Reading the News

I’m told that newspaperman and pundit H.L. Mencken once said, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” I say, “For every complex problem today, there are no solutions and even if there were, they would be unworkable.”

War in the Middle East, incompetence and corruption in government, doping and dopes in the Tour; it’s all too much. In the words of the cannibal, “I throw up my hands at it all.”

You’d think that with the vast technological resources available to us that our ability to address these complex social, political, and moral issues would be up to the task. But by all appearances, our skills are woefully inadequate. We have the tools to get us deep into trouble, but can’t figure our way out.

I was about eleven and had taken apart my bicycle’s derailleur to fix it. I soon realized that I had no idea how to reassemble everything. So I took out a hammer and smashed it all to bits.

Unfortunately, there’s no global bike shop where we can, in tears, take the broken bits of our world to and have the mechanic put it all right. And no worldwide Dad to help pay for the repairs that our allowance doesn’t cover.

I realize that the proper response to things is to take small steps. Do something: help one person, plant a tree, write a single letter to the President, making sure not to use big words. But then those small steps seem so tiny and pointless. If I’m bailing water on the Titanic, I want something bigger than a thimble.

So, in the end, I ride my bike, diddle on the computer, fix dinner for my family. Solutions to the world’s complex problems remain a mystery to me.

It’s all too much to think about; I think I’ll think about something else. May as well take a hammer to it; I’ll start by hammering my head.