“America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship . . . . With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.” (Barack Obama, January 20, 2009)
The moment was certainly moving, and I found the tears, unbidden, coming. But before too long, and in the midst of the celebration, and the eloquence, and the feeling of renewal, I could not but think about how he would lead us to fix our broken Government and Political System – a system that has allowed so many problems in so many areas of society and economy to accumulate and fester, that has allowed the Dreams of so many Americans to be ignored, that has stood by while the protections of Civil Liberties have been eroded, and while Americans have tortured others in the name of National Security. The magnitude of his and our task rivals that of the great tasks of the Revolutionary, Civil War, and Depression/World War II generations. And while I do not doubt that Americans will undertake these with the same courage and commitment as other generations, I couldn’t help but wonder whether they will be undertaken in a way that will grow both our knowledge and our problem solving capability throughout the long process of adaptation that faces us.
The title of this blog is “All Life Is Problem Solving,” and this applies no less to Societies and Governments than it does to individuals and other human collectives. All living things have ways of solving problems, and we humans and our collectives have ways of improving our innate and culturally transmitted ways of problem solving. The core of these is to improve our ability to see problems, arrive at creative alternative solutions, eliminate the alternatives that don’t both work well and increase our understanding, and communicate our surviving ideas to our fellows. Does the Obama Administration know how to simultaneously solve problems and grow our individual and collective intelligence? Will it develop such an understanding? Will it look back to the pragmatic method of American problem solving, originated in the great Roosevelt Administration that has come, in a notable irony of history, to be called “Kaizen,” and that has been mastered most successfully by Toyota, but not by any Government in its entirety? Or will it decide that it already knows the solutions to our problems and that all that’s needed is vigorous implementation, aided perhaps by the latest in Information Technology?
I hope it’s not just the last. Don’t get me wrong. I hope there are solutions and also vigorous implementation, but I hope there’s also continuous evaluation of the consequences of our actions, and quick re-inventions when things aren’t working. And I hope, above all, we realize that we need to create a new generation of problem solvers who understand that growing and transmitting how we solve our problems is as important a job as solving any specific problem or crisis of the moment. For, if we are to safely deliver that great gift of Freedom to future generations, we have to learn, once again, to eliminate “solutions” to our problems that do not preserve that gift, and accept only those that do.