It’s 2012, and we’re in a quiet church in a quiet town in Spain. Cecilia Giménez has decided to restore a 19th-century fresco of Jesus, known as "Ecce Homo” (“Behold the Man”). Much effort and patience were required; restoration is an intensive, exhausting, careful process.
Here is the end result of all that work.
Despite her most sincere attempt and a great deal of hard work, the restoration garnered worldwide attention, but for its catastrophic failure. It has since been affectionately dubbed "Monkey Christ" or “Behold the Monkey.”
Monkey Christ represents the Law of Unintended Consequences: actions almost always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. These outcomes can be good or bad, but they are all unforeseen, and they often arise as a result of things we can’t anticipate.
Today, let’s take a look at how the best-laid plans can go hilariously or horribly wrong. It serves as a cautionary tale for us all: sometimes our well-meant efforts to improve or innovate end up doing exactly the opposite.
Prohibition
In 1920, America embarked on what seems today like a pretty wild ride.
In order to reduce domestic violent crime and corruption, improve the nation’s health, and solve the great social problems of the day, the 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
This so-called “Noble Experiment” had more or less the exact opposite effect. It did not make society safer: it made it much more dangerous.
Illegal speakeasies sprung up everywhere, and since nature abhors a vacuum, organized crime syndicates met the growing demand through bootlegging. As a result, the public became a lot more cynical, developing a powerful disdain for authority.
Most of us know about the legendary violence from countless gangster movies portraying this dangerous time. I, for one, grew up on the likes of The Untouchables.
But what about health? Too much alcohol is very bad for you, after all.
Nope. Far from improving public health, Prohibition led to the consumption of dangerous, unregulated alcohol, causing countless deaths and injuries. Adding insult to injury, the loss of tax revenue from alcohol sales further strained an already struggling government budget.
The government eventually acknowledged its failure, repealing the 18th Amendment with the 21st Amendment in 1933.
The "Noble Experiment" serves as a classic example of how good intentions can go awry when implemented without fully understanding the complex interactions of humans in the modern world. Even with the best intentions, the solutions we design can sometimes create problems far worse than those we aimed to solve.
Cane Toads Down Under
Like with America before Prohibition, early 20th century Australia had a problem. Beetles were destroying the sugar cane fields at a time when the nation could hardly afford additional economic or social strain.
In 1935, in a well-intentioned bid to tackle the problem, the Australian authorities introduced cane toads from Central and South America. The idea was simple: the toads would eat the beetles, safeguarding the valuable sugar cane crops. The same toads had been used to solve similar problems in Hawaii and Puerto Rico.
What could possibly go wrong?
It turns out the toads weren't particularly interested in the adult cane beetles. They’d eat the larvae, but those lived underground.
Instead, the toads found a virtual buffet of other local animals they rather enjoyed eating, upsetting the balance of the local ecosystem. It didn’t help that they reproduced exponentially and then abandoned their territory after disrupting the region.
Even worse, the cane toads are toxic, and their venom led to the poisoning of numerous predators who tried to eat them, further destabilizing the ecosystem.
These toads are still wreaking havoc today, almost a century later.
Like the "Noble Experiment" of Prohibition, the introduction of cane toads into the Australian landscape shows that whenever we interfere with complex systems, we have to tread carefully. Our attempts to solve one problem can inadvertently create several new ones, sometimes with irreversible damage.
The Antibiotic Arms Race
In the early 20th century, the discovery of antibiotics completely revolutionized modern medicine.
Doctors, elated at this newfound miracle cure, began prescribing antibiotics liberally. For the first time, they understood how to fight against the bacterial infections that had been killing patients for time immemorial.
If you’re tempted to ask “what could go wrong?” without a sense of irony, I implore you to pay better attention.
Today, the phrase “antibiotic resistance” is a commonly used term. The overuse (and misuse) of antibiotics over the last century has led to a massive decline in their overall effectiveness .
Bacteria are the planet’s ultimate survivors; they adapt and evolve. By overusing antibiotics, we've essentially trained them to resist our most effective weapons. By using antibiotics in farming, we’ve made it even worse, with antibiotics making their way into our food supply, further boosting resistance across populations.
New superbugs laugh in the face of conventional antibiotics. In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, we are all too familiar with MRSA, a dangerous variant of a staph infection that’s resistant to methicillin, a common treatment for staph.
Minor infections that were once easily treatable can now becoming life-threatening, and we're once again back to a pre-antibiotic era in some ways, constantly looking for innovative breakthroughs.
The rampant overuse of antibiotics is another stark reminder of the Law of Unintended Consequences. While antibiotics have saved countless lives, their overuse risks rendering them useless, bringing new challenges to modern medicine.
Proceed Carefully
History is rife with examples that illustrate the Law of Unintended Consequences. I wanted to pick a few obvious examples from about a hundred years ago, so that we can see how long these changes have taken to whittle their way through our world.
We can also see how complex things are. Any time we try to solve a problem or improve a situation, we should proceed with the utmost caution, and acknowledge that there may be trade-offs we don’t even know exist.
We need to think in systems and consider the bigger picture. Everything is intertwined nowadays, but it’s not always immediately obvious as to how. Over time, we need to gather observations about the world—our data. We need to understand how disparate elements influence one another.
We need to be unafraid to examine economics, physics, social sciences… we are going to need it all if we’re going to have any chance of determining what unintended consequences might look like. Taking a multi-disciplinarian approach, as Charlie Munger often puts it, is our key.
We can start by reading and learning about different fields outside of your normal arena of competence. If you like history, try learning a little bit of physics. If science is your thing, how about economics?
Can you apply this thought process in your personal life? Before you take that next big step, pause, and think: "What could possibly go wrong?"
If your answer is “nothing”, you might want to consider these examples before stretching your imagination a little.
I owe
a debt of gratitude for sharing the “Monkey Christ” image over on Substack Notes. Follow Mike for a good time (and to learn a great deal).
What's interesting about this:
"Far from improving public health, Prohibition led to the consumption of dangerous, unregulated alcohol, causing countless deaths and injuries."
Is that these deaths and injuries weren't caused by the bootlegged alcohol per se but by the FBI and other Government agencies cracking down by putting Formeldahyde (dangerous methanol) INTO the alcohol.
There is actually nothing dangerous about distilling. You cast off the foreshots (methanol) and you're good. Even if you don't cast it off, the methanol level in a full batch of hooch is the same percentage as a homebrewed beer.
The Government poisoned the alcohol in an attempt to discredit the moonshine and ended up making it deadly! Unintended consequences?
And we learned nothing from Prohibition. The War on Drugs is Prohibition on crack!