PROBLEM -SOLVING 🆙
For our generation there's no such thing as life without trouble. There are only good kind of trouble and bad kind of trouble.
The bad kind of trouble stems from apathy, stagnation, the kind of hypocrisy that refuses to admit the existence of problems, the kind of vested interest that prevents institutional change. The good kind of trouble comes from being on the move, from being acutely aware of problems, from the confusion of too many people trying to solve the problem in too many ways all at once, too many critics talking too loudly, too many things changing too rapidly.
A generation doesn't have much choice in the problems that the forces of history throw in its lap. It does have a choice as to whether it will face those problems honestly. We need continuous and candid debate as to what the most important problems are, and whether we're turning our backs or solving them or making them worse.
If we look at our present capacity to solve problems, it is apparent that we do best when the problems involve little or no social context. We're skilled in coping with problems with no human ingredients at all, as in the physical science. We are fairly good at problems that involve the social element to a limited degree, as biomedical research. But we are poor at problem -solving that requires the revision of social structures, the renewal of the institutions, the invention of new human arrangements.
Not only are problems in this realm exceedingly complex, but in some cases we are rather strongly motivated not to solve them. Solving them would endanger old, familiar ways of doing things.
We have learned brilliantly the means of accomplishing scientific and technical advance. But we have a very limited grasp of the art of changing human institutions to serve our purposes in a changing world.
The consequences are familiar. We can build gleaming spires in the hearts our cities, but we can't redeem the ghettos.
We can keep people alive 25 years beyond retirement, but we can't ensure that they can live those years in dignity.
We choke in the air that we ourselves polluted. We live in fear of a thermonuclear climax for which we provided the ingredients. We face population disaster made more problem by our own healing arts.
Social change is learning process for all concerned. It always requires re-education of large number of people to accept new objectives, new values, new procedures. It can not go forward without the breaking down of long established ways of doing and thinking. This is true whether the problem is one of the civil rights. Most human institutions are designed to resist such learning rather than facilitate it.
By @bornprince
Source: John W. Gardener. - No easy victories
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Image source:pixabay.com
