How We Fail: Framing the Problem to be Fixable with an Existing Solution

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We say we want solutions, but we actually want a specific subset of solutions: those that already meet with our approval. 

The possibility that none of these pre-approved solutions will actually resolve the problem is rejected because we are wedded to the solutions that we want to work.

The sources of our resistance to admitting that our solution is now the problem are self-evident: holding fast to an ideological certainty gives us inner security, as it provides a simplified, easy-to-grasp frame of reference, an explanation of how the world works and a wellspring of our identity.

Our ideological certainties also serve as our moral compass: we believe what we believe because it is correct and therefore the best guide to solving all problems faced by humanity.

If we frame all problems ideologically (i.e. politically), then there is always an ideological "solution" to every problem.

If we frame all problems as solvable with technology, then there is always a technological "solution" to every problem.

If we frame all problems as solvable with finance, then there is always a financial "solution" to every problem.

In each of these cases, we're starting with the solution and then framing the problem so it aligns with our solution.  This is not actually problem-solving, and so the solutions--all blunt instruments--fail to actually resolve the complex, knotty problems generated by dynamic open systems with interconnected feedback loops.

Self-interest also plays a role, of course, as self-interest is core to human nature, along with an innate desire to serve the best interests of our family, group, tribe, neighborhood, community enterprise, class and nation. That we prefer solutions that maintain or enhance our current financial and social position in the status quo is no surprise.

Many of the built-in biases we are prone to serve to protect and solidify our beliefs. When challenged, or proven incorrect, rather than relinquish our beliefs, we double-down and defend them more aggressively. 

We can understand this irrational attachment as sunk costs: we've invested so much of ourselves in an ideological certainty that letting go of it is a tremendous loss: our inner security collapses into an unmoored chaos that is disorienting and uncomfortable.

We also fear the consequences of the world turning against our certainties, for both our inner security and real-world security are at risk.

No wonder we double-down on defending our certainties as evidence piles up that our proposed solutions are failing or making the problems worse.

Our initial response is emotional rather than rational: we slip into the comforting arms of magical thinking and reductionist thinking, simplifying the bewilderingly complex, interconnected problems down to either-or choices--left or right, capitalism or socialism, globalism or nationalism, etc.--and see glimmers of hope in unrealistic magical thinking: our desires for endless low-cost energy will be met by switch grass, test-tube biofuels, etc. 

Technology-based magical thinking becomes a comforting ideology in and of itself. If we can return to the Moon, it means we can accomplish anything. We will innovate our way to technological solutions to all our problems. We'll bury billions of tons of carbon, geo-engineer our atmosphere, launch tens of thousands of additional satellites, build new sources of limitless energy, all without having to sacrifice any of our current consumption, and in doing so we'll create millions of good-paying jobs that will support permanent growth of our consumption of the planet's resources. 

Historian / critic Christopher Lasch (who died in 1994) saw that the either-or mindset of left-right, Progressive-Conservative was already a dead-end in 1990 when he wrote The True and Only Heaven: "We need to ask whether the left and right have not come to share so many of the underlying convictions, including a belief in the desirability and inevitability of technical and economic development, that the conflict between them, shrill and acrimonious as it is, no longer speaks to the central issues of American politics." (page 23)

If this is true--and it seems self-evident to me--then we've squandered 30+ years clinging to solutions that have not only failed, they've become problems that existing conventions cannot possibly resolve.

Lasch also grasped the impossibility of endless growth on a finite planet: