(Note: This is by far one of my shortest and weirdest articles, ever. This also might be one of the worst written, most horribly convoluted, obnoxiously pretentious and absurd articles on Strat.in, and well, I’m not forcing you to read it, am I? This is just an experiment I’m trying, mainly because I’m sleepy and cramped and the goddamm berths on AC-III coaches have gotten smaller, and I have a nagging suspicion that while to my credit, I didn’t study at all in IIM-C, I might have missed a few chances to learn as well. Also, this is from the point of view of one of the most significant literary figures of all times (although the narrator kinda changes towards the end), and since I am writing this at four in the morning in a moving train, give me some leeway. Read on if you want, because all I promise is chaos. You have been warned)

“Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair”, said my husband and thought my creation. Fire and brimstone went up as clouds near Indo-china, and brought about the fall of the conqueror of Europe. I know this because I am hindsight personified, just as I was the first with a foresight. Was I a Cassandra? Did I bring about horror and fear and hope. Or was it something in the air that night? A sky like Gogh’s nightmares from an island on the other side of the earth. Did a butterfly cause this sky?

Now speak of pirates and religion, and how morality is lost in Kalyuga, just as pollution rises with the decline of buccaneers. Do we accept causality? Do we correlate the passage of time with human spiritual decline as we look back to The Golden Age, The Satyuga? Or do we accept that it is logic that drives our faith, even as faith becomes an excuse for being human.

What little butterfly caused those skies, and what manner of hunger caused the first Great War. Small pebbles cause avalanches, and yet, when the storm is past, no one looks for the butterfly. I question then, can we ever truly find those pair of wings? Can we trace the symmetries as events unfold and clouds gather and the hammer of heaven falls on the just and unjust alike?

And if we can find that butterfly, then can we not find the gust of wind, the ray of sun, the sight of a bird that caused it to take flight? How do we correlate when we cannot see beyond our caves? After all, Watson, its quite elementary.

What caused this recession then? Myopia? Greed? Fuld? Who can trace a line from the shutters going down to a specific signature on a specific piece of paper? Shall not the judge of all things take his/her time and travel back in time and witness the mundane event that started the avalanche? What if this disaster finds its genesis in a rational act of increasing value?

But then also, judge of all things, how will you know where to stop looking?

Is it a circle you see, or are you looking down at an infinite spire? When you trace a case-study down to its bare bones, do you work within the boundaries or do you tread outside to the white space where it is written “Here be Tygers”. When you crunch those numbers, do you spare a thought for pirates and pollution and the might of The Flying Spaghetti Monster? What butterfly caused those numbers? What caused that particular factory to produce exactly this amount of shoes as against that amount of shoes last year? Do you accept the given logic within the context, or do you accept it as a matter of faith?

Of course there are procedures and best practices, but then again, who watches the watchmen? Who ensures that the second decimal in an option does not cause a catastrophe decades after the ones who made the deal are dead and gone? How do you trace the decision to use a weak hull for a ship that was unsinkable? How do you know which butterfly to stop at? How do you determine which butterfly was the correct butterfly? Do you have faith in the numbers you crunch, and do you have faith in the correlations you draw, the causality you imply? Do you have faith in your logic?

What sets an IIM grad apart from the rest? For all you know, you have got someone who got lucky twice in six months.  Do you choose an IIM/IIT/Whatever alumnus to act according to numbers (why not get trained monkeys and a bunch of bananas), or do you choose them because you have faith that when push comes to shove, they will make the right decisions? And then, how do you know that you have not got someone who was just lucky twice in six months? Is it not a matter of faith? Isn’t all logic a matter of faith in the absence of significant butterflies? In the face of unknown variables, aren’t all such judgment calls matters of faith and experience and hope?

And yet, if faith is allowed in judgment calls, then who decides if a judgment call was what was needed? Who takes the judgment call to call it a judgment call? What data drives this thought, if any at all? Is it correlation and analysis based on previous patterns that might not hold true in a changed and chaotic environment? Do you accept the circle or do you dissect it? And what if all you find is a cross section of a Lacuna Coil. Do you make the judgment based on faith or logic? What judgment do you use to make a judgment? What strategy do you use to write about strategy? Once again, who watches the watchmen?

I’m just a puppet who can see the strings. But is there a puppet master? And if yes, then is there someone who controls the puppet master’s strings? Do I request more and more data, each diminishing return bringing me imperceptibly closer to a solution, bringing me closer to the razor’s edge? Or do I judge that I know enough to pronounce judgment, and hope that the logic behind my faith is correct?

Do I search for butterflies, or do I embrace the random? What do I decide, and how do I decide to decide?

Chaos is just the begenning.

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