come together.

Many of us are familiar with the Butterfly Effect, the notion that the most seemingly inconsequential events (such as the beating of a butterfly’s wings) can end up leading to major weather events such as tornadoes. But this is far more than a pop-science concept, or a forgettable noughties movie. Rather, it speaks to the deep and even limitless interconnectivity of the world in which we live and the systems that underpin it.

This interconnectivity can be seen in the power of our social networks, as revealed in the work of social scientists James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis. Their research has uncovered that the choices we make as individuals have profound and far-reaching influence way beyond what seems intuitively plausible to us. Key life decisions and traits, such as whether we smoke or how much we exercise, can be felt up to three degrees of separation. That is, if a person is a smoker, their friends have a 45% chance of being smokers too, their friends’ friends have a 20% chance and their friends’ friends’ friends have a 10% chance. Similar effects can be seen in almost every aspect of our lives, from how we vote to whether or not we are happy.

But how many people are we talking about then? How many people are my decisions really affecting? Well, let’s say you have twenty social contacts (friends, family, colleagues etc) and each has a similar number of contacts. That means you are connected to 400 people by two degrees of separation and 8000 people by three degrees of separation. Suddenly, I am no longer an isolated individual pursuing personal goals which may end up affecting others. I am instead intimately and intricately bound up with a huge pool of people on the most important matters, on the most life defining things. And so it is not only that we should take heart that our influence is bigger than we had previously imagined. Rather, we should consider it a serious responsibility to make the right choices because we are THAT important. Far from being dwarfed by this responsibility, we should relish in the deep meaning that this can give our lives: we are truly in this together.

And if we ourselves are not isolated individuals, then neither are the actions we take; rather they echo endlessly into the actions of others. We might still fail to see how the apparently tiny choices we make, like whether to be vegan or vegetarian, or whether to quit long-haul flying, or whether to recycle, can really make a difference, can really change the world. But we must understand that actions, like most things in life, are symbols, and it is as symbols that they find their significance. When a sportsperson bends a knee and raises an arm, that doesn’t really do anything at all, in and of itself. But when it is understood as a symbol, protesting against hundreds of years of systemic oppression against black and minority groups, and when it is copied by hundreds of thousands of people of all colours and creeds across the world, suddenly that bended knee becomes something much more. Every action you take in the fight against climate change is a symbol of resistance to the decimation of our environment, and it can speak loudly however quietly you go about it.

You might argue that you are still too small. Not a sportsperson. Not a politician. Not an influencer. Not even exactly sure what TikTok is. But remember that a young Swedish girl, who had been so depressed about climate change that she couldn’t even eat, decided one Friday afternoon to go and stand outside the Swedish parliament and protest. Within one year her movement had gone global, and there were millions of children demanding a better future, leading to local and national governments declaring climate emergencies the world over. There was nothing obviously special about Greta Thunberg, other than her refusal to believe in her insignificance. Through the action this obliged her to take, she has achieved more than anyone could have thought possible. 

We are all butterflies, and the tornado we can make if we beat together may just create the winds that shape the world we want to see. So, take a tiny action today: open an ethical bank account, combine your pensions into an ethical fund, start a climate change initiative at your place of work, go vegan, cut down your air miles and offset your carbon footprint or plant some trees, and know that your actions echo much further than you might think.

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