February 28, 2018
On the fifteenth of May, during the hottest time of the day in the Jungle of Nool, Horton, an elephant, is keeping cool by splashing in a pool of water. Suddenly, Horton hears a small noise – “a faint yelp – and becomes confused. There is no one is around who would make such a noise. When he hears the noise again – “As if some tiny person were calling for help,”- he is even more perplexed. Who could it be?
Horton Hears a Who
Horton is the central character is Dr. Suess’ beloved book, Horton Hears a Who. He soon discovers that the “faint yelp” is coming from a speck of dust that is wafting past him in the air. A voice from a speck of dust? Horton is amazed. And before long he learns that the voice is that of a Who who lives in Who-ville on the speck of dust. And the Who who is “yelping” is in trouble. The speck of dust is about to blow into the pool!
Suddenly, Horton is faced with a choice. Ignore the speck of dust and get on with the business of staying cool on a very hot day, or try and find a way to help. Horton makes his decision:
“…he’ll blow in the pool. He has no way to steer!
I’ll just have to save him. Because after all,
A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
Horton’s decision to help the Whos who live in Who-ville on the speck of dust is the beginning endless troubles and struggles. The other animals in the jungle cannot believe that Horton is stupid enough to insist that there are little Whos living on a speck of dust. Horton faces derision, hostility, rejection, aggression and even hate. It may have occurred to Horton that it would be better to abandon his attempt to help the Whos. But he persists, and eventually because of his efforts, the other animals are persuaded to help. “And from now on,” says a former enemy, the big kangaroo, “you know what I’m planning to do?…From now on, I’m going to protect them with you!”
Wicked Problems are Calling
While there could be many interpretations of the Horton story, my preferred version is that the Whos who reside on a speck of dust stand in for the problems that surround us, some large and threatening and others so small and insignificant that unless we pay close attention they could float away. Many of these problems are wicked. What are we to do? Like Horton, we are faced with a choice: pay no attention to what is going on around us and get on with our lives, or look carefully at that “speck of dust” floating by, one that seems to offer us a chance to use our talents and energies to help.
Tikkun Olam
All moral and spiritual philosophies include some version of what has come to be called The Golden Rule. The Christian version appears in the New Testament in several places. Here is how it reads in Luke: “As ye would that men do to you, do ye also to them likewise. The Jewish tradition is summarized by Rabbi Hillel, circa 20 B. C, with “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon, go and learn it.” Even earlier, Confucius’ words capture the same meaning – “What you do not like if done to yourself, do not do it to others,” – as do those of Muhammad: “The most righteous of men is the one who is glad that men should have what is pleasing to himself, and who dislikes for them what is for him disagreeable.”
The Jewish tradition goes beyond the teaching that “we should do unto others,” and includes the doctrine of Tikkun Olam, translated in modern times as “Repairing the world.” Tikkun Olam teaches that not only do Jews bear responsibility for their own moral, spiritual, and material welfare, and for treating other people as they would like to be treated, but, sharing a partnership with God, they are expected to take steps toward improving the state of the world.
Does the World Need to be Repaired?
Are repairs to the world needed? While there are many different opinions about what is wrong in the world, and what needs to be done to make things better, and even though there has been progress on many seemingly intractable problems, no one believes that we have arrived at Utopia and are now living in the “best of all possible worlds.” In 2010, Mohamend El-Erian, CEO of Pimco Global Investments expressed a pessimist view: “The world is on a journey to an unstable destination through unfamiliar territory, on an uneven road and critically, having already used its spare tire.”
There is wide agreement that we live in the midst of serious problems, many of which up to now have resisted all attempts at finding solutions and which continue to detract from the quality of our lives. While the problems on a specific list may differ, as will their relative positions of priority, there is no individual, organization, community, or nation without its own list of problems. Lists are important. Making one for problems is the first step toward making needed repairs. With a list in hand, we can then set priorities, mobilize resources, and assign responsibilities for taking actions. This process – identifying problems and organizing for action – is the principal work of representative governments everywhere. And in support of these efforts of making the world a better place, democratic leaders everywhere call us forth to battle against our problems. In the commencement address at Yale University in 1962, President John Kennedy urged the young people in the audience to “participate…in the solution of the problems that pour upon us, requiring the most sophisticated solutions to complex and obstinate issues.”
A notable attempt at making a list of the world’s most important problems is reported in An Agenda for the 21st Century, published 1987 by the MIT Press. Written by Rushford Kidder, it contains the results of 22 interviews with the world’s most “compelling thinkers – artists, scientists, government leaders, and philosophers.” Kidder begins each discussion by asking this question: “What do you see are the major problem facing humanity in the 21st century?” An analysis of the interviews identified six major problems:
- The threat of nuclear annihilation;
- The danger of overpopulation;
- The degradation of the global environment;
- The gap between the developing and the industrial worlds;
- The need for fundamental restructuring of the educational system;
- The breakdown in public and private morality.
Given this agenda, prepared in 1987, is clear that not only does the world of 2018 need to be repaired, but there is heavy lifting ahead in order to ensure that the future is one in which we will want to live. As British author John Galsworthy wrote over one hundred years ago, “If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.”
In her forward to An Agenda for the 21st Century, Katherine Fanning, editor of the Christian Science Monitor and sponsor of the 21st Century project, was clearly thinking about the future: “Agendas never accomplish anything unless are acted upon,” Fanning wrote, “the next step is to press toward solutions.” The issues captured by Kidder’s interviews were so important for the future of the nation and of the world, Fanning wrote, that the nations “must devote [their] full attention and unstinting resources” toward finding solutions.
The News Is Not Good
Are governments able to manage their political processes successfully enough to “repair the world?” The evidence is discouraging Looking back to the problems identified in Kidder’s 1987 book, it is clear that little has been accomplished during the past 40 years.. All the problems that were so important in 1987 and for which “full attention and unstinting resources” were required, remain on the 2018 list of problems to be addressed. And more bad news. The nations of the world have been unable to even agree about which problems belong on the high-priority list, what must be done to “repair” them, and who should be doing it.
Political or Personal
Wicked problems were calling in 1987 and they are still calling today. Who will respond? There are two possibilities: As I suggested earlier, the primary responsibility of representative governments everywhere is to “repair the worlds” that their citizens inhabit. A second way forward is for individuals themselves to take the responsibility of repairing whatever part of the world is within their reach.
The processes that governments rely on are political: the people elect representatives who then gather together to identify the most important problems facing the community and decide what needs to be done to “solve”them. During the past 40 years, few “repairs” to Kidder’s list of problems have been realized. Except in times of acute crises, when it comes to the major problems that face communities and nations, the political processes of governments have had limited success is “solving” wicked problems.
While there are those who relish the political arena with its debates, arguments, struggles, and battles, most of us keep our distance. There is for us – and for everyone as well – a second way of helping to “repair the world:” Individuals taking action to help others. Katherine Fanning, referring to An Agenda for the 21st Century, and perhaps doubtful that governments were up to the challenge, favored this approach: “We believe that each individual has an urgent responsibility to consider the impacts of today’s decisions and…building upon the wisdom of this collection of thinkers, begins to form his or her agenda for the 21st century.”
An example of someone who accepted Fanning’s challenge is the late Richard Selzer, renowned surgeon and respected author. In Taking the World in for Repairs, published in 1986, Selzer shares his experiences as a doctor in treating sick and distressed people all over the world. After describing the struggles of ministering to the sick and the dying in Peru, Selzer writes in the last sentences of his book, “Tomorrow we leave Peru carrying with us the pathetic belief that the way to heal the world is to take it in for repairs. One on one. One at a time.”
Three Stories from The Impossible Will Take a Little Time (2004)
Among the most egregious wicked problems that should appear on all lists of social problems are racism, totalitarianism, and violence. They are calling out to us for help. How can one individual’s answer hope to make a difference? Here are three stories of individuals who believed that the way to heal the world was “one on one, one at a time”:
Rosalie’s Bertell’s Mother:
Rosalie Bertell, past president of the Association of Contemplative Sisters and author of Planet Earth, tells a story about her mother:
“My mother, a World War I newlywed, lived in an apartment in northeast Washington D. C. She’d tell me how she noticed that black women, after working all day in white homes, would stand for an hour or more waiting for a bus to take them home. If there were only blacks at a corner, the buses did not stop. My mother went down every evening to stand with the black women so that the buses would stop – until the drivers got the point.” (191)
Robert Desnos, The Palm Reader
During World War II, in one of the most horrible of the many Nazi concentration camps, a truck loaded with people pulls away from a barracks. Among the prisoners in the truck is the surrealist poet Robert Desnos. The mood is somber, almost despairing. They all know that they are being taken to the gas chambers to be executed. American author Susan Griffin continues the story:
“And when the truck arrives no one can speak at all. Even the guards fall silent. But this silence is soon interrupted by an energetic man who jumps into the line and grabs one of the condemned. Improbable as it is…Desmos reads the man’s palm.
Oh, he says, I see you have a long lifeline. And you are going to have three children. He is exuberant. And his excitement is contagious. First one man, then another, offers up his hand, and the prediction is for longevity, more children, abundant joy.
As Desnos reads more palms, not only does the mood of the prisoners change, but that of the guards too. How can one explain it? Perhaps the element of surprise has planted a shadow of doubt in their minds. If they told themselves these deaths were inevitable, this no longer seemed inarguable. They are in any case so disoriented by this sudden change of mood among those they are about to kill that they are unable to go through with the executions. So all the men, along with Desnos, are packed back into the truck and taken back to the barracks. Desnos has saved his own life and the lives of the others by using his imagination.”
(136-137)
Alice Walker’s Fearful Vigil:
During the mid-sixties, American author and poet Alice Walker was participating in a voter-registration drive in South Georgia when her partner, Beverly, a local black teenager, was arrested on a trumped-up, moving-violation charge and held all night in jail. In Walker’s words, the arrest was “meant to intimidate her, ‘show her her place,’ and terrify her family.” Fearful that she would be in danger, Walker and others held a vigil outside the jail:
“I remember the raw vulnerability I felt as the swaggering state troopers – each of them three times Beverly’s size, and mine – stomped in and out of the building, scowling at us. The feeling of solidarity with Beverly and our friends was strong, but also the feeling of being alone, as it occurred to me that not even my parents knew where I was. We were black and very young: We knew no one in white America paid the slightest attention to the deaths of such as us. It was partly because of this that we sometimes resented the presence of the white people who came to stand, and take their chances with us. I was one of those to whom such resentment came easily.
I especially resented blond Paul from Minnesota, whose Aryan appearance meant, when he was not with us, freedom and almost worship in that race-obsessed South. I had treated him with coolness since the day we met. We certainly did not invite him to our vigil. And yet, at just the moment when I felt most downhearted, I heard someone coming along the street in our direction, whistling. A moment later Paul appeared. Still whistling a Movement spiritual that sounded strange, even comical, on his lips, he calmly took his place beside us. Knowing his Nordic presence meant a measure of safely for us, and without even being asked, he offered it. This remains a moment as bright as any I can recall from that time.”(367)
One on One. One at a Time
In these stories of individuals facing difficult and even dangerous situations, the wicked problems of racism, totalitarianism, violence, and extreme poverty, called out to them by way of people who were suffering the effects of them, and each one answered in his or her own way. All carried with them what Richard Selzer called “the pathetic belief that the way to heal the world is to take it in for repairs. One on one. One at a time.”
And yet, the larger problems continued on, unaffected and undented, and will undoubtedly continue in one form or another into the future. Wicked problems give little ground to individuals acting alone. But it is Horton’s conviction that matters here:
“…some poor little person who’s shaking with fear That he’ll blow in the pool. He has no way to steer! I’ll just have to save him. Because, after all, A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
If millions of people all over the world can hold on to Selzer’s “pathetic” belief that the way to heal the world is one on one, one at a time, and do what only they can do, then what can be possible is beyond our most optimistic imagination.
In 1948, the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, wrote, “Perhaps we cannot prevent the world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.” And then the question: “And if you don’t help who else in the world can help us do this?” Perhaps then Selzer’s belief will not be pathetic at all.
Wicked problems are calling. Who will answer?