48. CONSEQUENCES
The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn’t matter what they do, because everything works out in the end…Real life’s nasty. It’s cruel. It doesn’t care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be.
- Darren Shan, A Living Nightmare
All the steps taken to this point to prepare ourselves to serve others and help society face climate change have the best of intentions. Identifying our purpose, being honest with ourselves about the world, and coming up with options for the obstacles we’ll face all make us more resilient, and, as a result, more likely to continue with a life of service.
But good intentions are not enough.
In the comics, when Spiderman reveals his secret identity, he does it to support superhero registration, a policy he believes is needed for the greater good of society. Problem was, that with his identity made public knowledge, an assassin came gunning for Peter Parker and ending up shooting his Aunt May instead. For every action, a reaction.
Things work much the same way in real life. The Afghan prisons that held detained insurgent fighters, captured in the name of peace and security, ironically enabled Taliban radicalization and recruitment1. Then there were the hundreds of Afghans employed as cultural advisors and interpreters for coalition forces, people who were all in Afghanistan to lay the foundations for long term development, stability and peace2, the best of intentions. When coalition forces left in 2021, many of these Afghans and their families were hunted down by the Taliban and killed in retribution.
There is, however, a clear difference between these two examples.
Following Aunt May’s near-death, Spiderman makes a deal with the literal devil, who rewrites reality so Aunt May lives. All it costs Spidey is his marriage to Mary Jane Watson and the life of their unborn daughter. No harm, no foul, especially since they’re all made-up characters.
But there’s no rewriting reality in Afghanistan. All those interpreters and cultural advisors and their families who the Taliban tortured and executed will stay dead, deserted by their Western allies and killed because they dared hope for a better world.
No matter how well we prepare to serve others, no matter how good our intentions to help society, whether that’s to face climate change or some other goal, our plans will not go as intended. There will be consequences to our actions, some of which may cause more harm than good. And so, we will need to be prepared to adjust our plans based on those consequences, the most obvious of which is failure.
Marisa L. Porges, “Radicalization Processes in Afghanistan,” Combating Terrorism Center, January 2012, Vol 5, Issue 1, Radicalization Processes in Afghanistan – Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (usma.edu), accessed 1 Dec 2020.
UNAMA, Mission Statement, https://unama.unmissions.org/mission-statement, accessed Sep 29, 2021.