Unintended Consequences and Wild, Wandering Virtues
“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Wild, Wandering Virtues
Chesterton offers us an accurate diagnosis the ills of the modern world. In Orthodoxy, his defense of the Christian faith, he points out that a surfeit of goodness can be just as dangerous to society and the soul as its absence. What we aim for in the Christian life--and is a free and virtuous society--is balance or what the fathers (taking their cue from Greek philosophy) would call the "royal road" of moderation. As dangerous as the absence of goodness is, we must also guard against a merely abstract commitment to it.
When, as Chesterton points out, I pursue virtue without a sound understanding of the vice. I am prone to create more problems than I correct. And, again, this is true both in the soul as it is in society.
Having fallen prey to wildly wandering virtues, that life of abstract moral goodness that Christos Yannaras criticizes in The Freedom of Morality, I don't simply cause harm in the name of (a greater) good. Bad as this is, my sincere commitment to the good makes me less willing to repent secure as I am in my own good intentions.
Compounding the problem, I can often cite (if only to myself) the real. good fruits of my actions. Though I may not realize it, narcissism and a utilitarian ethic often go hand in hand. The conceit of the latter is bolstered by the former allowing me to minimize the negative, if unintended, consequences of my adherence to the good, the, the beautiful, or the just--this last one being an especially common temptation in contemporary society.
Recently, I read two essays on different Substack blogs that put me in mind of the law of unintended consequences. "[O]ften cited but rarely defined," it says "that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it" (Unintended Consequences).
Don't Let Greater Goods Undermine Lesser Good
The first is Eva Kurilova's discussion of the dramatic decrease in Lesbian bars (The Mystery of the Disappearing Lesbian Bars). As she writes
If you’re connected at all to lesbian or even to wider gay circles, then you’ve likely heard that lesbian bars are dying out. It’s true. In the late 1980s, there were more than 200 lesbian bars in the United States. Now, most major cities don’t have even one.
She goes on to "that a combination of many factors likely contributed to the decline" including "reasons like assimilation, gentrification, and dating apps. ... economic factors" what is often left out of the mix is what she calls "over-inclusivity."
What she means by the last term this. Rather than lesbians "hav[ing] spaces just for lesbians" an expectation is made such that
...lesbians are ... to cater to the needs of every other letter in the [LGBTQ+] acronym that is seeking a “safe space,” and it certainly seems that many have internalized that role. There is an odd strain of self-hatred that believes it is wrong for lesbians to have any boundaries whatsoever.
So instead of simply being a bar where people are able "to socialize and meet new people" they have become "social justice centers" or "a place to showcase virtue and do the work of progressive politics."
Profit Can Overflow the Monetary
Pause here for a second and recall Milton Friedman's famous (or if you prefer "infamous" argument that the only social responsibility of business is to maximize profits. While this might jar us a bit, the vanishing of lesbian bars is a good illustration in how by pursuing their primary purpose--making a profit by providing a desired service--a business can also serve foster social justice.
The virtuous pursuit of profit, in other words, can have other socially beneficial consequences. While these don't appear on a balance sheet, they are nevertheless part of the moral goodness of the free market. Like property rights. a profitable business (like a lesbian bar) can create a place for like-minded individuals to gather and provide mutual support and encouragement.
Ironically, it is precisely when businesses pursue justice as an aim that they fail not only to achieve a just social outcome but fail as a business. "If these weren’t factors," Kurilova writes referring to bar as social justice center, "that initially led to the rapid decline in lesbian bars (though I would argue they certainly are), then at the very least they are factors in why these spaces continue to shutter and why new lesbian nightlife spots have a hard time getting their doors opened."
Kurilova illustrates her point by recounting how two lesbian bars were (falsely) accused of racism and transphobia resulting in one closing and the other "only surviving because of its oxymoronic tagline: 'A lesbian bar for everyone'" she points out that we reached a point where,
The only allowable lesbian bar is a lesbian bar for everyone, which means that it isn’t a lesbian bar at all. If lesbians are allowed to set boundaries around our spaces and our identities, then it reminds men who wish that they were lesbians that they aren’t, and that they can never be. This is the madness that helped kill and continues to suffocate lesbian bars. It really isn’t that much of a mystery at all.
Good Ends Pursued By Wicked Means
The second blog post--"Christian" Patriarchy is Not the Solution to Feminism Run Amok by Kaeley Triller Harms--covers similar ground albeit from a different moral perspective. After pointing out that some "things just don’t make a whole lot of sense" she goes on to say that "other things do."
Specifically, she's thinking of the "the backlash to feminism."
I get it. As feminist inclined as I may personally be, I’m also an honest person, so I have to acknowledge that third wave feminism has run off the rails. When conservatives thumb their noses at it, I do understand a number of the objections, and the surplus of 60 million abortions coupled with the downright embarrassing feminist corporate sell-out of women’s hard fought sex-based rights are at the very top of the list. When even the pink pussy hats are taboo at the annual Women’s March because they’re “transphobic,” you know you’ve lost the reins of your own movement.
Harms is quick to point out her objections to some forms of feminism is most assured not a rejection of the whole movement.
I maintain (and will always maintain) that true feminism was always and will always remain necessary. (If you struggle to understand this, I invite you to consider the plight of women in Afghanistan), and I think people on my side of the political divide are aggressively unfair and lacking in nuance when it comes to their approach to feminism, but I’m not blind to their legitimate grievances.
What we must not do, she says, is allow ourselves to succumb (as many conservative Christians have), to "a rapidly metastasizing cancer in our own camp: 'Christian' patriarchy."
As with the desire to defend LGBTQ+ rights, it is all too easy to seek justice for some that comes at the expense of justice for others. And so "Patriarchy is to the left as feminism is to the right. And neither side is entirely wrong in its criticism." But we need to be on guard against a “solution” that however "well-intended" is "ill-advised."
Turning lesbian bars into bars for everyone or arguing for 'Christian' patriarchy in both cases is to offer "the promise of order and control amidst a backdrop of total gender chaos, but in reality, it is actually a feeder program for the same toxic" behavior "it claims to oppose."
She goes on to say (correctly in my view) that "Toxic patriarchy is the root, liberal feminism the fruit." And the arrow goes in the other direction as well. Liberal feminism is the root, toxic patriarchy the fruit. "One always produces the other. But very few are naming this problem. They’re two broken wings of the same decrepit bird."
Good Intentions and Unintended Consequences
Neither side, Harm concludes, is willing to acknowledge how its own, largely reasonable agenda, "contributions to the problem. ... We refuse to address the problem at its root. We want to pluck the head off the dandelion and convince ourselves we’ve eradicated the weeds in our garden."
The moral and policy problems converge; good intentions don't protect me from unintended consequences. Ironically--tragically really--good intentions can dull my willingness to accept responsibility for the unintended harm that can result from even the best of motive. of the , So let's go back to learning to fly. Let me conclude by returning once again to the law of unintended consequences.
Somewhat to my discomfort, the first thing I realize is that yes, there are times when these consequences will be unwelcome and even sinful. But there will also be other times, however, when these unintended consequences will be both welcome and virtuous.
What is important, is that precisely because they are "unintended" they are not under my control; they are not the result of my planning. So rather than trying to create an unalloyed good outcome, it might be better to simply do what I know (or at least, think) is good and then correct my course as the consequences play out.
This means I need to be humble in my expectations about the good I (or others) can do. Likewise, I need to be humble in my criticism of the harm I and others do. Yes, there will be times when I or others act unjustly.
More often than not though, unjust or harmful consequences will result despite--or even because of--our best intentions and efforts.
The task of Orthodox Social Thought I think is to assist people as they go through their lives not only making decisions but wrestling with the unintended consequences of those decisions. What the Christian moral tradition does best, is help people in the prudential analysis of not just their intentions but the consequences of their actions.
As part of the broader Christian moral tradition, OST should offer us not only a vocabulary for what is morally good but a tool kit to recognize and regroup when sin inevitably makes itself know in our social lives.
Or, if you prefer OST helps us acquire the "knack" of not being held captive to those wild, wandering virtues that blind us to the wicked outcomes of our good intentions.