"I'm significant! screamed the dust speck" (from "Calvin and Hobbes")
Before getting extremely agitated and infuriated at me about questioning the value of your existence (how dare he!), bear with me for some time.
Recommended for you
I'll introduce a little something called the Butterfly Effect. For those who know it (and have a little smirk already on their faces), I say, be grateful that you possess this piece of knowledge. For those who don't, let me explain. I'll get back to the point where I said why you are unimportant and challenged your ego later.
Let's look into an awesome piece of a story based on "The Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury.
Remember, this is all hypothetical.
Suppose that a time-traveling device has been invented, not by a genius, but by a mad scientist. Now, what do you do with a time-traveling device? Of course, go and meet the dinosaurs. Now, let's say that you traveled some hundreds of millions of years back in time to the era of the dinosaurs. Let's assume that in this distant past, you changed and touched absolutely nothing, except one thing: You killed a butterfly. Stepped on it, used your palms to slap it dead, whatever. You killed a butterfly on a fine morning in a famous Tyrannosaurus hangout spot that day.
Now that you've killed the butterfly, you return to your time machine and return to the present. What do you see? Is the present the same as you left it? Or is it different, because of that one dead butterfly in the long timeline of events?
I'll give you some time to think about it.
...
Done? OK.
I know most of you will say that the present will be the same as you left it. I mean, how much can one dead butterfly change the course of events, and that too, after millions of years? Right? Wrong.
Because of that one dead butterfly, in the parallel universe in which the butterfly is dead, the world could be in chaos today in 2015. In that alternate universe, Gandhi could have never been born, Nikola Tesla may have never invented AC current, the apple may have never dropped on Newton's head. As a result, India may have been never achieved its independence, people may still be living in the dark ages with no electricity (well, no AC current at least), and students may have to study a lot less physics (but in exchange for a monumental loss in scientific progress).
I would go ahead and say that humans might have even gone extinct because of that one dead butterfly.
Now I'm really starting to get on your nerves, aren't I? I mean, what is this dude even talking about? First he tells me that I'm not important. And now he tells me that if I go back to the past, kill one butterfly, humans will go extinct? How angry are you? How ready are you to just close this tab and look at something else on the internet? How ready are you to call bonkers on what I am saying right here and get on with your life? All I have to say is, I am not lying one single bit. Have patience, and try to think this through after you've read this article. You'll see what I mean.
I'll tell you how. Suppose, because of that dead butterfly, a female frog didn't get enough dietary nutrition to lay one egg. In the universe where the butterfly wasn't killed, she lays eight eggs. Instead, she lays seven.
So that makes one missing butterfly and one missing frog egg, right? Let's focus on the math here.
Now, because the poor unborn frog offspring never got a chance to live, survive, mate, and produce offspring (as he does in the butterfly-alive universe), we have a few more missing frogs from this universe.
Now, the frog's children never get a chance to survive either. Give it a few hundred years, and we have a whole army of missing frogs on this universe.
What do frogs eat? Bugs. And what are one of their favorite delicacies? You guessed it, mosquitoes. Now, because of the missing frogs, there would be a relative rise in the population of mosquitoes in this alternate reality.
Now, suppose that the rise in the number of mosquitoes killed one person in 70,000 B.C. due to some form of disease or allergy. OK, a dead butterfly, some missing frogs, and a dead person, so what?
Fun fact: Did you know, in 70,000 B.C., because of the eruption of a super-volcano named Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, the human population dropped to levels as low as 1,000. Yes, you heard that right, 1,000.
Stuff that; another study says that we dropped to levels below as 40. 40, as in 40 breeding pairs, excluding children.
I quote from another article, "How Human Beings Almost Vanished From The Earth In 70,000 B.C." by Robert Krulwich:
"More likely there was a drastic dip and then 5,000 to 10,000 bedraggled Homo sapiens struggled together in pitiful little clumps hunting and gathering for thousands of years until, in the late Stone Age, we humans began to recover. But for a time there, says science writer, Sam Kean, 'We damn near went extinct.'"
So back to the missing butterfly universe, which resulted in a missing frog, several missing frogs, many missing frogs, an unprecedented rise of the mosquito population, and one missing human. One human out of 40 pairs. We have evolved from 40 breeding pairs of humans to an overwhelming population of 7 billion. Imagine how that one missing person would have affected the whole course of human history. Envision, if that one missing human was the provider and leader of the 40-breeding-pair pack. The pack wouldn't survive. Yes. We'd all be dead as of today.
Now do you believe me? The idea of a missing Gandhi, missing AC current, or missing Newton inventions doesn't seem so far fetched now, does it?
What if that one human was the sole ancestor of all the Egyptians, or the Europeans, or the Italians. We'd have a whole missing population. There would have been no pyramids, no Christopher Columbus, no United States of America, no Leaning Tower Of Pisa.
Now, think about all those times you clapped those mosquitoes dead, smacked all those spiders dead with a folded newspaper, stepped on all those bugs.
Thinking about stepping on that tiny ant walking along the sidewalk? You might be stepping on the next Einstein, the inventor of the time machine, or maybe the guy who'll invent those cool flying cars and hover boards.
Yes, it's true. You're creating history as you live. As you walk, as you talk, as you go around town in your car blowing out all that carbon dioxide.
As you sneeze, letting creating those small disturbances in the air molecules which affects the small microorganisms which are present in that tiny field of space. Somewhere along the line, causing one small microorganism to die, which in turn causes a whole lineage of microorganisms to die, and a small insect (which would've died if the microorganisms were present) to live. After reading this article, you can imagine what this little living critter can do, it might be the difference between a person living or never existing. Yes, you did all that, with one sneeze.
Have you ever heard how enlightened gurus and Zen monks talk about the universe and all life being connected, saying that we are the universe, we have the power to create and all of that philosophical babble you never understood? Yes, think about it now. Makes a little bit of sense, doesn't it?
Now, coming back to the point where I said you were unimportant. I was kidding. Don't let anybody ever tell you that. For someone with the power to fluctuate the whole course of human history and the universe with one sneeze, you are pretty darn important.
Note from the author:
(Who knows, you might change the fate of the universe in the process.)
I'll be writing another article soon on how the Butterfly Effect affects your entire life, and how something as simple as picking up or turning down a phone call could be the difference between you being a millionaire or a homeless person.
