This is a question that is coming up for me lately and I thought I’d express what is coming up for me. Are we living in the era of unintended consequences, because of an evolution of great ideas that are aimed to be helpful to humanity becoming less so, perhaps in some cases hurtful?

Here are some example scenarios that I can think of:

• Mobile phones: Connects us to the world like never before, changes the world with apps in the palm of our hands, becomes a significant contributor to society becoming antisocial and withdrawn
• Social Media: Gives everyone a voice, becomes influencer-driven platforms, becomes platforms that politically and socially divide, exacerbated by fake news and trolling behaviour
• Free market capitalism: Everyone can work hard and be innovative, becomes an economy of overly dominant corporations with disproportionate power and influence over regulators, becomes the driver of corporate greed inflation, resulting in middle-class consumer anger and boycotts such as the Boycott Loblaws movement
• Well-meaning policies such as Vancouver’s drug decriminalization program which did not solve the drug crisis and its underlying root causes, only succeeded in making it allowable for drugs to be consumed publicly
• Lastly, an example that my friend Callie often mentions – the obsession with eradicating nuclear power in some geographies that has resulted in energy insecurities, which has led to restarting coal-fired generation, which is worse for the environment and sustainability that

These are just superficial thoughts and I am open to hearing different thoughts. What do you think?