Broken Record

by John
(Mountain View, CA)

Listening to the news today (August 9, 2014), and hearing President Obama describe the long term plans for Iraq, and the recent bombing, I could not help but think of the words, "Broken Record."

Broken because it will not work in the long term. And record because we are playing it, on our national record player, over and over. You would think we would notice the repetitive nature of the message, and the history of failure of its functionality hypothesis.

So what is the alternative? Good question.

Clearly, when an immediate moral issue, such as genocide, occurs, some form of humanitarian response is needed. But here is the problem:

The corrective solution is never going to work in the long term. WHY?

Because it fixes a problem, rather than creating a shift in culture. Culture is 10,000 times more effective, reliable, durable and powerful than problem fixing.

The worse response is to fix the problem. Better than that is prevention. Better than that is education. Better than that is self-education. Best is a change in culture.

So how do you do that?

Through MANY means… but some of them are dialogue, conversation, relationship-building, team-building, inter-economic exchanges, scientific collaboration, free trade, exchange programs, etc, etc, etc.

In the short term, clearly, these types of initiatives do not work… the crisis is too imminent. What MUST be done is to pair the short term solutions with relationship-building, as a hybrid.

Both are needed. And, when relationship builds, the reactive war/bomb stuff will atrophy. A shift in dominance will occur, just as it has in every other educational effort. Just look at the civil rights movement. It's the culture that perseveres. And the idea (in that case, that all men are created equal).

Ideas, visions, HARD WORK in the areas of relationship building will have VASTLY better results than dropping aid, and bombing the insurgents.