By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--June 30, 2016
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…"If today after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further, we will realize that humanity is indivisible," Annan was quoted by writer Philip Gourevitch, in a March, 2003 profile, entitled The Optimist in New Yorker magazine. "To illustrate his point, Annan evoked an image from chaos theory. ‘Scientists tell us that the world of nature is so small and interdependent that a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest can generate a violent storm on the other side of the earth. The principle is known as the Butterfly Effect. Today, we realize, perhaps more than ever, that the world of humans also has its own Butterfly Effect--for better or for worse.’ "Reflecting on the terrorist attacks of September, 2001, he (Annan) heard a wakeup call for his cause," Gourevitch wrote. "’Ladies and Gentlemen, we have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire,’ he said in Oslo on accepting the Nobel Peace Prize--awarded jointly to Annan and the UN--in December of that year.“A year later, when Gourevitch made a return visit to Annan at UN headquarters, "Annan allowed that of late the human storms have been worse." "The world is really a big mess," said Annan. Where ever you turn you have problems. "We have the global economic downturn, and of course you have the terrorist threats and the terrorist networks which are spread very far. "Even without these things, I always maintain that we have a serious crisis of governance. To govern in this atmosphere and take optional and rational decisions, trying to deal with the hot issues while containing the others, is really a difficult thing. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I don’t know where else a major crisis is going to break." “Obviously, not on the other side of the world if that's where a butterfly flapped its wings."As one meteorologist remarked if the theory of the butterfly effect were correct, "one flap of a seagull’s wing would be enough the alter the course of the weather forever." So where did the Butterfly Effect originate? Not with Kofi Annan. Not even with Ashton Kutcher Picture’s 2004 Butterfly Effect, the movie. There was also the Butterfly Effect premise borrowed by Ray Bradbury’s world famous short story, A Sound of Thunder. It had already been dramatized as part of the Ray Bradbury Theatre TV stories, and the short story inspired a sextet of sequel novels by Stephen Leigh, published from 1992-1995. So Annan had lots of sources for the anecdote he related to Gourevitch. As a theory, the Butterfly Effect, has been out there floating around (no pun intended since the 1960s).
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