Recently I watched a conversation between 2 political figures from opposing sides. Since it was long-form, I was expecting some civilized debate, where people could actually come up with logical conclusions and arguments.
As I write this, I now understand how ingenious I was.
Between shouting, presenting individual cases as a way to make a generalization, talking about macro without actually following up with details, failing to present answers, and a lot of irony in the mixture, there was one thing that I actually believe deserves some comment.
A lot of the time, people discussing complex issues, call them “systemic problems”. To be honest, is true that most problems worth discussing in detail are usually happening, in a complex system. However, people call it that without actually understanding what it means.
You want to know how I know that?
Because, even though they call it a “systemic problem”, they then proposed a simple solution, failing miserably at addressing the overall surrounding system.
It’s not enough to label something as a “systemic problem”. We actually need to understand all the forces at play, both enabling and inhibiting change from happening.
The reason why I’m mentioning this here is that I believe in order to get to a Modern Golden Age, we will need to solve complex systems. And even though it’s tempting to fall prey to short-term solutions, the real transformation we need is a deeper one.
One that addresses different forces, instead of aiming at a black-or-white “obvious” solution.
