unintended consequences…
The unintended consequence of having “big hair” is that people think you live in Dallas =)
In contrast, to unintended consequences, if you lift weights, the INTENDED consequence is to build strength, lose fat, and stay healthy. It seems pretty straightforward.
But if your weight training becomes so intensive that it deprives your children or spouse of important family time, that is an UNintended consequence. What you want, causes something unintended that you DON’T want. I have five children, and when I was doing a lot of personal training for a living, I had to make sure I still was able to supervise, love and nurture my children. I had to make sure my need for income did not have the unintended consequence of isolating my children from me.
Have you ever paid money to buy something you did not want? You will most likely think you only purchase what you DO want, but often there are hidden or unintended consequences that are the opposite of what you really want.
Perhaps you want entertainment. So you purchase music on an app…but then realized that with the thing that you wanted which was to listen to music, you also “gave away’ something that “they” wanted… you gave away access to your private data, photos, contacts etc. The giving away of privacy is an “unintended consequence” of the thing you purchased or allowed.
My oldest son once told me years ago, that society was going to get to the point where people would be tricked into PAYING for the very things that would hurt them or destroy something important for them…he used apps as an example.
As a parent, if you and your children are about to go on a family bike ride, and as you are all wheeling out of the garage, and you see the older child push the younger child off his bike, and you respond by immediately punishing the older child and comforting the younger child without asking questions, (and later find out that the younger child was ASKING the older child to push him because he did not want to go on the bike ride) your UNINTENDED consequences is that the older child will now be angry at his sibling and that your children will be less likely to trust you to figure out the truth.
There is an important lesson to be learned as a parent to be PROACTIVE and not REACTIVE with our children AND with our choices about how we discipline, and about what we allow into our homes…because of unintended consequences. Computers bring in porn… phones give access to drugs…what we allow for children unsupervised and without teaching what is good, perfect and pure is something we must be responsible for as parents and as a society.
Perhaps you want to “know what is going on” FOMO, fear of missing out, so you keep watching broadcasts that are subversive (because they do not give a complete picture), so you are misguided and fearful, until you realize that the only thing you were MISSING, was something that was destructive or evil and very biased or fear driven.
TV News and many movies or games have kind of become an example of such broadcasts, because these “approved” or marketed broadcasts make us believe a narrative that is not actually representative of what is really happening everywhere, and they make us think that good is missing in the world…Kind of like how in the garden of Eden, in genesis 2, Eve was talking to a snake and became convinced she was missing out on knowledge, so she ate the apple. The only knowledge she gained as an UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE, was knowledge of sin, sickness, disease, lack, hate and death…nothing good like she already had in paradise.
To avoid paying for something unintentionally, we should be slow to bite the bait, and talk with people we know and trust and listen to God most of all. Also, it is important to be grateful for what we already have. It is good to be successful and it is important to use our talents, and help others, but when our behavior becomes aggressive, or ungrateful, or self serving, then we will get more than we bargained for… My dad said that in marketing, we should never sell people more than they need, and that we should sell them what was good for THEM, not what was good for US. We are of course free to choose to trick others into listening to us, and buying what benefits US, with clever marketing, but the unintended consequences, will catch up to us eventually.
Those who believe it is important to force people to work for free, or to give up hard earned funds without permission, or those who force people to accept ideas or others against their will, are having as an unintended consequence, the virtual imprisonment of others, and people were never meant to be in a prison of others creating…we were meant to be free. God made us free…and he made us individuals with talents and abilities that we cannot be deprived of by another. And when we use these talents of our choosing, and do not bury them, we are doing good to the world.
We get to choose what we let in to our experience and we get to choose what we individually believe. Those evils of aggression eventually destroy themselves. The unintended consequences of privacy invasion is that this privilege which was once afforded, will eventually get denied or even completely eliminated.
The only real power that anyone has is the good that they do…and THOSE consequences of good ARE intended and benefit everyone. I can choose to let in those ideas and people who are blessings to me that are also a blessing to others. I can surround myself with people and ideas that uplift, inspire and do not promote fear. I can cross from being afraid to being secure, from believing I am missing out, to knowing I can stand alone but in truth. But with God one is never alone.
It is hard sometimes to deny ourselves something that SEEMS to be fun or good for us as an individual, but that we know, deep inside us, has a negative impact on others. Taking drugs for recreation is a good example. Betting our paycheck at the racetrack is another example…or taking a job in pharmaceuticals that provides a good income but that produces drugs that hurt others (because they cause a genetic modification in humanity that makes them vulnerable to birth defects), is another example. Our choices to benefit ourselves at the cost to others will always have unintended negative consequences.
But, when we make choices as individuals, that may seem to deny us what we want, but are good for others, the good we THOUGHT we were getting by being self serving was only superficial and not lasting, and we actually grow and benefit. By depriving ourselves of short term superficial gratification, we will learn, that the unintended consequences of THESE choices are not only that we do NOT get hurt, but that we are elevated to a higher human experience, become MORE successful and be happier. It is a beautiful consequence and it is how we grow in our connection to good.
We CHOOSE as individuals to think about good, or as the bible says, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things”, we cannot go astray and have bad or unintended consequences. When something bad comes into our thinking, we can dismiss any such thoughts as “not our own” because even though we may not be able to control them from coming into our thinking, we CAN shut them out, because only good thoughts belong to God.
If the platforms we choose to use as an individual, do not require others to sacrifice their freedom of individual choice as well, they will be not only good for us, but good for others as well.