"Subtle influence is what each of us exerts, for good or ill, by the way we are. Our attitude and being forms the climate others live in, the atmosphere they breathe. Subtle influence in its negative sense – collusion – holds restrictive systems together, but in its positive sense is vital for keeping open systems renewed and vibrant. Each of us is a hidden degree of freedom, an angle of a systems’ unexpressed creativity.

The subtlety of our influence begins with the fact that this kind of power is unpredictable – just as the metaphorical butterfly in Brazil that can cause a tornado in Texas. We lock into society’s feedback loops in so many different ways that it’s as difficult to guess the long term effects of our actions as it would be to predict next month’s weather. Perhaps for this reason many of the world’s wisdom traditions teach that an action should not only take into account the welfare of others in the future, it should be based on the authenticity of the moment, on being true to oneself, and exercising the values of compassion, love , and basic kindness.

Czech writer Vaclav Havel suggests that within this humble power lies our freedom. During the period of the communist regime, the people of Czechoslovakia believed they were powerless. Yet, even in those extreme conditions, individuals found ways to engage in authentic individual creativity. Havel termed their actions "living in truth." In terms of our chaos metaphor, this is the simple, though not easily achieved, process of opening ourselves up to uncertainty, discovering the edge between our individuality and the universal, and acting from that discovery. In our authentic realization of the truth of the moment lies our ability to deeply, if humbly, influence even the rigid systems built on automatism and empty phrases.

So although cynical realists argue that human nature can never change from the greedy, self-centered, hierarchical, power-driven consciousness that has dominated history, chaos theory opens the door on such change. It suggests that consciousness is not confined to what is just taking place privately within our individual heads. It is shaped by language, society, and all our daily interactions. Each one of us is an aspect of the collective consciousness of the world, and the contents of that consciousness are constantly being altered by the forces of chaos that each of us expresses. Through chaos, one individual or a small group of individuals can deeply and subtly influence the entire world. "

-- Copyright 1999 - John Briggs and F. David Peat