Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Solution

  • Is it a truism that for every difficult and complex problem, there a simple answer, a solution?
  • Is it also a truism that that solution is most likely wrong?
  • Can one simply say: Be careful about invoking truisms and solutions in the same sentence?
  • But isn’t it a truism that problem solving makes up our principal personal and professional concern and activity?
  • Are workable, hopefully just, solutions how we measure success?
  • If it’s not a problem that needs solving, is it even on the radar?
  • What if the problem is just plain made up?
  • Should we waste effort, time and money dealing with solutions to “made up” problems?
  • How many personal and public “made up” problems can you identify?
  • Do certain media mongers and politicians (and even key elements of our justice, intelligence and regulatory apparat, or us) thrive on making up stuff to gain attention or favor or to threaten?
  • Certainly including the fabrications and fabricators just mentioned, how do we achieve solution to long standing and vexing problems?
  • If we yearn for simplicity, can understand it, can even afford it, can we accept a legitimate approximation if it provides some solution especially, or even, if utilitarian in nature?
  • Do dialectical evolution and the passage of time often provide solution?
  • Does the 1619 project, vaunted or disputed, tell stories of black punishment and achievement, indeed the building American prosperity, yet advocate change to bring it all down?
  • Should we take a simple problem, this 404th August 20th, anniversary, of the first Africans being brought to Virginia and figure out a solution to perceived or real or unreal racism?
  • Since, in this nation of 330 million people, narrative can be fashioned and amplified to support any position, is simple solution, any solution, possible?
  • Better tune in to next week’s Third Degree and find out? Meanwhile…….

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours?