Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“[Every individual] … intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”¹ These words of Adam Smith (1723-1790) in his Wealth of Nations describe how market as a social contrivance to facilitate economic transactions leads to public good out of selfish actions by individuals, thus producing an outcome that was not their original intent.

What Adam Smith describes with a well-known metaphor of “an invisible hand” is a classic example of what has since been formulated as the law of unintended consequences by social scientists. Among the many social scientists who have discussed the law of unintended consequences, Robert K. Merton (1910-2003), an American sociologist, may be mentioned as one who gave a most systematic analysis of it. Also known for developing such concepts as “reference group,” “role model,” and “self-fulfilling prophesy,” Merton gave a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of unintended consequences of a purposeful action as a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in all kinds of social contrivances, including organizations and the government.²

In some cases, a purposeful action is taken out of ignorance, or error of judgment, about the consequences of that action. It is clear that a purposeful action in these cases ends up bringing about many unintended consequences. There are also perverse cases where a purposeful action is taken, intentionally neglecting unintended consequences because an individual, or a social organization, is single-mindedly concerned about the immediate consequence of his, or its, action. From a systems perspective, unintended consequences come about because no purposeful action is taken with full understanding of the extent to which that action invites reactions and repercussions in a wide network of social transactions that defines a social system. In other words, it is our myopia about the whole nexus of causes and conditions in which our action is taken that our purposeful action brings about unintended consequences. In this sense, the law of unintended consequences can be considered a corollary of the law of causes and conditions, which underlies the Buddhist view of the world.

As a major historical event, it should not be surprising if the Reformation, which started out as a purposeful action taken by Martin Luther (1483-1546) to reform the Church practice, has brought about many changes and transformations in the character of Western civilization, some of which were not obviously intended by him. When Luther posted a copy of his 95 Theses, or Arguments against the Power of Indulgences, on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, his intention was to stimulate academic discussion of the Church practice, for nailing such a document to the door was a conventional way of inviting the town and the university to public discussion of the matter. Thanks to the availability of printing press, the printed version of his 95 Theses became widely circulated, and is said be sold out in two weeks in Germany. In fact, Luther’s call for academic discussion of the Church practice spread far beyond his intention into a full-scale war of pamphlets between Luther’s supporters and his opponents.

Moreover, public discussion of the matter was not limited to academicians and priests. The ordinary people, too, were caught in the frenzy of the debate about the Church practice, for while “the mighty act of Luther was a purely intellectual decision,” as Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), a German historian known for his work The Decline of the West, pointed out, “the common people could only feel, not understand, the element of liberation in it all. They welcomed, enthusiastically indeed, the tearing up of visible duties, but they did not come to realize that these had been replaced by intellectual duties that were still stricter … the mystic experience of inward absolution by faith alone.”³

Once the question of salvation was shifted from the acceptance of the Church doctrine to the individual quest by faith, or the individual reading of the Bible, it was inevitable that a variety of interpretations would open up as to what leads to that salvation. While the Peace of Augsburg (1555) recognized only one Protestant church, the Lutheran, Luther’s action inspired other reformers to start their own denominations and sects based on their readings of the Bible. A wide variety of Protestant denominations and sects that have since sprung up may be another one of unintended consequences of Luther’s action.

There was no doubt that Luther was an effective pamphleteer. In addition to such pamphlets as The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520) and Passional Christi and Antichristi (1521), which were intended to attack the Church practice, Luther wrote pamphlets on many other subjects, some of which turned out to be quite controversial and ended up bringing about unintended consequences because of the violent and vulgar language he used. For example, Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants, which Luther wrote in 1525 in response to the 1524-25 peasants’ revolt against the feudal authority in Germany, contained inflammatory words such as: “Let everyone who can smite, slay and stab, remembering that nothing can be more devilish than a rebel. It is just when one must kill a mad dog.”⁴ By the time the revolt was crushed, it is said that as many as 100,000 peasants were butchered to death in a frenzy of aristocratic reprisal because of Luther’s violent and vulgar language. Arguably the most controversial pamphlet Luther wrote would be The Jews and Their Lies (1543), which he wrote in frustration about the reluctance of the Jewish people to accept his version of Christian faith. Containing such words as “these miserable, blind and senseless people” to describe the Jewish people, this pamphlet became a source of anti-Semitism in Germany that would culminate in the mass killing of the Jews in Nazi Germany, another case of the law of unintended consequences working in the long span of human history.

While it is easy to blame Luther for his myopia about his actions, it must be admitted that his intention was to reform the corruption of the Church, which was obvious to other Protestant reformers as well. Whatever unintended consequences his actions have brought about—the division among the Christian world that sometimes turned into sectarian conflict and warfare, the overzealous pursuit of personal gain that has brought about the gap in income and wealth between rich and poor, the loss of communal spirit that has come to undermine the viability and cohesion of social systems, to name just a few—it is up to us to start rectifying these unintended consequences. In short, it is up to us to start reforming the Reformation so that we can make Luther’s actions relevant to the realities of the twenty-first century world of global interdependence.

1. Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Chicago: Britannica, Great Books, 1952. p. 194.
2. Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe: Free Press, 1957.
3. Spengler, Oswald, The Decline of the West, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 338.
4. Gascoigne, Bamber, The Christians, New York: William Morrow & Company, 1977, p. 160.

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“Civilization, like life, is a perpetual struggle with death.”¹ These are the words of Will Durant (1885-1981), an American historian known for his authoritative work on the history of civilizations, The Story of Civilization. Kenneth Clark (1903-1983), a British historian also known for his expertise on the history of civilizations, concurs with Durant when he says, “[C]ivilisation … is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed.”²

Why is civilization a perpetual struggle with death? Why does civilization get destroyed? In short, why does civilization rise and fall, come and go? It is important to confront and examine this question if we are to figure out what we need to do to prevent the decline and fall, let alone the death, of a civilization, especially that civilization is the one that has brought us to where we are and defines the way we lead our existence today.

As historians Durant and Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) see it, the death, or the decline and fall, of a civilization is due mostly to internal decay. As Durant puts it, “The death of a civilization seldom comes from without; internal decay must weaken the fibre of a society before external influences or attacks can change its essential structure, or bring it to an end.”³ Spengler sees civilization going through two stages—an earlier stage, which he calls ‘culture,’ characterized by vigorous creativity and a later stage of ‘civilization’ characterized by the weakening of moral fiber and the pursuit of selfish interests.⁴

The decline and fall of a civilization, in addition to internal decay, is also brought about by external threat. This is so because no civilization exists by itself but is subject to the constant process of interaction with other civilizations. As the British historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) sees it, the life of a civilization is the story of challenge-and-response, that is, the constant process of challenges coming from other civilizations and its responses to them. A civilization rises and continues to prosper as long as these challenges are successfully met, but declines when it fails to come up with successful responses.

From a systems perspective, both internal decay and external threat that contribute to the decline and fall of a civilization can be explained as the case of “systemic dissonance.” A civilization, which can be defined as a social system composing of subsystems of culture, economy and polity, is an open system that exists in the space of interaction with other civilizations and the natural environment. The term “systemic dissonance” refers to a disturbance, or an imbalance, created in a civilization as a social system composing of these three subsystems. It can originate from any one of the subsystems, which would be an internal decay, or from other civilization(s) or the natural environment, which would be an external threat. The term “systemic dissonance” is employed here because, whether a disturbance comes from within or without, it causes conflict and friction among the three subsystems of culture, economy, and polity, resulting in the decline and fall, even the death, of a civilization.

What took place in the Indus valley around 1,500 BCE illustrates how an external threat coming from the natural environment causes the decline and fall of a civilization. For the period of about 2,500 through 1,500 BCE, a fairly sophisticated civilization with urban planning, sewer, and septic system flourished around Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. This civilization disappeared almost overnight around 1,500 BCE before the Aryans invaded the region. It is speculated that a catastrophic flood triggered by an earthquake was probably responsible for the disappearance of this civilization. It appears that a natural disaster caused systemic dissonance in this civilization by destroying the infrastructure, or the economic subsystem, judging from the skeletal remains that seem to indicate that people left the area in panic.

The Black Death in the Middle Ages that wiped out almost half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century can be cited as another example of a natural disaster that caused the decline and fall of a civilization through its impact on the economy. The plague began in 1347 with a merchant ship returning to the Sicilian port of Messina, bringing back the disease from the Black Sea. In 20 years half the population of Europe was wiped out. The countryside was damaged and the farmland went uncultivated. The resulting starvation further contributed to the people’s misery from the plague. In fact, it took nearly three centuries before the population of Europe regained the pre-plague level and what we now know as Western civilization started to rise as a dominant civilization in the world.

The rise of Western civilization as a dominant civilization in the world is a familiar story by now that owes to a number of dramatic events that have taken place in Europe since the sixteenth centuries, notable among which are the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. The Reformation, originally intended to offer an alternative to the Church doctrine regarding salvation, has turned out to be a transformative event in the character of Western civilization by causing changes in all three subsystems of civilization—the division among different denominations in the Christian world in the cultural realm, the rise of Calvinism as the driving force of capitalistic development in the economic realm, and the spread of democratic ideas and institutions in the political realm. On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution, which was made possible by advances in science and technology, has been responsible for the rise of global industrial civilization with an increase in the material standards of living in the realm of economy. As Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895) pointed out, “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization.”⁵

It is clear by now to historians and astute observers of world events that the kind of civilization that has evolved under the influence of dominant Western civilization for the last several centuries is facing a crisis, even showing signs of decline and fall, as exemplified by the deep gulf between rich and poor not just in the West and but in other regions of the world as well. Reflecting on the phenomenon of the decline and fall of civilizations is pertinent now as we are going through a critical phase in the evolution of a dominant civilization that has been shaped by the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. There is no question that the introduction of industrial capitalism has drawn all nations of the world into the sphere of industrial civilization for the past couple of centuries. At the same time, the spread of industrial civilization has created a systemic dissonance between economy and culture in the form of obsessive pursuit of material progress at the cost of degradation and destruction of the natural environment. Indeed, we are at a critical stage in the evolution of humans as a species, for systemic dissonance between human economic activities and the natural environment is not an external threat but a sign of internal decay of global human civilization.

1. Durant, Will, Our Oriental Heritage, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954, p.218.
2. Clark, Kenneth, Civilisation: A Personal View, New York: Harper & Row, 1969, p.3.
3. Durant, op. cit., p.914.
4. Spengler, Oswald, The Decline of the West, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
5. Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto, 1848.