This is Part 3 of a 3-part article. (Go back to Part 2.)
Now let's apply this Law Of Reverse Effect to a current situation. For example, let's apply it to the current conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians:
On the one side, the Palestinian people feel oppressed, subjugated, deprived of liberty and the means to economically sustain themselves. They have a deep anger against what they feel is a deep and continuing injustice.
Militarily, they are faced with helicopters, infantry, tanks—the elements of a large and powerful army. The Palestinians are completely overmatched militarily. Where and how to direct this rage? The rage gets channeled into what Israel knows as "suicide bombers."
Palestinian suicide bombers want to inflict pain, fear and bloodshed on Israelis as a "payback" for the suffering and pain that their own people have endured and are enduring. And they achieve this: The Israeli people do experience pain and suffering and fear. So this is the temporary result, the primary effect.
Meanwhile, the longer-term effect of the suicide missions is to increase the feeling of insecurity among the Israeli population in general—and thus to increase the power of right-wing elements in Israeli society and government. This in turn leads to more military solutions and thus more pain, bloodshed and fear among—you guessed it—the
Palestinian people. And that's the secondary effect.
On the other side, the Israeli people are experiencing a great deal of fear and insecurity. The little strip of land called "Israel" has only been carved out in the last few decades, after two thousand years of waiting, and feels extremely tenuous. The Israelis feel besieged by angry neighbors who, they feel, want them to disappear. Only they're not going to. One thing they learned from the Holocaust was to stand up for themselves.
In consequence of all this, Israel has a big army and a large right-wing element and a feeling that no-one is going to be allowed to push Israel around or tell it what to do. Least of all terrorists. So it clamps down on the Palestinian territories in order to control this horrible terrorism. And the effect is achieved. Military clamp-downs do indeed cause terrorism to be temporarily reduced. This is the primary effect.
Meanwhile, the more-gradual, less-obvious effect is to greatly increase the long-term despair and rage and lack of hope among the Palestinian people. This in turn fuels a desire among its more extreme elements to lash out at their oppressors in any way possible. A desire grows among the young to die for one's country.
Palestinian military planners, meanwhile, outmatched completely in men and weaponry, turn to suicide bombing as a way to strike. All of this tends to increase, long-term, the number and degree of suicide bombings in Israel. This is the secondary effect.
In other words, the very thing that Israel does to decrease terrorism and increase its security acts to increase terrorism and decrease security. Whether you are pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian, it is not difficult to see the mutual devastation of both peoples and both economies in this destructive conflict.
That is, each side achieves the exact opposite effect of what it intends. This is the Law Of Reverse Effect in action. To make use of this law in a positive direction, we have to begin by understanding the other side and why it is feeling so fearful and pained.
This also applies, of course, to those interior parts of ourselves that we reject, push away, "make war on." If we can welcome these parts/thoughts/states of mind when they appear in consciousness—instead of pushing them away—a positive cycle can begin.
But this welcoming is not the same as buying-in to their message. We can love that they're there, like the melody of a beautiful bird, without needing to buy-in to what they're saying. (For more info on this, please click on the "Reality" button at left.)
This very wide-ranging Law Of Reverse Effect applies to every area I've looked at so far. As a last, different example, let's take finance.
In the up-cycle of human financial affairs, more and more credit—that is, debt, since all credit is also debt—is created. The percentage of debt in the society-at-large increases among individuals, corporations, municipalities, states and national governments. This is what we see now.
This increasing credit/debt bubble creates an effect, for awhile, of greater prosperity and financial well-being—that's the primary effect. With minor set-backs, that's basically what we've seen since the Great Depression of the 1930's.
The secondary effect comes when the credit/debt bubble collapses, as it inevitably must sooner or later. Eventually every debt bubble in history has collapsed upon itself, as the increasing debt soonor or later exhausts the ability of the society to service it.
When this happens, a financial recession or depression occurs—that's the secondary effect. This secondary effect follows the primary effect as surely as night follows day. And yet, like all "negative" events, this painful contraction serves a beneficial purpose, in that it wrings out distortions and excesses and creates a solid base for the next great movement upward in human events.
The two opposites in life always come as a package, the primary and secondary effect, equal and opposite, like Newton's Third Law of Motion. Every "catastrophe" or "bad" event also eventually brings about a great good. And conversely, every "good" event also brings about something we would label "bad." They always go together because it's the nature of existence to always balance itself.
Everything in the universe is matched by its opposite and always has been. In the dimension of time, this plays out as the primary effect (the myth) always being followed by the secondary effect (the reality).
When we truly see this, and perceive the inherent pairing of all things, we naturally surrender more to the flow of existence, to contributing our little part without obsessing about the what the ultimate outcome will be.
We see that what we call "bad" actually makes possible what we call "good," that the two always come as a package, and that the one can't exist without the other.
We see that existence itself can't exist except as what we think of as these "opposites," but which are all really just different manifestations of the same phenomenon, the same energy, the one—the great mystery that loves without exception all parts of itself, the ineffable light that includes both light and darkness.
Perceiving this, we naturally let go, like a closed fist relaxing, of our resistance: our resistance to the way things are, to the way we ourselves are, to the way other people are, to the way the world is. And our actions, including those actions intended to serve life, occur within that larger and more relaxed context.
Then we do our part, whatever that may be, in great humility and compassion and surrender as we see that our actions arise by themselves and that, in any event, "we" aren't doing it. Paradoxically, that surrender of control is the very thing that tends to lead, by the Law Of Reverse Effect, to the effects of greater harmony, effectiveness and alignment in our actions.
This is an exquisite and beautiful existence, subtle and balanced in its divine perfection, always being wherever It is supposed to be.
—jim sloman, for 5/22/02
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