I have been reading a mystery novel titled Blood Ties which has another example. Two 18 year old girls at a carnival. One gets drunk and passes out. The other has a choice of taking care of her or going off to ride the rides with her boyfriend. She chooses to go with the boyfriend. While she is gone, the drunk friend gets raped and gets pregnant. She ends up marrying a guy she doesn't really like who abuses her and later the daughter she has when he learns that she isn't his.

    Of course, this being a mystery novel, we get the story backwards, starting with the daughter being found dead and later the mother is murdered. When the woman PI hears these details, she is very angry with the friend and just about blames her for the two deaths. While the woman certainly deserves some blame for leaving the friend passed out in a restroom, can we really say this caused her death?

    In the traditional butterfly example, you might conclude that we could prevent hurricanes bu getting rid of the butterflies, but that would be jumping to a false conclusion. Many other things could trigger the air flow that becomes a dust devil that becomes a tropical storm and finally a hurricane. The same could be true in the case of the two young woman. Even if the friend had made the better choice, karma and destiny may have eventually resulted in that girl getting killed anyway. Even the rape may have happened under different circumstances. So we can't really say that the one young woman caused the death of the other.

    On the other hand, we can say that helping the drunk friend home, getting her into a cab, or somehow taking care of her MIGHT have prevented those things from happening. And that is why all of us need to think a little more about the things we do, say, and think and the possible consequences. While we can't always prevent bad things from happening, sometimes we can.