The Human Law of Unintended Consequences: How the Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

It’s interesting if you look at the major social movements or even big events in history. 

Whether it’s things like Communism/Socialism, Nationalism or even Progressivism & Environmentalism in this recent age. 

It almost always starts off with noble goals. Communism/Socialism is about bringing equality in society where the mass of the population who were being left behind. Environmentalism was about taking care of the long abused planet we live in where the natural ecosystem has been decimated and plundered by man. Reducing our carbon footprint would be critical for lowering global warming effects. Progressivism is about raising awareness of privilege and trying to equalize opportunity for long ignored and overlooked genders, races and backgrounds. 

Who can argue with any of this? 

But too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. Too many vitamins turn into toxins. 

Somewhere along the lines these movements get abused as idiots, sociopaths, status seekers and fanatics who take it to the extremes. Communism has led to crazy amounts of tragic death through violent excesses during the Soviet Union such as Stalin’s Purges, Holodomor in Ukraine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor) and CCP in China from the great famine and the purges of Cultural Revolutions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution). 

Progressivism has led to Woke Cancel culture spreading like a plague in most of the Western world. Environmentalism has turned into this somewhat anti-human movement. And stupid ESG (Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance) policies have led to underinvestment in fossil fuels and over investment in presently not reliable greentech. This is leading to massive gaps of energy for growing economies, leading to both dependence on dictatorial countries that do not share our values & gaping holes in energy supplies that will directly lead to mass human deaths. (This is worth reading more on: https://doomberg.substack.com/p/why-are-cows-sacred & watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCXhFiveeg)

We see this effect even directly in our own lives. Why are most rich kids useless? Well, most self made and newly rich parents hope to spare their children all the scarcity and challenges they had growing up. The irony is that by doing so, their children grow up either entitled or unable to deal with inevitable issues that come up in life. By hiding them from any possible pain, they face an even more delayed pain later. 

Personally, I am in the midst of undoing some of this in my own life. I have always prioritized work and business over family because I grew up without much money. This led me to the view that financial stability and financial resources were critical to a good homelife. This by itself I believe is very honorable: That’s what you are supposed to do! 

The problem is when you take it to the extreme like I have. You end up spending little time with the family you are supposed to be taking care of. I spend almost 50% of time on the road and always have since 2003. I remember when I was at Yahoo!, people would call my wife, the Yahoo! widow. I also missed so much time with my daughter in her first 10 years when she really needed me and wanted me in her life. As a tween, she does not need me as much anymore. All of this has definitely and directly led to my now very damaged home & family life. 

I don’t have any real answers here as I’m working through all this myself. Recognizing something is a problem is the first step in trying to fix it. 

But I sometimes wonder if this drive to extremism is just a natural state of the human condition. This is why it’s so important to question everything you hear and read, and learn to think for yourself and not get caught in the “Animal Spirits” of mass movements or societal and personal beliefs you inherit.