Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will eventually go wrong somewhere at some time. It works for a lot of real phenomena as a general rule of thought to consider.
Law: In law, it works for sets of laws. If the set of laws is flawed, then anything that can go wrong will go wrong for some person at some time. It will go wrong at some point for the innocent lawbreaker of an unjust law, and then it will continue again and again until professionals restore the logical alternative to the unjust law.
Engineering and architecture: Failure is one of the eventualities and gives us strong moral motivation to fix things. In engineering and architecture, Murphy’s law applies to bridges and city planning. If the bridge is unsound, the engineers can recognize when there is a flaw via the methods and machines for vibration based damage detection. They are responsible professionals, and as professionals they are blameworthy for certain types of failures, and for other failures, they are not morally blameworthy, although they might still be legally blameworthy.
The professionals are legally blameworthy, but most importantly they are morally blameworthy. They are morally blameworthy, if they are negligent, in two different ways: first and foremost, they have their own self-blame, self-guilt and self-disapproval, however strong that moral sense of theirs is. Secondly, they are held morally blameworthy by others, especially by other professionals in their industry. Professionalism, which gradually works toward optimizing safety, efficiency and fairness, is a crucial aspect of civilized society.
Sports: Murphy’s law applies to a lot of different phenomena. If you just throw a bouncing ball in your room enough times, then it will eventually go into the hardest place for you to retrieve it into which it can go. It will also eventually end up in the place where it is most difficult to find. Economists can then attempt to explain why the sales of bouncing balls are as high as they are with insights from Murphy’s law.
Medicine: If there is a flaw in the methodology for surgery, then a failure in a surgery is an eventuality, and then many more failures ensue, if the methodology is not improved. The failure of the surgery is an inevitability with certain kinds of flaws. So, what this should motivate us to do is to improve the methodologies for safety, efficiency and fairness. Fairness? You might ask. What is that exactly?
Ole Man Kant may have said it best. Fairness is when you act in such ways that you would want everyone to act in those same ways, if given the same circumstances. The same holds true for inaction. You would also want each of them to take inaction, like you would want yourself to do, if the situation is the same. In those cases, it would be fair for you to act (or take inaction) given that you would will or want for each of the others to do the same thing in the same urgent life situation.
What is the importance of Murphy’s law and its applications at the present moment in all of our lives?
Nuclear power, war and weapons peddling: Now the pressing questions are whether there is a possibility that anything can go wrong with the nuclear power plants of Eastern Europe. There is the pressing question about the nuclear weapons of multiple forces in Europe. There is also much doubt, concerning the safety of Europe, about whether the latest soldiers from the world’s most powerful military force and their presence in the Ukraine in November of 2022 needs to end before driving us all toward the real possibility for global war between nuclear powers.
If there is a possibility, then it will eventually happen, unless a major change happens soon. And this regional war comes to an end before global war becomes an inevitability!
What is required to end the war? The war economy must make major changes away from manufacturing armaments of war to manufacturing completely different goods and producing entirely different services. As of 2022, the largest US exports have been weapons and ammunition of war throughout the 21st century.
Tell them to stop! It has been more than enough! Make something else now! Demand an end to the making of war machines. It is time for inaction but also for planning.
Let us make it a normal task to ask enormous corporations to change what they are producing and selling because what they sell is destructive and unproductive. None of us voted for how the urgent life situation is now. So, it is totally undemocratic and is enriching several crisis profiteers.
Journalism: Journalists should be inquiring about what the next new products will be because weapons of war are not sustainable as business products for makers, for sellers or for Our planet. Demand that they inquire about what products these weapons peddlers will make that are actually productive with high societal use-values. We Need products that are useful to our society. If anything can go wrong in journalism, especially regarding mass broadcasting of news stories, then at some time and place it will go very badly. Make sure that you know who the owners of your news media sources are or at least maintain an attentive amount of doubt regarding the content or the selection process for it. Beware of propaganda and public relations coming from owners of media who also are owners of many other businesses.
Business: No one can run and manage dozens of businesses simultaneously or reliably delegate the work to thousands and thousands of employees with efficiency. No one can even know all of their names, let alone delegate constructive tasks as work for employment. Billions of dollars that are each owned by several individuals are not earned from doing ones own work tasks, but rather the billions are accumulated by each through compound interest, inheritance and the labor of poorly compensated workers, employees or slaves.
Public Relations: Some of the wealthiest and most powerful, the ones who pay fleets of public relationists, also pay for their fame and infamy alike to be reduced. They pay to be taken out of the public eye. The ones who impact the public the most have their characters and misbehavior purposefully hidden from us. The public relationists fool the public into thinking the worst are the best and that the courageous and wise persons with self-control are the worst because they aim to expose their most monstrous bosses.
The wealthiest corporativists are people who have their public relationists and propagandists manipulate public opinion the most via mass media organizations they own. They pay people to do unproductive and destructive work. Many journalists have become public relationists concerning their work tasks because, rather than the journalists frequently choosing what is newsworthy and going against large corporate powers at times, PR journalists: (1) distract attention away from the problems that the enormous corporations cause. They are beholden to them. (2) attack opponents or potential opponents. They write offensive articles against others, utilizing Machiavellian strategies. (3) cover up corporate wrongdoings as well as hide their corporate connections in politics, law and other social institutions. They cover up the wrongdoings of the owners and their associated “partners in crime” by mass broadcasting the selected false narrative that serves their purposes. Their purposes are to remain in power with vast wealth and fame, but always under the constant threat of becoming infamous, or to be hidden from the public.
The crisis profiteers make corporate money through the tax payers and corrupt government officials. There is no American democratic system that voted for the biggest weapons manufacturing companies to get over half of their income from governmental contracts. However, that is the case in America during the early 21st century still. Put simply, the politicians are not being held accountable.
US politicians are backed by the owners of mass media broadcasting. The mass media broadcasting is performed by obedient workers who do public relations and propaganda (PRP) for the corporate power elites that appear to the public to be in the form of news. However, most of the public watching the PRP are beginning to mistrust it.
Optimism for finding inlets for societal change: Any government can only be as corrupt as the number of corrupt officials who enrich themselves, who are extorted and who take inaction while knowing about the corruption and remaining silent. Although they have certain aspects of wisdom since they know about the situations and the people involved in governmental, corporate and military corruption, the ones who remain silent lack self-control and courage.
There are multiple ways to lessen corruption, though. So, this should give us motivation to work constructively.
Call to Action: We must come together as knowledgeable persons to collaborate and push for changes in the American philosophy of productivity and away from weaponry of destruction as exports and toward sustainable products for civil society. We must collaborate internationally in good faith. Our first task is to inform the people and to plan for a future of products for uses for the society that are healthy, safe, efficient and fair.
On Neighbors and the International Community: Neighbors with debt and health problems
What do we do or say to the people of the neighborhood? What do we say to them when one neighbor is in debt to too many of the other neighbors? When that very same neighbor has been using the money for nefarious purposes? The neighbor is producing goods and services that are destructive. Moreover, what do we say to our neighbors about this one neighbor with poor integrity who also has the most tragic addiction problems with dangerous drugs?
There are so many analogical similarities in the international community. Is it possible for the country with the largest debt in the history of nations to recover its losses? Can the most heavily armed nation in history change the directions of its own productive powers toward producing goods and services that are technologically advanced and constructive rather than destructive machines? Can the largest drug market in the history of the world recover from its immensely worsening public health crisis?
It saddens me to inform you of this, but the United States is the larger debtor nation in history. It has the largest legal and illegal drug markets in history. The main exports of the USA are weapons and ammo of war during the 21st century.
Fortunately, the United States of America has the capability of recovering from its massive debt, drug problems and obsessions with producing armaments of war. Our nation must collaborate, cooperate and share with the international community. The current trend during the first two decades of the 21st century, however, has been to make strategic allies for selling more war machines, oil and gas, of which the Pentagon uses between 100 and 200 billion barrels of oil per year during this century. Those are massive amounts. So, Change is inevitable.
However, there are still many new people from younger generations who struggle for salaries and who invest their time, funds and energy in weapons, ammo, oil and gas for war. They have watched many other people enrich themselves. They are coming of age and perhaps Nothing creates the zeal for inventiveness and problem-solving like war and its products do. They must be morally shamed by us and held blameworthy by us for perpetuating the production of destructiveness. Their destructiveness is still ongoing with hundreds of thousands of employees each year and corporate-style dictators over them.
A change in the moral values of our ethos needs to happen. We need to change the direction of the business activities from destructive to constructive ones. We need to reshape our cultures with the common goals of respect for multicultural brilliance, collaboration, sharing and cooperation. For America, multicultural collaboration, sharing and cooperation is where our Hidden strengths and ingenuity are.
The war games, cold wars, war exercises and war product-making must come to a stop. Manufacturers of ammo and armaments must begin producing totally different products, and they must benefit the society and international community.
But why would the international community allow the United States back into the relationship of trust and confidence?
The best location for a national economy: The United States of America is situated in the most strategic geographical position for a political economy in history. It resides between two smaller and friendlier neighbors to the north and south. There are vast oceans to the east and west. When Europe has an economic crisis, the United States has historically avoided the crisis via trading more with Asia. Moreover, vice versa is the case when Asia has an economic crisis.
The immense power to collaborate comes internally from respecting its own cultures: The United States is of many different cultures. Herein lies the brilliance of multi-cultured people but also the conflict with socio-psychological behavioral tendencies of social groups to act in domineering ways based on cultural differences. It is based on our human tendencies to try to dominate via controlled threats and violence.
The collaborative and cooperative power resides in the United States as a cultural center for brilliance, containing so many cultures. The respect for each culture, which many but not enough Americans have, is, at its heart, the reason why the international community deserves to give forgiveness and to strengthen relations of exchange and then trust. The nature of a few powerful individuals at present to socially dominate masses of people must come to an end via Our demands to change the products of US manufacturers from weapons, oil and gas to products that can strengthen families and neighborhoods with safety, public health, efficiency and fairness in mind and in actions.
Albert Einstein once said: “Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life… We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
We must have logical discussions and create the dialectic to shape our cultures, especially in the professions. We must work for a safer, healthier, more efficient and fairer world that we know that we can make in our urgent life situation. It requires an amount of courage, wisdom and self-control that you and I have at our very fingertips.
Email us at info@ethicalconflictconsulting.com to participate in the movement toward more civilized societies that act in good faith with collaboration, cooperation and sharing internationally.
Citation: Brant, William Allen (2022). “Murphy’s Law and the Power to Create Societal Change.” Ethical Conflict Consulting. November edition. https://ethicalconflictconsulting.com/2022/11/06/murphys-law-and-the-power-to-create-societal-change-in-times-of-international-despair/
