What makes problems difficult

The theory

The reader question I will consider for today's post is: "How does one make a group forward-looking rather than backward-looking?"

This takes me back to the wheel of life, that I have been talking about in other posts. Like I said at the end of the post, self-controlling systems can still go wrong. And they can go wrong at any stage of the wheel:

Jared Diamond, in a chapter of his extremely interesting book Collapse, tries to explain how societies can sometimes get into so much trouble that they collapse. He divides difficult problems in four categories, that can be mapped roughly to the wheel of life, and they apply not just to societies, but to any self-controlling system:

• Some problems are difficult to anticipate: People, like just about all living creatures, are naturally backward-looking: it's a lot easier to remember the past than to anticipate the future. Failure to anticipate a problem is a failure of thinking and feeling the right things when the early warning signals appear. It has to be said, humans are by far the best at anticipating on this Earth, but even the best can fail. You can try to avoid this by recruiting the best thinkers and putting them in touch with people with the best records for accurate "gut feelings", but there are no guarantees. Examples of problems difficult to anticipate are frogs failing to guess when it's a good time to cross the road (the problem is far too difficult for a frog's intelligence), and bankers failing to anticipate a global financial collapse.
• Some problems are difficult to see: It's pretty much impossible to do something about a problem if you don't notice it. This is a failure of watching. Examples of problems difficult to see are most types of chemical pollution if you don't have the right equipment to detect it (for example, if you are a bird), and people who don't believe in climate change because they can't notice much change in weather patterns.
• Some problems are difficult to act on: Jared Diamond says that, perhaps surprisingly, most problems that destroy societies fall into this category. This is a failure of choosing. People may notice that there is a problem, they think it's a problem and feel it's wrong, but still can't decide what to do about it or decide to do something that is clearly not helping. Many accusations of people being backward-looking actually mean that people are deciding to go for old solutions because they can't bring themselves to do something new. Examples of problems difficult to act on are a pigeon getting all confused in front of a mirror, and the trouble world leaders have every time that they try to sign a world treaty.
• Some problems are difficult to resolve: Even when a decision is made, the action to be taken can itself be extremely difficult. This is a failure of doing. For those that can't see how difficult it is, it can look like laziness, indecision, plain old stubbornness or inability to do something different. A good example is a fly trying to get out of a window. We all have seen them hitting the glass again and again until somebody opens the window, and they will still hit the glass a few times before they manage to get out. But from the point of view of a fly, there is really no other solution but keep bumping their heads (which must be somewhat painful) until they get out. They can't see the glass, and they are too simple to have the faintest clue of what the problem is. All they may know is that in the past, if they hit again and again this strange barrier of hard air, it will eventually let them go. It's tough, but for a fly, it's the only solution. A human example can be a famine. There are a number of things people can do if it happens to them, none of them pleasant or easy.

In short, being forward-looking and having all the right new solutions to new problems is anything but easy. But a good understanding of why problems can be so difficult is a first step towards finding those exciting new solutions. If you can identify which step of the wheel of life seems to be broken, you can apply your energies to fixing it.

The practice

Experiment 1

Do you have a pet that keeps doing something that you would like it to stop doing? Do you have a garden that is giving you too much work? Instead of trying to fight the problem constantly, try a new approach: why isn't this animal or plant already doing what you would like it to do? It's already self-controlling, why isn't it already keeping itself to the boundaries you would like? It already knows how to keep within a boundary, that's for sure.

This little story may give you inspiration:

The palace gardens of the Emperor of New China were famous in the whole world, and justly so: the chief gardener was a real artist. With the passing of years, the style of the gardens changed slowly, and they looked wilder, more like a forest than a garden. But still, it was an incredibly beautiful forest, and the Emperor loved it.

One day, the Emperor died and was buried like an acorn, and his son took his place. He heard unsettling news about the gardener: he had dismissed most of his helpers, he never pruned the trees and he almost didn't work. When the new Emperor asked the gardener, he mused strange things about talking with plants in a language they could understand. He said plants and trees didn't understand scissors, because they kept growing the same way; he said one should explain them what one wanted with light and water. The Emperor thought the gardener was a bit crazy, but the gardens were lovelier than ever, so he kept him at his service.

Time passed, and one day a messenger came and told the new Emperor, who was old by now, that the gardener had died at a very advanced age after a long illness. The Emperor was very surprised, because the gardens weren't neglected at all. But the surprise was much bigger when he knew that the old gardener had never gone out in the last ten years. He'd made a garden that didn't need care at all: just rainwater and sunlight. The shapes of plants weren't cut with scissors, but modelled by water and light and different kinds of soil.

In more practical terms, try to identify what kind of problem your pet or plant has:

• Is it too difficult to understand for a simple creature what you want? Can you make it far simpler?
• Is it difficult for your pet or plant to detect what you want? Can you use something that your pet or plant can perceive easily?
• Is the choice itself difficult? Can you make your preferred option much easier to choose?
• Is what you want to difficult to do? Can you make it easier?

Experiment 2

Pick your pet peeve: a favourite personal problem that you still haven't been able to resolve. Try to figure out what makes it difficult according to the points above. Is it difficult to anticipate when it's going to happen again? Is it difficult to notice until it's too late? Does it present you with difficult choices? Is it that what you have to do is, in itself, difficult? Or is it a combination of two or more of these?

Once you have identified what are the problem steps in the wheel of life, try to see if there is any way that you could strengthen those very steps. Some future posts will have more guidance on this, but try to think something yourself for a start.