JANGSEOKIN

THEORIES-BUTTERFLY EFFECTS & BROKEN WINDOWS THEORY

The Power of Samll Things project is based on two theories, which are the Butterfly Effect and The Broken Window Theory. Both theories focused on small things that we have ignored. This is the story about a small thing that brings a huge result. The Butterfly Effect is that one time of butterfly's flapping of the wings will bring typhoon on other side of the world. In addition, The Broken Windows Theory explains that one neglected broken window from the empty house could change a normal town to a slum area. The Broken Windows Theory is the power of a small thing, which is not only in our daily life, but also in cyber our life. I will show you several precedents what the small thing brings with different types of a small thing such as a small object, a small environment, and a small action.

First, a small thing may influence your life in regard to trust and respect for people. Here is the example, which is a story that your small active changes someone’s life better. One day, a hot dog seller asked to a homeless for sale a hot dog instead of him for a little while because he got a very urgent business. After few hours, a hot dog seller came back, and then said thank you. Also he paid money as a reward to a homeless. The homeless man, now wearing a suit, came back to the hot dogs store few years later. And the homeless said that thank you for everything. I could believe myself because you believed me, so my life was totally changed. What is the small thing in this story? It was a single belief by a hot dog seller. Just a single belief made a change of a homeless’s life better.

Second, a small thing changes your or someone’s life worse. If you see the broken window car on the street, you might think nobody take care of this car. Moreover, you could wonder what is in there. Therefore you might look around the car, and then if you see something what you want to get, you might steal it from the car. I mean you will think it looks like fine to steal something from there even though you didn’t have any intent plan to do. Just one broken window might drive you to be a criminal. Here is another precedent that a small thing changes your or someone’s life worse. Cyber Bullying has become one of the major social issues in Eastern Asia, especially South Korea. Nobody wants to throw a stone to the intact window. However, if someone broke the window already, next person might throw a stone much easier. Like this, if someone writes the malicious comment first, next person writes the malicious comment much easier. What's next? The one neglected malicious comment can make many malicious comments. They might feel no guilty because everybody does, nobody cares, and then they are going to write more crazy and tough. Finally, one malicious comment could drive the person who is the target of malicious comments to commit suicide. Actually it happened already few times in South Korea.

Third, we can handle ourselves to be better with a small thing. Actually, as mention above, these precedents look like an accidental happening. However, if we think differently a little bit what a small thing is, definitely we can control our life to be better. A small thing does not have to be an object or a person. It might be the environment, like broken windows theory, because we are dominated by the power of the situation. If you change your environment a little, you will get the totally different results. According to the Korean TV documentary program, titled "Two-Faced Human", it said that the influence of the situation is enough to dominate human. Based on this, there are great experiments. There are two-study rooms for students, who are the similar level. One room is massed up, and another room is very clean. And students start to study. Few days later, they had an exam. The result was that the students from the clean room got higher score than the students from the messed up room. Maybe, someone might ask me that the clean or dirty rooms are not small things, but these are the totally different environments for students' academic achievements. Yes it is. However, if we think the whole life of students, just the condition of study rooms is a small thing.

Fourth, your small action might save someone's life or be the standard for judging you. I have one sentence: "Never underestimate the power of your actions." I like this sentence because I had several experiences, which are good and bad. I realized that people might judge me what kind of person I am because of my small tiny actions. Also my small action might be the reason of someone's happy.

In conclusion, small things around us can be the reason of our successful life. Definitely, we cannot guess what will be happened with a small thing. It is impossible to take care of every single small thing. What I want to say through my mini thesis is that we should consider of a small thing at least because nobody knows what kind of small things will be your reason of successful life.

**As the video above, just a tiny drop of ink changes the color of the entire water.**

Reference:
Heath C. and D. Switch-How to Change Things When Change is Hard. New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 2010. Print.
Koval R. and Thaler L. The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference. New York: Random House Digital, Inc., 2009. Print.
Levine M. Broken Windows / Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards. New York: Warner Business Books, 2005. Print.
“The Power of the Situation” Two-Faced Human Jung S. EBS. 13 Aug 2008.