Prologue: The Butterfly Effect

Family dynamics can be complicated - mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Join Brian Dahlen in this limited series podcast as he navigates the complexities and mysteries of family. You may discover a family who, like all of us, fell victim to the generational impact of the fall. Maybe you’ll even discover something that looks a little bit like your family? Episodes release every Thursday through Father's Day. 

To learn more, visit https://www.moodyradio.org/podcasts/grandfather-effect/ .

Head to https://bibletolife.com/resources/series/the-grandfather-effect for devotionals that aim to prompt further prayer and reflection based on each episode. 

This podcast is a production of Moody Radio and the 820 Podcast Network in partnership with 12:2 Media.

Host and Creator: Brian Dahlen

Executive Producer: Emma VanDeVelde 

Producer and Engineer: Caleb Gray

Support the Grandfather Effect: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/podcast/grandfathereffect

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
We never heard from you. In a letter. No call,
no contact. That's very possible that I played a leading
role in what happened. Here we go. Three seven, five one.
Five seven.

S2 (00:13):
This is it. I think it's an incredible story. I
guess I kept wondering why everybody didn't.

S1 (00:19):
Address the elephant in the room. I'm Brian Donlon, and
this is the grandfather effect. The butterfly effect. Ever heard
of it? No, not the Ashton Kutcher movie. The actual
butterfly effect. If you're not familiar, it's part of something

(00:39):
called chaos theory. You see, most science operates in the
realm of the predictable things like chemical reactions and gravity.
But what do you do with unpredictable things? That's where
something like the butterfly effect comes in. In the 1960s,
MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz was studying long range weather forecasting.

(01:04):
Could it be possible to predict weather patterns weeks or
even months in advance? Some of his colleagues thought with
enough data, sure, it could be done. But Lawrence was skeptical.
So he created computer weather models that contained 12 variables.
You know, weather stuff like temperature and wind speed. And
he discovered that minuscule changes to just one of the

(01:27):
12 variables produced wildly unpredictable results over time. Anything from
a beautiful sunny day to a tornado. As an illustration
of his discovery, he said that something as insignificant as
a singular butterfly flapping its wings in one part of
the world could ultimately cause a tornado in another. I

(01:47):
know it sounds hyperbolic, but think about it for a minute.
If you take this idea out of meteorology into everyday life,
you can see how seemingly inconsequential events can have very
unpredictable yet momentous consequences, whether positive or negative. Consider those
hurtful words from a bully in middle school that forever

(02:07):
impacted your self-image, the casual encouragement from a teacher that
nudged you toward your career. It's the flutter of those
little things in life that change everything, and we simply
can't predict how they'll impact our future. These effects as
we know them describe causation, consequences, why things are the

(02:29):
way they are, how things affect other things. Which begs
the question What affects you and me? Why are you
the way you are? Why am I the way I am?
Ever wondered? And the butterfly effect isn't alone. There are
other effects out there as well. Take, for example, the

(02:49):
Hawthorne Effect. This one first appeared in the 1950s and
the writings of researcher Henry Landsberg. He spent time analyzing
productivity experiments conducted at a Western electric facility in Hawthorne, Illinois.
Researchers there wanted to see how minor changes in a
work environment would impact the productivity of people on the

(03:09):
factory floor. They'd make measured changes to things like the
lighting temperature, how long breaks were, and so on. But
much to their surprise, no matter what changes they made,
productivity always increased. Why in the world did that happen?
Lance Berger figured out that the workers were just responding

(03:30):
to the fact that their supervisors weren't paying closer attention
to them. Employees had to be observed carefully while recording
data for the experiments, since there were obviously no video
cameras at the time and the workers weren't dumb, they
could see their bosses standing around, staring at them, taking notes.
Scientifically speaking, the test subjects knew they were being watched
more carefully, so they worked harder. Now widely used. The

(03:54):
Hawthorne Effect describes the phenomenon where subjects perform better in
a study when they know they're being observed. If you
apply this effect into everyday life, it continues to ring true.
Don't we all work a little harder when the boss
is watching? Don't kids behave a little better when the
teacher's looking? So why do I bring all that up? Well,

(04:18):
I think I inadvertently stumbled on to a new effect
of sorts, and I didn't mean to. All I was
trying to do is figure out why my grandpa disown me.
Let me explain. As a little boy. I lived just
a few miles away from my grandfather, but I never
saw him. He wanted nothing to do with me or

(04:39):
with my family. All I knew was the entire relationship
crumbled over something silly, something so seemingly trivial that it
was difficult to comprehend. And yet it wasn't something we
ever talked about as a family. We just moved on
without him. But if I'm being honest with myself, I
didn't really move on. I took it personally. It really

(05:03):
did affect me. I wanted a grandpa that loved me,
protected me and guided me as I became a man.
A grandpa that told me dumb jokes. And gave me candy.
A grandpa that loved me unconditionally. Instead, I had a
grandfather that loved me conditionally, who rejected me. But why?

(05:28):
I was left with so many questions about myself. Was
I that bad? Was I that insignificant? Not to mention
the questions I had about others. What was wrong with
my grandfather? Are other families like this? How do other
broken families cope? Those questions lingered through adolescence, adulthood, marriage,

(05:50):
and kids of my own. And since I'm supposedly a
grown up now and work in radio, I figured I'd
do a few interviews with my family and find the answer.
Then I'd slap on some music, toss in a few
witty comments, and voila, a great segment for my radio show,
maybe even a special episode on my podcast. Boy, was

(06:11):
I wrong. What I thought would be a few weeks
of casual questioning turned into a five year, heart wrenching
journey and beyond wildly underestimating the duration of my investigation.
I also completely misdiagnosed the problem itself. You see, I
thought this was going to be a podcast series about discernment.

(06:34):
In fact, Disowned was the working title for years. It
wasn't until I let the story itself guide me that
I realized everything was much more complex, much more nuanced
than I ever could have imagined. This wasn't one of
those a run of the mill dishonest that happened because
of an intense disagreement situation or falling out and irreconcilable difference.

(06:59):
Sure there was a specific incident that served as a catalyst,
and we'll get to that. But as you'll see, it
was really about so much more. And candidly, in a
lot of ways, the depth of the whole thing made
it much more painful for me. It would have been
easier to walk away with a simple explanation with justified blame,

(07:23):
maybe a clear villain. But as time went on, I
realized that the discoveries made were less about acts perpetrated
by a singular man and more about the generational trickle
downs that slowly but surely separated all of us. The distance.
The quiet since. The lack of empathy. The refusal to

(07:46):
say I'm sorry from every direction. The failure to remember
in more ways than one. Now I urge you to
listen to this story with an open heart. Don't let
the suspenseful music and cinematic sound effects fool you. If
you're looking for a murder, mayhem and chaos, you won't
find it here. And come on. That'd be too easy,

(08:10):
wouldn't it? Too perfectly packaged for a story about a
real family. I think what you may discover is a
family who, like all of us, fell victim to the
generational impact of the fall. Maybe you'll even discover something
that looks a little bit like your family. And if
that's the case, my hope is that you'll fully realize

(08:31):
that you're not alone. That there isn't a single person
who's ever lived that was utterly unaffected by those who
raised them. Or in my case, those who didn't raise them.
In this story, you'll be introduced to several key players,
some family, some others some I'm close to and some

(08:52):
I'm not. Each of these people plays a key role
in helping me discover the significance of story of my
story of nature versus nurture. Each of them internalized their
own story in light of these events differently. If you
listen closely, you'll hear some of it. Some suppressed emotions.

(09:12):
Some selective forgetting. Some hidden hurt. All as a result
of the things previously discussed. Maybe not too far off
from your own experience. Who knows? All I ask is
that you listen. Which brings me back to my addition
to the list of effects like the butterfly effect and

(09:32):
the Hawthorne Effect. I wish I had a pithy definition
for this new effect. Perhaps that will come with time.
For now, what I can offer instead of a definition
is an invitation to join me on this very personal
journey of discovery as we travel the road together. You'll
be able to build your own in-depth understanding of this

(09:53):
effect in the broader context of the story. With that,
let's go back to the beginning, where it all started
in late 2016. I sat down in a recording studio
in Cleveland and recorded what would become Act One in
this series. It would also inadvertently become the first phase
of discovering a story. This story. My story is the

(10:18):
grandfather effect.