The Law of Unintended Consequences

What goes around comes around. We like to believe in cause and effect. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. But the universe is a complex place. The effects of our actions are often not felt for decades. Actions weave together and interact. The consequences... oh, boy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or at least different intentions from the results.

Last week I railed against pedophile priests and the hierarchy that protects them. Do I think that the Church set out to hurt children? No. The policy of celibacy was established so that the Church (not the priest's children) would inherit a priest's property. These savvy early bishops could not have predicted that their pragmatic decision to attract wealth to Holy Mother the Church would also attract young men with arrested sexual development. Generations of impaired young men have grown into a powerful community of impaired old men, who believe their own b.s. and have a warped perspective of the lives of children.

Friday night we watched "Darwin's Nightmare" (2004), a documentary about how globalization has destroyed both the people and the ecology in the Lake Victoria area of Tanzania, Africa. European businessmen celebrate the hygiene and productivity of the new perch filet processing plant, while the 90% of the plant workers (separated from their rural families) are dying of HIV/AIDS because of rampant prostitution. While the exotic species of perch in the lake have eaten all the other fish and are now eating their own offspring. While orphaned children roam the streets sniffing glue made from fish bones. While the planes that take the handsome fish filets to Europe must bring back cheap yellow peas to feed the starving locals. While those same jumbo jets also deliver arms to stoke all the African civil wars.

Here I am, someone who grew up accepting the nobility of single men ministering to their parishes. Here I am, someone who supported NAFTA and WTO and deregulation of international trade during the Nineties. Here I am, someone whose livelihood, in the form of retirement accounts, depends on the financial success of multinational corporations. How did things get so screwed up??? Can you ever really spin silk from a spider's web?

7.15.07

Thumbs Up if you liked this entry.

NOTES

Law of unintended consequences. [Wikipedia]