Symptoms instead of Problems

2007-12-21

   
    I feel like I see it everywhere. The world is full of problems that are burned into everyone's awareness, yet I wonder if our awareness is actually of the problem or of its symptoms.

    The extremes of poverty and wealth is a good, random example. Communism was/is, at least ideally, an attempt to solve this problem. But, whether you view communism favorably or not, I think it is relatively safe to say that it is has not, in the examples we have seen, affected a viable, lasting solution. This is because it's failure took place long before it's discrete mechanism and functions were implemented. It is because it focuses on the symptoms, and not the problem.

    At the most basic level, poverty and extreme wealth exist because we  have a near fanatical attachment to material things. There are examples of communal cultures in which this issue is basically nonexistent, as everyone shares with everyone else as needs arise. Therefore, as a drastic oversimplification, it can be said that our attachment to material objects, as well as our enculturated desire to further ourselves and our kin before everyone else, are the ultimate roots of the extremes of poverty and wealth.

    Allowing that the above supposition is correct in at least the oversimplified, abstract sense, it only follows that an economic system like Communism would falter and fail, as it's very intention is aimed at the wrong thing. Nothing about such a system fosters a detachment from material things, and, though it tries, nothing about it actually engenders the kind of communal vibrancy that so visibly animates those cultures that are absolutely free from inequitable economic disparities. It's like pointing a cannon in the opposite direction of the fort one is trying to overwhelm. It doesn't matter how big you built the cannon, it's not going to suddenly bring about the fort's collapse.

    This is just one, very brief example of a solution focusing on the symptom and not the problem. Abdu'l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Bahai Faith, wrote about our speech in the following terms: "First diagnose the disease and identify the malady, then prescribe the remedy, for such is the perfect method of the skillful physician. Though he was addressing the way we should interact with someone in need, I think the same process can easily be applied to any form of problem solving. And the first step is always to accurately diagnose the disease, not simply to start treating the symptoms.