Tag: Russia

Unintended consequences

Like most golf courses, the fairways of Augusta National Golf Club, host of the annual Masters Tournament, were mowed in both directions – one stripe (or section) mowed from the teeing ground toward the green, and the adjoining one mowed from the green back toward the tee. That’s obviously efficient – when the ride-on mower gets to one end, it just turns around and mows back the other way. But, so it’s said, some elite golfers complained that there was an advantage or disadvantage depending on whether your ball landed on grass leaning back towards the tee or leaning forward towards the green. There was less resistance to the ball when it dropped on grass tilted toward the green, so it went further. The distance our drives go, they said, shouldn’t depend on which stripe of grass it lands on. The Augusta Club thought about that, and solved the problem. It cut all the grass only in one direction – leaning back towards the tee. That was not at all what those players wanted. But it’s what they got; their complaint had resulted in an unwelcome, unintended consequence.

I’m not sure that story is entirely true, except that Augusta these days does mow its fairways from green back to teeing ground. Not that it actually matters. Scientific tests have shown that neither direction of mowing makes any difference to how far the ball runs.

The point of the story, though, is that words and actions can very easily have unintended consequences.

When I first experienced severe back pain (in my teens and twenties), I was made to lie on a hard board placed on top of my bed’s mattress. On another occasion I lay on the floor beside my bed. Such practices were the wisdom of the time. Except – at least for me – they weren’t at all wise. The pressure of the hard surface made my back much worse. An unintended consequence.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, many commentators explained that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, did not want a NATO-member country right on his border. The invasion was to prevent Ukraine ever being that nation. But that invasion made both Sweden and Finland afraid they might be a future target of Russian aggression. So both these traditionally neutral, unaligned countries applied for NATO membership. If granted, which is likely, that will seriously displease President Putin. Why? Because Finland has an 830 mile (1340 km) border with Russia. The goal he did not want – a NATO country as his immediate neighbour – he looks certain to have. An unintended consequence.

We all attempt things which don’t work out. We don’t pass an exam, our auction bid fails, our house plants die, our penalty kick misses the goal, our application for promotion is rejected, the car we repaired won’t go. And so on. But unintended consequences aren’t about trying and getting nothing. They’re about trying and getting something we didn’t expect.

That happened to me back in the days of four-ring electric cookers when two rings on our cooker stopped working. To do nothing would have left us with a barely usable cooker. Being a man of action I set out to fix what was broken. I took all the rings off, so I could see how they were wired and fitted. That went well, other than it didn’t help me diagnose the problem. Actually, only my dismantling went well. My reassembly went very badly because, when I finished, instead of two broken cooker rings we now had four broken cooker rings, and I couldn’t repair any of them. But this is a bad/good story because my attempts to fix the cooker had two unintended consequences. First, that cooker died completely. Second, we bought a much better cooker.

We all experience unintended consequences. To help you survive them, I can offer one reality check and two encouragements.

Reality check: Life is neither predictable nor controllable

Normally we expect our plans to work out as intended: that the plane we’re booked on will fly; the meal we’ve prepared for guests will taste good; our car will run smoothly. But none of these are guaranteed. The plane might have a faulty engine and never take off (I’ve experienced that); the meat may be left in the oven so long it’s become a burnt offering (I did that); the car won’t go because it was filled with diesel instead of petrol (someone else did that). The old saying that ‘Man proposes but God disposes’ reminds us not everything works out as we expect.

That’s true even when there’s a very carefully crafted business plan and big budget. Most major supermarkets have installed self-checkout facilities. You scan your own goods, then pay, and then go. It avoids a queue at a cashier checkout. Surely that’s good? But a survey of 1000 customers found 67% had problems at self-check kiosks. By the time they got assistance, sometimes more than once, they’d have been quicker going to a cashier. So, customers weren’t delighted. Surely the stores benefited? Maybe not. It’s not clear that businesses have found self-checkout helpful or profitable. The idea of getting the customer to do work previously done by cashiers must have seemed good to management, but:

  • The self-check machines are expensive to buy and install, and they need regular, costly maintenance
  • They often break down, perhaps causing the kind of queues for customers the system was supposed to avoid
  • Customers don’t enjoy scanning their own items so they buy less
  • Staff still have to be employed to assist customers with difficulties
  • More shoplifting happens through self-checkouts than traditional cashier checkouts, and that’s costly.

Installing self-checkout facilities was not a whim, but a carefully worked out plan and investment to boost profits, and to please customers by speeding them through the scan/pay/go experience. But the plan didn’t deliver only benefits. As the bullet points above show, there have been unwelcome and unintended consequences.[1]

The reality is that a sizeable percentage of all our plans don’t work out the way we intend. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t define goals and might as well give up on organisation. We should aim for the best and do our best to achieve it. But be humble – we may not have thought of everything. And be flexible – things may have to change. And be accepting – life rarely involves a straight line from A to B, never mind from A to Z.

Life is neither predictable nor controllable.

Unintended consequences may be more significant than anything we intended

It’s 2003, and a second year Harvard student is creating a website. He calls it Facemash. Many might think it inappropriate, because the site gives his fellow Harvard students the chance to compare two photos and decide which one is ‘hot’ and which is ‘not’. His initial thought is to use school facebook[2] photos – many of which he thought ugly – and put them alongside images of farm animals. In the end, he copied images from several facebooks, and got users to choose the ‘hotter’ person. In its first four hours online Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views. It began to take off on other campuses, but the Harvard administration then stepped in and almost expelled the student.

But in January 2004 that student, Mark Zuckerberg, began writing code for (what he initially called) TheFacebook. All he intended was a website that would link everyone on the Harvard campus. He had no thought beyond that. But much more happened. By December 2005 (what was now called) Facebook had six million users.[3] The estimate for 2022 is almost three billion monthly active users worldwide. All that Zuckerberg intended was to link Harvard students together. But the unintended consequence has been an unprecedented take up and growth. People have strong pro and anti feelings about social media, but undeniably Facebook’s story over less than 20 years is truly remarkable.

The chances that our unintended consequences will be like those encountered by Mark Zuckerberg are very close to zero. But we can learn that unanticipated consequences need not be unwelcome consequences. It’s very possible that the unintended consequences in your life will be greater and more wonderful than anything you anticipated.

And that brings me to the final encouragement.

Unintended consequences can be absolutely, excitingly, life-changingly delightful

Here’s my story of exactly that.

My career beginnings were in journalism, leaving school and starting work with The Scotsman (which, never short on modesty, has for decades described itself as Scotland’s national quality newspaper). My first year with the paper was mostly journalism studies at college, then followed by two years full-time as reporter and sub-editor. It was during that time I made my Christian commitment and only months after that I felt I should prepare for Christian ministry. That would mean going to university. I didn’t have the qualifications for entry, so I began studying at evening classes. But severe back pain halted all work and study for about two months. I recovered but realised I’d never get into university with part-time study. I resigned from The Scotsman and enrolled full-time at a further education college. One year later I had the passes needed to enter the University of Edinburgh.

I began alongside thousands more freshers. One of the other new students at the University should have arrived one year earlier, but her intended course of study was being revamped so they’d cancelled the previous year’s admission. Hence she began the same year I did. We met within a few weeks, and three years later Alison and I got married. That was undoubtedly the greatest wisdom either of us ever had. And, well over four decades later, being together keeps getting better.

But very easily it might never have happened.  What if I had done better at high school and gone on immediately to university? What if I’d made my Christian commitment some other time? What if I hadn’t been sidelined by bad health when I first tried to improve my qualifications? What if Alison’s course hadn’t been pushed back a year? But all these factors, all these circumstances, strangely and wonderfully had the unplanned, unforeseen, unintended consequence that Alison and I met.

In my opinion, there’s a lot to be said for unintended consequences.

[1] Much of the information here is from https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/09/business/self-checkout-retail/index.html

[2] Albums with photos of every student.

[3] Information from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook

Wisdom

In ancient times, when kings judged hard cases, two prostitutes stood before their king. I’ll call them Anna and Bella. Anna began their story. They shared a house, both became pregnant and in time gave birth to sons. One night, Bella’s baby died. Quietly Bella got up, took Anna’s baby and placed her dead child in his place. When morning came, Anna awoke and, to great distress, found her baby lifeless. But she looked closely, and realised it was not her baby. It was Bella’s.

Before the king could respond, Bella protested that Anna is lying – her baby is the one who died. The argument continued, but never got beyond ‘Her baby died; ‘No, her baby died’. There was no way to know who was telling the truth? Or was there?

The king had a large sword brought, and ordered that the living child should be cut in two so each woman could have half.

Anna wept. She loved her son and couldn’t let him die, so begged the king to give the child to Bella.

Bella, though, said the king was right that neither should have the child, so ‘Cut him in two!’

Then the king ruled: the child must go to Anna, the mother who so valued the child’s life she’d give him up in order that he would live. ‘Do not kill him; Anna is his mother’ he ordered.

Word of the ruling spread throughout the land. People were in awe of their king ‘because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice’.

The king was Solomon, ruler of Israel for 40 years from 962 BC. The case of the two women and one baby is described in the Old Testament, 1 Kings 3:16-28 (my quotations from New International Version).

Early in his time as king, Solomon sensed God speak to him in a dream asking what he wanted God to give him. His reply had nothing to do with riches or power over his enemies, but: ‘…give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong’ (1 Kings 3:9). And God gave him what he asked for.

Ever since the dispute over the baby, Solomon was seen as having the wisdom of God. Even some 3000 years later, people wish they had ‘the wisdom of Solomon’.

The title of this blog site is ‘Occasionally Wise’. I’d never claim to be all-wise about anything, hence the word ‘occasionally’ in that title. Wisdom is important, very important. Yet I realised I’d never written about it. Until now.

The dictionary I consulted for a definition of ‘wisdom’ used these words: experience, knowledge, and good judgment. I checked several others, and mostly they used the same or similar words.

To me, it seems hard to define wisdom, if we’re thinking of a ‘quality’ someone can possess. Do I know anyone who is so imbued with wisdom they are wise for every circumstance on every occasion? I don’t think I do, and I’m very sure I’m not like that. But if we can’t possess wisdom, I believe we can become people who mostly practise wisdom – train our minds and hearts so that generally we act wisely.

But it’s best to get away from definitions and, in this blog, I’ll write about what wisdom is not.

The writers of dictionary definitions won’t like some of this!

Wisdom is not knowledge    Knowledge is a great tool, but no guarantee of right decisions. Josef Mengele was a doctor and a Nazi SS officer. He had both a medical degree and a doctorate in anthropology. So he was exceedingly knowledgeable – a clever man but also an extremely wicked man. The name he acquired in the Auschwitz concentration camp was Angel of Death. He was happy to assess victims to die in gas chambers, because it gave him opportunity to select those on whom he would perform appalling and deadly medical experiments, especially on identical twins. He knew much, but applied it in ways so unwise he is remembered only for infamy.[1]

Wisdom is not experience    It’s wise to learn from experience. No question about that. But the problem is that many don’t learn from experience. They hold the same beliefs, same assumptions, same values, same goals, and therefore make the same mistakes. That explains the oft-quoted trite saying: ‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got’. The sentence is simplistic, but often simply true.

I’ve counselled people on debt, who swore they’d change, and off they went to spend again because it made them feel better. I’ve counselled people on their marriages, about sharing, listening, nurturing, and each said they’d learned, but back they went to squabbling and hating each other, so much I thought they were happy that way. Except they weren’t. Experience had not brought them wisdom.

Wisdom is not authority    A strong leader – someone who points a clear way forward and motivates others to follow – is assumed to be wise. They know the direction to take. They know how to get there. They know how to take others with them. But authority by itself is not wisdom. Napoleon lacked nothing in the authority department, but in 1812  led almost half a million troops in an invasion of Russia. That campaign has been called one of the most lethal military operations in history. Within six weeks he’d lost half his men because of disease, hunger, and extreme weather. More followed when heavy snows fell. Only 120,000 survived, and Napoleon’s image of invincibility had gone.

Hitler – another heavily authoritarian leader – made a similar mistake. In 1941 he dispatched troops to conquer the Soviet Union. Battles lasted until 1945, by which time almost 40 per cent of all deaths in World War II had occurred on the Eastern Front. The battle for Stalingrad in the winter of 1942 trapped 300,000 German troops who froze and starved, and only 91,000 were left when they surrendered. Eighty per cent of all German military deaths occurred on the Eastern Front. It’s widely reported that Hitler thought himself a military genius and ignored his top generals. He used his authority, but his lack of wisdom cost millions of lives.

Wisdom is not taking the easy way    Perhaps one of the best known parables of Jesus is the story of two men and their house building. Probably they were equally good at designing houses. Both places were impressive. The issue that divided them was where they built. One took on the tough task of finding rock for his house’s foundation. The other took the easy way – there was plenty sand so ‘I’ll just build here,’ he decided. Then came the day of the Great Storm – rain fell for hours; the streams flooded; the wind was gale force. The house on the rock stood firm. The house on the sand collapsed with a great crash. That story of Jesus – recorded in Matthew 7:24-27 – is usually called the parable of the wise and foolish builders.

What was wise was the hard way – perhaps it cost more money, certainly it took more time. But the house lasted. The man who opted for the easy way – cheap and quick – lost everything. The easy way always looks… easy. And therefore attractive, because you can have it quickly and at little cost. But the easy way is nearly always the wrong way, not the way of wisdom.

I’ll stop here. After several long blogs, actually very long blogs, one of modest length may be particularly appreciated. A wise choice for me to make.

Next time I’ll write more positively about what it is to have wisdom. Hopefully I’ll find sufficient wisdom for that.

———————–

I realise there was a longer-than-usual gap before this blog appeared. My apologies for that, but I had another of these study pressure moments when my priorities temporarily had to shift. It was the right thing to do – the wise thing to do – but I’m still sorry for the delay. Thank you for your patience.

[1] When World War II ended, Mengele escaped to South America where he consistently eluded Nazi hunters. He eventually died in 1979 from drowning after suffering a stroke.