The Law of Unintended Consequences and The LOTR

In everyday life, we are used to the idea of cause and effect. That means that when we try to do something, we expect an outcome similar to the effort we put in. However, sometimes our actions backfire and result in the exact opposite of what we intended.

This effect is called the Law of Unintended Consequences, which Wikipedia defines as follows:

In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types:

Unexpected benefit: A positive unexpected benefit (also referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).

Unexpected drawback: An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect.

Perverse result: A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended.

When can we expect an opposite outcome from our actions, and why does this happen?

Areas of Human Endeavour

Generally speaking, we can divide all human experiences into three areas:

Self: Internal (intrapersonal) experiences, for example: eating good food, intellectual stimulation and exercise.
Other: Interpersonal experiences that involve interaction with others, for example: making friends, being part of a community and participating in group activities.
Ideology: Idealogical experiences associated with a belief system, for example: environmentalism, philanthropy and religion.

These areas can overlap, for example:

Self + Other: Sharing a meal with others combines the personal experience of eating good food with the shared experience of socialising.
Self + Ideology: Studying a specific scientific field might inspire you to donate to a charity focused on that research area.
Other + Ideology: Engaging in a group environmental activity reinforces the benefit to the environment through collective action.

The more areas of experience involved in an activity, the higher the level of personal engagement. Full personal involvement is achieved when all three areas of experience come into play.

Society and Self

In addition to the Self, Other and Ideology experiences of the individual, societies also have a powerful and pervasive idea of how the Self, the Other and Ideology should be experienced.

Self: Societies shape the Self by encouraging certain traits, values, and behaviors.
Other: Societies promote certain types of relationships and interactions, so shaping the Other.
Ideology: Each society espouses specific belief systems or Ideologies that align with its core values and principles.

Together, these elements combine to create a unique societal system. The type of Self that a society nurtures, the nature of relationships (Other) it promotes, and the Ideology it espouses, all contribute to the shape and function of the societal system.

Societal Perpetuation

In order to guarantee the societal stability, society institutionalises these concepts of Self, Other and Ideology:

Legal Frameworks: Societies have laws that explicitly dictate acceptable behavior and ideologies. Laws can reject or penalize influences that contradict these legal norms. For example, societies that value individual freedom and self-expression (Self) might have laws that protect freedom of speech, thereby limiting the influence of ideologies that advocate for censorship.
Customs and Traditions: Customs and traditions (“the way we do things”) can promote certain behaviors and beliefs while discouraging others. These often play out in common practices that encapsulate the society’s preferred Self, Other, and Ideology, and discourage alternatives.
Cultural and Social Norms: Cultural and social norms are informal understandings that govern individuals’ behavior in society. They act as a primary filter, influencing what types of behaviors, relationships, and ideologies are considered acceptable. When an external influence is at odds with these norms, it often faces resistance or rejection from the society.

In this way, society creates a protective buffer around itself to guard against influences that seek to change the way of life exemplified by the society.

Inverse Perception of External Influences

When one society forcibly exerts influence on another in an attempt to change or subordinate the second society, the recipient society always perceives this influence from a different perspective (relative to the Self, Other and Ideology categorisation) than the source society.

For example, if Society A attempts to forcibly influence Society B from an ideological perspective, then this will be viewed as an attack on the Self and Society of Society B.

We can identify this effect in the discrete areas of Self, Other, and Ideology.

Forcible attempts to impose a new type of Self: According to the second society, the Self of the first society is oppressive and grasping. Such a Self cannot be a true, natural form of Self and is rather an artificial form generated by an incorrect Ideology and ways of living (Other). Therefore, forcible attempts to impose a new type of Self are construed as attacks on ideology and societal structure.
Forcible attempts to impose a new type of Other: According to the second society, the societal interactions in the first society are unhealthy and unnatural, and so must be the product of incorrect Ideology and personal corruption (Self).
Forcible attempts to impose a new type of Ideology: According to the second society, the Ideology of the first society is invalid, therefore this ideology cannot truly appear as ideological to the second society and is instead perceived as a projection of a corrupt Self and of dysfunctional societal interactions (Other).

Since the second society always perceives the source of the influence from the first society as coming from a different area than it emanates from in the source society, the element of the second society that responds to that stimulus is inevitably different to the source element. Therefore, the effect it has on the target society is always in a different area (of Self, Other and Ideology) than in the source.

This means to say, due to the inversion in perception that occurs when force is traded between different societies, the area of Self, Other, or Ideology impacted in Society B is always different from the area of influence intended by Society A.

We can see this effect in The Lord of the Rings.

Sauron and the Fellowship of the Ring

In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron the Dark Lord wants to take over the Free World by using his army of orcs and disaffected men. The Fellowship of the Ring aim to destroy the One Ring of Power, which will destroy Sauron. On the way to destroying the One Ring, the members of the fellowship are tried to their utmost, both physically and emotionally, and in the end, they succeed in their mission.

In this way, the pressure exerted by Sauron on the Fellowship due to his mission to conquer all of Middle Earth (Ideology), has a unifying effect on the Fellowship (Other) and results in their personal growth (Self). Faced with the threat of Mordor’s domination, the Fellowship members develop deeper bonds of mutual reliance, fostering a sense of unity in the face of their common enemy.

Here we see that the forceful application of Sauron’s Ideology (to rule the world) has a positive impact on the Fellowship’s Other and Self.

Sauron, the Dark Lord, encountered the Law of Unintended Consequences when by attempting to conquer the world, he forged the Fellowship of the Ring, a group of hardy and stalwart people. Since the Fellowship of the Ring lived in a different, converse society to Sauron, Sauron’s attempt to gain dominion over them backfired and resulted in his final downfall.

Systemic Errors within the same Society

There are other situations in the Lord of the Rings however, where the Rule of Unintended Consequences seems to apply within the same social system.

Boromir’s Attempt to Use the Ring: Boromir, a member of the Fellowship, moved by his desire to protect his people in Gondor (Self), attempts to take the One Ring from Frodo to use it against Sauron.
However, his actions are perceived by the Fellowship (Other) as a breach of the group’s Ideology, which is to destroy the One Ring. His personal desire to help his own people (Self) leads to the temporary dissolution of the Fellowship (Other), due to his failure to adhere to the group’s Ideology, an outcome opposite to his intention.
Denethor’s Stewardship: Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, desires to maintain the strength and unity of his realm (Other). Yet his actions, driven by despair and a misguided use of the palantír (seeing stone), lead him into madness (Self) when Sauron’s Ideology percolates into his mind.
This culminates in his tragic suicide; he fails in his role as Steward and contributes to the near downfall of Gondor, contrary to his original goal.

These events do not seem to fit into the idea that inversion of societal areas occur specifically when a social boundary has been crossed.

Further analysis shows, however, that in the above scenarios, a system boundary was crossed unwittingly. In other words, a systemic error was made.

Boromir’s Attempt to Use the Ring (Self to Ideology): Boromir is by definition unable to use the One Ring, since it represents the power and the system of Sauron.
Denethor’s Stewardship (Other to Self): Denethor thought he could use the power of the palantír (seeing stone) to strengthen himself, however, Sauron wrested control of Denethor’s mind through his use of the palantír. Thereby, Denethor was drawn into Sauron’s social system and became “mad” relative to his own.

This illustrates that not only does the Law of Unintended Consequences apply when social-system boundaries are crossed explicitly, but even where constructs of one society occur within another society, then attempting to use those constructs invokes interaction with the other society which results in perverse and unintended consequences.

Summary

We can deduce from the above that the manifestation of the Law of Unintended Consequences signifies a crossing of societal boundaries; this crossing of boundaries may either be deliberate, as in the case of Sauron’s pursuit of dominion, or it may be inadvertent, as in the case of Boromir trying to gain control of the One Ring.

This deduction can be stated as follows.

If the result of a social action is in line with the nature of the action, then both the action and the effect occurred within the same societal context. However, if the result is contrary to the nature of the action, then a societal boundary was crossed between the action and the effect.

Practically speaking this means that if we do encounter the Law of Unintended Consequences, and the outcome of our actions is the opposite of intended, this is because either we have unwittingly crossed a societal boundary, or because we are trying to apply one society’s constructs within another.

We can respond to our surprise in these situations by reassessing the local societal structures and adjusting our responses accordingly.