The Aggregation of Unintended Consequences

Every act has unintended consequences. Living well means opening a lot of packages and containers, so our landfills fill up with old packages and containers. The sky fills with carbon dioxide from our wonderful gasoline cars.

The earth is round. We begin to breathe our own exhaust. Our behavior is self-limiting, the growth of human life on earth slows and stops. Unintended consequences congeal globally.

Political side effects require that to define a following, one must define its opposition. The side effect of identity is division. As Republicans scramble for identity in the wake of cataclysmic loss, sorting their moral purity from their moral poverty, they are becoming self-opposed. Preachers chide the amoralists. Amoralists damn the world as sinners.

By welcoming all the opposition into the discussion, if not the agreements, Obama has pulled the wind from beneath their wings. Feathers blow in the wind.

All the side effects from our special effects.

Maybe the purpose of special effects can become to develop quality side effects.