Opinion Analysis by Gaelle Nohra, Staff Writer

September 13th, 2020

‘Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect: An Eco-Political Illustration’ was a Phoenix Daily national affairs piece released on the 20th of May 2020, contrasting the Butterfly effect to the Lebanese events, through a brief comparison drawn between the reforms raised by the Hariri and Diab previous executive councils. In light with the August 4th tragedy and in view of the fact that the butterfly effect, by nature of functionality, holds a series of what-ifs inside, this piece will be an extension to the previously launched article, as well as another opportunity to reflect upon the 6-seconds blast, which altered forever the lines of Beirut’s history.  

In order to facilitate our illustration process, we’ll start by identifying our game players and different entities involved, whether from the affected or the causative side. Over the past few weeks, Lebanese judge Fadi Sawan, leading the probe of the blast, has issued several arrest warrants, but with no clear and explicit legal terms have set on the table yet, tackling the causative side won’t score best in terms of relevance and accuracy considering the blurry vision of investigations. Consequently, the affected side, the people of Beirut, will be the object of our focus.  

The butterfly effect or law of sensitive dependence, underlying principle in Chaos Theory, suggests that tiny disturbances in initial conditions and inputs for any given system are prone to create large variations in the final output. It is an interdisciplinary principle developed by Edward Norton Lorenz in the early 1960s, revolving around the recognition of patterns and interdependence under randomly oriented systems. Incorporating it into the blast, the butterfly effect would state that if one of the victims living near to the port region was late to leave his work premises, even for the silliest reason possible such as entering a 30-mins dispute with one of his colleagues over a parking lot, he would have ridden out the explosion. But in that storyline, survival is a small word given its incapability in ruling out the fallouts ranging from minor material losses to the biggest tangible damages, and this time, whether the blast’s settings match the logic the butterfly effect goes back to the psychological standpoint of the affected. 

When the Butterfly effect fails to hold 

Small changes in initial conditions fail in reversing the entire equation or creating a drastically differentiated output. The butterfly effect doesn’t hold not because an order is prevailing but is due to the neutrality the affected has towards the situation. Neutrality in the sense that losing a loved one, a car, a small enterprise or even the cheapest possession, eventually led to the same anxiety and prompted the same insecurity feels. While the type of the loss hugely differs, it doesn’t have a considerable say over the magnitude of the trauma the affected got subjected to.  

 For this category, material damages shouldn’t be understated or granted a superficiality label, they even seem a harder-than-death option to those who invested years in building the assets they lost in the blink of an eye, to those whose destructed house was the only residency, or even to those whose car was one of their core labor capitals. If they physically got through the explosion, it doesn’t mean they escaped the worst-case scenario and it doesn’t mean they were lucky.  

When the Butterfly effect holds  

The simplest variation entirely shaped the final output. The size and nature of the loss heavily speak about the emotional repercussions it has on the affected who’s now in a constant state of self-blame and wondering what would have happened if only they undertook more appropriate measures at the time then. For example, losing a closed one holds a higher weight over losing a residency. The recovery path and coping strategy highly varies from one person to another, and this is why the final result, which in terms of the blast represents the losses endured, aren’t just divergent from initial conditions, but divergent from all other losses of other affected individuals. 

Beirut blast beyond chaos

In general, the presence of the butterfly effect sheds light upon how the behavior of the affected tends to follow a chaotic stream, and as exhibited, presence and absence are relevant answers depending on the respective psychological stance each affected adopts with regards to the overall scene. That said, the absence of a fixed and unshaken answer markedly reveals the turmoil the Beirut Blast has brought to the table. The previous article, where the butterfly effect was implicitly shown to be irrelevant, attempted to trace a hidden order existing between the shift from the Hariri to the Diab cabinet. As for the port explosion, the purpose isn’t denying the presence of an order as much as proving that even chaos fails to describe the physical, mental, social, and psychological scene of Beirut and the people of Beirut. Ever since 1975, resilience has long been nothing but a recurring word in the Lebanese vocabulary. This time, however, resilience has come to be a mere romanticization for a deadly state unable to move out the loss-realization phase before planning its steps forward. From a more or less scientific perspective, the butterfly effect tells again about the strenuousness of, not August 4th, but speaking about August 4th