By Jill Szoo Wilson
I was filling in for an Acting instructor at a local performing arts academy. The students are in middle school, which means two things: they are wonderfully curious, and I am brave.
As class began, there was a faction of the group that was acting rowdy. Perhaps they often behave in this manner. Perhaps they were testing the “sub.” Either way, I’m not really one to allow chaotic energy to catch hold in a group of middle school students. I had to learn the importance of beginnings in a classroom the hard way.
I have a theory that I am sure is not my own. Certainly, educators who have gone before me have written essays on this style of classroom management. I’m not sure what the textbooks would call it. I call it the Jordan Peterson school of classroom management. Here’s the theory: the calmer I remain, the less chaotic the students. I expect them to meet me where I am. So, instead of metaphorically reaching out and pulling them into my orbit, I establish the orbit and invite them to join me and the others who are already focused and ready to go.
On this particular evening, three students were bucking the system, as it were. I said, “This chaotic behavior is telling me that something must be on your mind that you would like to talk about. I’d like to hear it. One at a time, please share what’s on your mind.”
Student A: What does chaotic mean?
Jill: It’s energy that is unstable. It moves in all directions instead of focusing on one system. Or one thing.
Student A: Huh?
[student laughter]
Jill: Can you give me an example of chaotic energy?
Student A: Running around and not listening.
Jill: You’re quite intelligent. That was a great answer. Where is your chaotic energy coming from?
And so on. Soon, the whole class was engaged in a discussion on chaos. That’s when I shared the Butterfly Effect with them. They were mesmerized. Not by me, but by an idea they had never heard before, by the fact that they had the capacity to understand a big idea, and by the fact that a strange new teacher was interested in their thoughts. As a side note, I have written about this many times, but it bears repeating: students want to be in the room. Don’t allow the idea that “the students have changed” to take root in your mind as evidence that they are “bad.” They’re not. No worse than you and I were at their age. They just live in a different world than we did, and the onus is on us to try to understand what that means and how to connect with them. Anyway . . .
That’s what inspired this essay. So, thank you to the middle school actors who are much wiser than they sometimes behave.
Chaos theory emerged from the work of meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the early 1960s. While using computer models to study weather prediction, Lorenz discovered that an extraordinarily small change in the starting conditions of a simulation produced dramatically different outcomes. This finding challenged a common assumption about causality. Most people intuitively believe that large causes produce large effects and small causes produce small effects. Lorenz demonstrated that in sufficiently complex systems, tiny differences at the beginning can generate enormous differences over time. His work eventually became one of the foundational contributions to chaos theory and transformed how scientists think about predictability in complex systems.
Mathematician and science writer James Gleick later introduced these ideas to a wider audience through his influential book Chaos: Making a New Science, which traces the development of the field and the scientists who helped establish it. Together, the work of Lorenz and Gleick helped popularize a fascinating insight: systems may follow rules while remaining difficult to predict because small variations can accumulate into dramatically different outcomes.
The Butterfly Effect became the most recognizable expression of this principle. The phrase originated from the title of a lecture Lorenz delivered in 1972: “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” Obviously, the butterfly itself was never the point, but it does provide an easy hook for casual readers of science and philosophy, and middle school actors. Lorenz was illustrating how sensitive complex systems can be to their initial conditions. Weather systems provided the original example, but the idea has proven remarkably useful for understanding human behavior, organizations, relationships, and culture.
The more I read about chaos theory, the more I found myself thinking about Walter White.
At first glance, Breaking Bad seems like an unlikely companion to a discussion of meteorology and mathematics. Yet the entire series functions as an effective illustration of how small events propagate through complex systems. The story begins with a single disturbance: a high school chemistry teacher receives a cancer diagnosis. The diagnosis appears limited in scope when it occurs. Nothing about the moment suggests cartel violence, international drug trafficking, fractured families, multiple deaths, or a plane collision over Albuquerque. Those consequences emerge gradually because each decision alters the conditions under which future decisions are made.
Walter’s decision to manufacture methamphetamine initiates a chain reaction that expands with each season. His partnership with Jesse Pinkman creates new relationships, new opportunities, and new threats. Every attempt to solve a problem introduces additional complications. Every effort to gain control creates new variables that must also be controlled. By the final season, the network of consequences has become so extensive that no individual character fully understands the system in which they are operating. Metaphorically, they’re trapped in a Category 5 tornado with no obvious way out.
One of the clearest examples of the Butterfly Effect appears in the storyline involving Jane Margolis. (SPOILER ALERT . . . )
Walter allows Jane to die from an overdose. Her father, Donald Margolis, is devastated by grief. Donald returns to work as an air traffic controller while struggling emotionally, and a momentary lapse contributes to a midair collision above Albuquerque. Hundreds of people are affected by a chain of events that began with a decision made in the bedroom of a small duplex. No participant in that sequence could have anticipated the outcome, yet the connections remain real. The tragedy illustrates the central insight of chaos theory: consequences often travel far beyond the horizon of human awareness.
This dynamic helps explain why Walter White remains such a compelling character. Throughout the series, he repeatedly believes that intelligence, planning, and calculation will allow him to control outcomes. His confidence grows as his power grows. Yet the deeper he moves into the system, the more obvious it becomes that control is largely an illusion. Walter influences events, but he never masters them. While his choices matter enormously, their consequences consistently exceed his ability to predict them.
Perhaps that is why chaos theory continues to fascinate people far beyond the scientific community. The theory challenges one of our most comforting assumptions: that sufficient intelligence and preparation will make the future predictable. Chaos theory suggests something more humbling. Human beings live inside systems of extraordinary complexity, and even our smallest decisions may ripple outward in ways we cannot foresee. The enduring power of Breaking Bad rests partly in its willingness to confront that reality.
What struck me most about my classroom conversation with the tiny actors (they pretend to hate when I call them that) was not that the students understood the Butterfly Effect. It was that they immediately applied the idea to themselves. They understood that energy spreads through a room. They understood that one person’s choices affect other people. They understood that focus creates focus and distraction creates distraction. Before they had ever heard of Edward Lorenz, chaos theory, or nonlinear systems, they recognized that human beings are connected to one another in ways that are often difficult to measure and impossible to predict.
A classroom, after all, is its own complex system. So is a family. So is a community. So is a city. The students began the conversation by talking about chaotic behavior, but what they were really talking about was influence. That may be the most enduring lesson of chaos theory. We are constantly shaping one another’s worlds, often through actions that seem too small to matter until much later, when their consequences finally come into view.
Jill Szoo Wilson 