The cause-and-effect rule is a fundamental basis for all actions. Basically, as anybody with common sense knows, a cause leads to an effect.

This rule drives man to do what they do. It is what leads to the perception that doing good will lead to more good: good cause = good effect. It fuels students yearning for good grades to study. It drives activists to rally. It is what makes us donate to street children, pity cancer patients, and do little acts of niceness. Similarly, what we call karma, or the belief that bad actions will eventually be repaid, sprouts out of the cause-and-effect rule.

Man tries to alter and create causes. Be it studying, lifting weights, holding fundraisers for the benefit of cancer patients or strapping dynamite to kites then detonating them in the skies in a heroic attempt to make it rain (I kid you not, someone has tried this), we want causes that will produce the desired effects.

However, there is another rule that follows cause-and-effect: every effect will eventually become a cause, which, in turn, creates another effect, which becomes a cause, then makes an effect, and so on. It sounds absurd, but consider it: The Wright brothers wanted to fly, and because of this desire, they invented the airplane. That’s a cause-and-effect right there: the desire to fly was the cause for the invention of the airplane. The invention of the airplane, in turn, became the cause of the modernization of air transportation. Air transportation then becomes the cause for many effects: faster delivery, people going to distant places…Faster delivery leads to a better market…People going to distant places mean better or worse lives…It goes on.

Every new cause we make is rooted in causes-turned-effects. If we raise money for Alzheimer’s patients, they are the cause of your efforts. Alzheimer’s patients are the effects of, well, Alzheimer’s disease affecting patients. Thus, the patients, previously effects, are now a cause. What will happen to you raising money? It will result in you donating the money to some organization, perhaps, which will result in more research on Alzheimer’s, or maybe the money will go to some unfortunate grandfather. These effects will then become causes.

Causes are ever-present, and so are effects, which turn into causes, then produce effects, which turn into causes, which bear effects.