The Means Determine the Ends
A meditation on the long trail of unintended consequences
Since I wrote this reflection on the law of unintended consequences, I had the enriching and frustrating experience of watching a new video from Formscapes, one of the new great genius creators on Patreon. But he’s also on YouTube, where he puts ads every 5 minutes. It’s a tribute to his amazing knowledge of history, philosophy, psychology, and esoteric science that I listened anyway.1 At the end, where he elaborates what I think was originally the idea of Carroll Quigley (Bill Clinton’s Poli Sci prof at Georgetown) of Nuclear Civilizations becoming Universal Civilizations and declining if not renewed, he pointed out how Abraham’s NO CHILD SACRIFICE “nuclear civilization” became the universal Christian civilization, and how the original nucleus has now been completely corrupted into one that sacrifices children (Gaza, and Epstein). I see this as a manifistation of the small dots in the Yin Yang symbol blowing up to take over their “complementary” field, when time takes its toll on a formational motivating idea for a culture. Afterall, things change. The idea itself creates change. At some point, all the habits, customs, rules and regulations that emerged from that nucleating idea start to have the opposite of the original intended effect.
I have posted several notes and comments, as did at least one other person, asking him to make this video available without ads. I will post an update if he does.