Natural Consequences
A natural consequence can be defined as the way a given situation will change over time in the absence of interfering action. Natural consequences can rarely be fully predicted in a real world setting, but their general shape is usually easily foreseen.
A simple example : If you roll a ball down a hill, you cannot easily predict the exact course it will take, but you know it is going to the bottom of the hill.
A more complex example : If you build a house on a foundation of sand, the house will collapse. Where it will break is not easily predictable... the walls may separate from the floor, or each other, the floor may collapse, ectetera. It may take a week, it may take a year. But it will collapse.
A simple example : If you roll a ball down a hill, you cannot easily predict the exact course it will take, but you know it is going to the bottom of the hill.
A more complex example : If you build a house on a foundation of sand, the house will collapse. Where it will break is not easily predictable... the walls may separate from the floor, or each other, the floor may collapse, ectetera. It may take a week, it may take a year. But it will collapse.
A real life example : If, as an ongoing policy, you buy things without bothering to ask what they cost, the price of those things will increase constantly.
Now that I think about it, natural consequences are really an expression of a deeper priciple : balance. A situation that is out of balance will do one of two things. It will either 1) Move back towards balance, because of effects on a related system countering, or 2) Spin out of control until it breaks, and the wreckage will fall into balance.
4 comments:
"While the Tao cannot be expressed, Taoism holds that it can be known, and its principles can be followed. Much of Taoist writing focusses on the value of following the Tao - called Te (virtue) - and of the ultimate uselessness of trying to understand or control Tao outright. This is often expressed through yin and yang arguments, where every action creates a counter-action as a natural, unavoidable movement within manifestations of the Tao."
Natural consequences = what swings too far in one direction must swing an equal distance in the other direction.
Ying and Yang - without white there is no black and vice versa.
That is the trouble with extremism...it always breeds its opposite. Find the middle way, the balance and success and harmony are yours...
Radical isn't it? :)
The conservative blog world has never understood why I hated Bush so much....Clinton had found the middle way but that was not good enough for the libertarian extremists...and now look, they got their opposite in office.
Btw, I like your posts, OMR. I have added you to my blogroll (see "Right Leaning Blogroll") and taken others off because your writing actually has class and intelligence behind it.
Based on this post and your previous, I can respond that both of our parties seem to lack an understanding of natural consequences of their political choices.
I was once a Republican. Now I don't know what I am.
All this is to say, I like your blog.
Well thank you James, and welcome to the playground.
Feel free to comment, I have a small but diverse group who chip in here, the conversations are more fun than the posts, often.
On an aside, I pretty well agree with your "I was once a Republican. Now I don't know what I am."
In no small part, this whole blog is about finding that out.
OMR and James...
Our world is changing and we have denied it for too long.
We have had numerous issues facing this country that no one has been willing to deal with....
Until Obama.
Obama is forcing both of the parties and all of us to to sit down and deal with the fact that the future will be different than the past and that change in necessary.
Right now there is no republican response, and by default no republican party.
Its all so new and different....
We are reinventing ourselves and this country.
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