How To Solve all The World’s Problems
An introduction to our present predicaments
Grim
Not sure if you’ve looked at the news lately, or maybe just out your window, but things are looking pretty grim.
There’s a lot of problems and not a lot of immediate or obvious hope for solutions.
I don’t actually have the solution to all the world’s problems — sorry if you came here for that.
But I can offer some sort of hope:
A way to think about the world’s problems that simplifies them and that may lead you to find solutions.
You can’t solve all the World’s problems
The idea of solving all the World’s problems is usually passed off as a joke, or as a criticism of those who wish to try under the assumption that there are an endless number of things wrong with the world and any one individual is helpless against the forces that make things the way they are.
While this is in some sense true, in reality, many of the little problems in the world stem from far more fundamental ones.
And those more fundamental problems are considerably simpler to solve, precisely because they are so fundamental.
It’s simpler because solving those problems may in turn solve, or simply remove, many of the innumerable smaller problems.
Another way to say this is:
Name a problem in the world and you can usually trace its origins to one of a small number of causes.
Simple
Usually, thinking about problems in simpler terms is not a good thing to do.
Problems are complex, and it’s important to understand their complexity so as to not offer solutions that fail to address nuances.
But I’m not advocating for simplicity in thinking about any individual problem, only simplicity in thinking about problems in general.
Also, just because thinking about problems in this way makes them simpler, that doesn’t mean it makes them easier to solve.
And for what it’s worth, while it would indeed be difficult for a single individual to solve or overcome some of the biggest problems in the World on their own, people as a whole are not helpless against the forces that have brought us to where we are.
The first step is to figure out what a problem fundamentally is.
Because your problems aren’t my problems, and our problems probably aren’t World problems.
What’s the problem?
A problem is anything we don’t like.
Pick anything you think is a problem, and the reason why it’s a problem will be because you’re unhappy with its existence or its actions or its consequences.
In other words:
A problem is something we experience distress over.
By taking this definition, we can look at life and pick out those things that — at least for the majority of people — are fundamental causes of distress, and there we will find our World problems.
Distress is what happens when something we want or need is in jeopardy.
And people generally want two things:
to stay alive and
enjoy the time they’re alive.
Not dying
This may be a gross oversimplification, because there are definitely other things people seem to be driven by.
But if we think about those other drivers, if we think about other things we want — sex, fame, achievement, money, privilege, political office, high-ranking jobs, the desire for anything driven by social status, or experience, or power — then we can ask what the value of achieving or gaining any of those things is.
Usually, we want those things because they give us the power to get whatever we need to stay alive or to get other things we want.
And even for those things that seems to be their own ends, the reason we have the desire for them in the first place is usually because they were necessary for our survival and evolutionary success.
Either way, the desires to stay alive and enjoy life are far more universal than the desires for status, achievement, experience or power.
Not everyone wants to depose the monarch or be the next Steve Jobs or be known in every obscure corner of the world, but nearly everyone, it’s safe to assume, in every one of those obscure corners of the world, will protect themselves from dying and will on occasion make efforts to improve the life they’ve got.
You can’t always get what you want
So, a problem is anything that threatens our ability to get what we need or want.
In order to satisfy those two things, people need food, water and a safe and healthy environment, which includes access to shelter, amenities and healthcare, and the removal or minimisation of harms.
If you live in a place where food, water and the resources needed for a safe and healthy environment don’t actually exist, then you have a problem.
If you live in a place where they do exist, but you don’t know how to get them or turn them into something usable or useful, then you have a problem.
If you live in a place where they do exist and you know how to get them, but then you just throw everything into a fire or use them to feed an invisible magic elf, then you have a problem.
Those primitive examples contain three main sources of problems:
Lack of resources
Lack of knowledge
Bad ideas
The other major source of problems is Nature, giving us disease, disaster and endless decay.
Of course, with the right resources, the right knowledge and the right ideas, we can cure disease, prepare for disasters and counteract decay.
So even though Nature supplies us with its own problems, they only remain problems if we lack the resources or knowledge to deal with them, or if we have bad ideas about how to use our knowledge and resources.
So those three things are the key sources of problems in the World, because either they create problems, or they get in the way of our ability to solve problems.
That’s a good place to start
The point isn’t just to identify the main sources of problems and be done with it.
I also want to try and show how major problems in the world lead back to these sources, and hopefully identify some solutions or places to look for solutions.
That’s a task too big for one post, as solving the problems might be too big for one person, but this is definitely a good place to start.
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