As I was watching some discussion of some political issue the other day, a rather bizarre epiphany popped into my head, and I thought I would share it with you.
It’s pretty basic: just about every problem we talk about in our national or even local political discussions started out in life . . . as a solution.
Just example, it used to be very difficult to get from one place to another when we were limited to walking or riding horses, so we invented cars and we built asphalt highways. These were marvelous solutions to a problem, but now those solutions have become the problems of pollution, global warming, and traffic jams.
Childhood diseases were a terrible problem, and we came up with some marvelous solutions in terms of vaccines for the majority of these problems. Now we have another problem, which is there are now 7 billion people on the planet.
The federal government was a solution to a problem of self governance for the 13 colonies. Now many people see that solution as a problem. Social Security and Medicare were all created a solutions to problems, now those solutions are seen as problems.
I’m not sure what to conclude from this, except that, no matter what solution anybody is offering you or me to any particular problem, somewhere down the road, that solution is going to become a problem. It never ends. Maybe the Amish have the right idea.
© Justin Locke
