The years teach much which the days never know.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
In ancient Rome, a group of men loyal to the Republic feared that Julius Caesar was going to make his dictatorship permanent and establish a monarchy. In 44 BC they decided to assassinate him, thereby restoring the Republic. In the ensuing chaos and power vacuum, Caesar’s great-nephew Octavius quickly rose to the top, assumed power, and permanently ended the Republic by establishing a de facto monarchy. After Caesar’s death it came out that he had never intended to create a monarchical system. The conspirators brought about precisely what they had tried to stop. Invariably in these cases, people’s thinking is remarkably simple and lazy: kill Caesar and the Republic returns, action A leads to result B. Understand: Any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, to D, and beyond. Other actors will be pulled into the drama and it is hard to predict their motivations and responses. You cannot possibly map out these chains or get a complete handle on consequences. But by making your thinking more consequential you can at least become aware of the more obvious negative consequences that could ensue, and this often spells the difference between success and disaster. You want depth of thinking, to go to several degrees in imagining the permutations, as far as your mind can go.
Daily Law: Game out all of the possible consequences of a strategy or line of action.
The Laws of Human Nature
, 6: Elevate Your Perspective—The Law of Shortsightedness