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Collective Causation
Also expressed as collective-causation, which is the sum result of numerous micro-causations. People are generally familiar with a direct causation. Tip over a glass of milk. This directly causes the milk to spill. Hit your toe against a corner, and this causes pain, depending upon how hard you hit the corner. A collective-causation is more difficult to appreciate. While one cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, smoking many cigarettes over many years most likely will. The habitual smoking of cigarettes is thus a “collective causation” of lung cancer. Each cigarette, in turn, is a “micro causation”. One might ask: Does a one beef steak cause arteriosclerosis? Does one child not getting vaccinated cause an epidemic? Does one vote impact an election? Does one water bottle thrown out the car window cause a plastic problem in the oceans? Does one drive to the grocery store increase atmospheric carbon dioxide? Does one raindrop cause a flood? These are all examples of micro-causation. For all of these, you have a little event that can add up to a large event when the numbers are also large. The answer to all of the above questions, according to the idea of collective causation, is yes. As the human population continues to soar, collective causations will become all the more notable. And because the rapid rise of the human population is ever so recent, the very idea of collective causation is not generally recognized. This is particularly problematic when it comes of the issue of global warming. When one’s actions account for only a tiny fraction of the whole, then blame for the collective causation is easily discounted and not personal. Similarly, collective causation explains, in part, why quitting the smoking of cigarettes is so difficult. The danger posed by one cigarette (one micro-causation) is truly miniscule, but not zero. Because miniscule and zero are relatively close to each other, the smoker may thus erroneously equate the two. Likewise, it is easy to discount the combustion of one tank of gasoline as a significant cause of increases in the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Truly, it is not a significant cause. But it is, in fact, a micro-causation, which means a collective causation is inevitable when there are so many people burning through tanks of gasoline. Connecting the results of any collective causation to its micro causations is key to solving any problems that arise. As an example, drunk driving is a collective causation of thousands of highway deaths each year. The micro causation is an individual drunk driver, who still stands a chance of making it home safely without harming anyone. When cars were first introduced, the collective causation of drunk driving was not recognized. Public awareness efforts by organizations such as Mother’s Against Drunk Driving, schools, and police departments have helped to change the culture to the point where the connection between the collective causation and the micro causation has become generally recognized. Such a shift in culture takes decades of sustained public awareness efforts and is something that will need to be maintained indefinitely. In short, because micro causations are so easily dismissed, unlike direct “macro” causations (such as spilling milk), getting the public to do something about it is quite the challenge. All the more so with global warming given that the results of the collective causation are long term, unpredictable, and generally not as visible to us as a horrid car accident scene. An important first step will be bringing the terms “collective causation” and “micro causation” into our daily language. When this is the case, identifying the problem and pushing for micro causation remedies will be all the more possible. These thoughts and these two terms were generated by John Suchocki in the development of his Big Picture podcast series. He gives thanks and recognition to linguistic anthropologists, such as Robert Levy, and cognitive scientists, notably George Lakoff.