Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes

The Weather

It may seem to you that a simple set of physical laws will allow the weather on your worlds to take its course without needing too much further input on your part.  Alternatively, if you have an activist orientation, you may view the management of weather related phenomena to be an integral part of your role as deity.

Sadly, both of these views will no doubt break down in the face of harsh reality.  Weather and climate seem to belong to a class of complex phenomena wherein seemingly minor variations can have vast and long lasting implications.  A single snowflake can be a force of destruction or a source of inspiration that can echo forward throughout history.

In light of the significant ramifications a single droplet of rain or gust of wind can have most deities are unable to set things in motion and remain uninvolved regardless of which villages stand to be washed away in the floods or whether an invading army encounters unseasonably fair weather as it attempts to cross a mountain range.  One does not generally become a god without having one’s favorites and chosen peoples.  However, when one does decide to become involved, be it through the sending of rain or the hurling of lightening bolts, the implications of action in one location will have numerous implications throughout the world in question.  A sending of rain to bring the crops up for one village could well mean flooding and catastrophe for a downstream community.

Like many seemingly intractable problems this one does have a fairly simple solution.  In tracing back the causes and effects a clear culprit emerges.  We must therefore advise against creating the small winged creatures known as butterflies in the first place.

personal note:  don’t want to jinx it, but i’ve had a slightly better couple days, and have begun working on editing and expanding some of my eralier fiction things, including this and a bit more on the one-eyed girl