Solutionism
I notice with significant confusion that many humans I interact with don’t seem to take solutionism to heart. That is: when confronted with a problem, their first thought isn’t “what’s the solution here?”; rather, they’ll come up with all kinds of reasons not to implement solutionism themselves.
Someone else’s problem
It’s someone else’s problem to solve: the very nature of the problem dictates who is responsible, and it’s not you, and it’d be unfair for you to think of or implement a solution yourself. (A side-effect of your human instinct to proclaim “clean up your own mess!”, perhaps.) To solve the problem yourself, even if you’re well-placed to do so or that it would cost you not to, would be to throw the notion of justice in the trash. It’s not worth it: justice must be upheld!
It is the nature of problems that some mop them up, and others sit by, and this is just. Justice is worth the cost of waiting around for the relevant people to register their cue and jump into the mess they’re cosmically responsible for solving, even when there’s downsides to the problem continuing to exist. This is because those responsible must learn their lesson: it’s not about the problem in question, it’s about the meta-game where those who’re responsible must understand it’s up to them to mop this class of problems up, and society in general must learn that justice will be doled out no matter what. Justice is a blade with multiple edges: it’s important to punish detractors and reward those who follow their roles to perfection both; and to solve a problem it’s not your responsibility to solve is just as damaging to the fabric of justice as to cause a problem in the first place, or to refuse to solve a problem you’re responsible for. As Martin Luther King would put it, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. You do not fucking MESS with the cosmic web of justice by letting a problem-causer get away with his problem scot-free, you do not TEACH these people that justice is a lottery where sometimes someone else does the work for you.
This is a matter of principle, or at worst a categorical imperative, but if you had to justify your justice-bone with some kind of formal proof, you’d argue that to directly intervene in the complex machinery of cause and effect (by which you mean “it’s your fault you caused this and you’d better goddamn contain those effects”), would be to disrupt the delicate set of incentives that binds civilization together. Any and every dig at the principle of karma further weakens the structure which keeps the number of total problems at a manageable low. To fix someone else’s problem instead of telling them to solve it themselves is thereby extremely dangerous.
What problem?
You haven’t been taught to notice whexn your mind comes up with sour grapes justifications for problems, or adds a panglossian twist to your world-view after encountering something bad. Perhaps the problem in front of you builds character; or it forces individuals to embrace a “community spirit”; or it teaches humans that everything comes with a price. Or perhaps, the problem can be “solved” by establishing that to desire that things were different is a sin in and of itself, and therefore things should not be different.
Perhaps the problem has become part of your identity, and to let go of the problem would be akin to ego death for you. What are you supposed to do if the struggle ends? If it is from adversity that you may build up your nobility, why would you wish adversity gone? To define yourself by your enemies, living and inanimate, is to form a symbiotic relationship with them, and solutionism would sever that precious thread that binds you both.
The problem deserves respect
Who are they to think they can solve the problem you’ve been puzzling about for years? By even postulating solutionism as being an option, they’re insulting your status as a prime problem-puzzler! See, you’ve entangled your respect function so thoroughly with the problem that solutionism as an *amorphous concept *feels threatening to you; to disrespect the problem is now to disrespect you.ˆ1 It’s visceral enough that you can no longer distinguish between people who attempt to negate your status over them by playing off the problem as being less of a big deal than you make it out to be and people who think they can pull their sleeves up and solve it for you.
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