Negativity Cascade

I had a complete idea, a full blown concept that came to me one night in that strange state between dreaming and waking. The seed of the thought was that a slight change sometimes makes a major effect. This is not always a domino effect, where a small initial change trips a continuous line of events, cumulating in a long series of results, although that is one example. I’m talking about how a small impetus results in an out of proportion effect.

I had recently had a few examples of cascades described to me. The first were studies that revealed historical major shifts in climate. Sometimes these shift would be towards an ice age, other times toward a warming trend. Scientists often could not tell which direction a massive shift would go toward due to a particular stimulus. For years, scientists tried to create climate models that simulated the temperature trends. Small assumptions or tiny changes would cause wildly fluctuating results. At first, they assumed these models were not correct. When the models got much better, they realized that climate changes can sometimes happen catastrophically. This was unexpected, as climatologists and early theorists had always assumed that the climate was mostly stable. They believed that when there were climate changes, they were like lumbering giants that took a long time to turn around or change direction.

There is a similar small impetus/large effect seen in the expression of genes. Sometimes a master gene can be switched on, and a whole series of processes are turned on at once. In genetics, this is often referred to as a cascade effect and is brought on by the action of some master gene. For example, there have been many reports recently about a gene called FOXP2 that is said to be a language master gene, able to start several other genetic processes when it is switched on.

This cause and effect phenomenon could also be visualized as being like an avalanche. While an avalanche is a catastrophic effect, it is a perfect example of a small originating event with a large result. Obviously, if the small action is intended and the big result is the goal, then the phenomenon is not catastrophic. The situation is not necessarily detrimental, unless deliberately unleashed on someone with that intent. Examples of this would be winning a sporting event by throwing your opponent off their game, or winning a battle by getting momentum over your opponent and overrunning them. Nathan Bedford Forrest called this “getting the skeer (scare) up” when used in battle, and he was a master of orchestrating devastating defeats over foes that outmanned and outgunned him. With equal measures of deception, bravado, and quick and decisive blows that were landed and continued while an opponent was off-balance, he was usually able to cause his enemies to collapse or flee a battle.

These examples are about a single cause and effect, or a concerted effort and the results. The cascade concept also applies to the balance of a system and what it produces. When a system tries to operate in a slight imbalance, it can deliver consistent poor results or quickly spiral out of control. When a system, process, or organization is tilted in one direction, it is very difficult to make it run in the other direction, or even straight. If you’ve ever had a car with the steering out of alignment, or driven on a freeway in a strong cross wind, you know what I’m talking about. You have to continually correct the steering in order to just go straight.

Originally, I was thinking about the imbalance being in a individual’s personal attitude. There are people out there that are negative, but only because of a slight tilt, a slight skew or leaning toward the darker side of things. Saturday Night Live makes fun of this type of person by creating an extreme version of it in the character of Debbie Downer. This character is the type of person that can suck the joy out of any and every situation. There are many average people that tilt this way slightly. I was recently scanning an article in a self-improvement magazine that was one of those advice pieces about how you should get all the negative people out of your life so they don’t drag you down. At the time, I thought about how heartless this is, as many people will go through occasional hard times, and when they do, the worst thing that can happen to them is that their shallow friends bail out on them during their time of need. I think a reasonable person that read the article would not start sorting their friends by this criteria, and weeding them out if they weren’t always perky all the time. A reasonable person would interpret it as saying that when you choose someone as a friend, do not pick those that are always down all the time. I’m sure other people's negative or positive tilt can impact your attitude, but I was thinking it is much better to be aware of these leanings and seek to be the kind of person that can re-adjust those around you to a more positive tilt. Whether raising people’s moods with humor or just listening to a friend when they are depressed, the goal should be to help your friends feel better without letting them bum you out, too. I wonder if this is naïve. Does it work to just listen to someone, and thus improve their mental balance?

I remember a very depressing time in my life when I was young and married, overseas in the Army. My (then) wife seemed determined to be in a foul mood all the time. One day, I realized what was going on and told myself that I was not going to let her drag me down into her depression. I went home determined not to react as I normally did, not to let her depression infect me. I had to do this by attempting to mostly ignore her. She noticed that something was different and that I was not reacting normally, matching her gloomy mood. By the end of the evening, this cumulated in her shaking me and screaming in my face, "I'm miserable and I'm taking you with me!" That may be one extreme of the situation, but the question is how to teach people to notice that no one wants to be around you, and realized it's because you bum them out.

I was listening to a podcast about an early psychologist that had a bad upbringing and a family history of what would probably be diagnosed as psychiatric problems. This person studied the human condition and came up with the idea that you can self-correct any mental defect by force of will and habit. It seems to me that he might be right. My wife said it was the definition of cognitive therapy. I was thinking efforts to balance yourself and become more positive would also come from practicing meditation. I’ve often wondered if meditation can really help you (in a provable and repeatable way – something that could be studied and measured scientifically). In one respect, achieving balance through meditation would be nothing more than leveling out one’s mental field, correcting an imbalance, and staving off any future cascade.

What about permanently gloomy people? Do they exist? People that would be called incurables? What about permanently happy people? I remembered the Friends episode where a dull party was going on and they called in someone they knew, but didn’t hang out with. He was called Happy Sam or something like that. The point of this story was that they were calling on this guy to tilt the perspective of the entire group, and he just happened to be really depressed, so it was the worst thing to add to the mix.

There is a saying, attributed to Louis Pasteur who made some of the most important breakthroughs on germ theory. He is credited with the quote, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” In other words, luck comes to those who are looking for it, recognize it when they see it, and seize the opportunity to exploit or benefit from it. This is why I was thinking about the cascade effect or the slight imbalance effect. It seems to me to be one of those things that awareness of can allow you to capitalize on.