Today’s conversations around climate, politics, and technology are dominated by a word I’m increasingly uncomfortable with: solutions. Don’t get me wrong, we have real problems today, but the “solutions” framing is counterproductive. It suggests our problems are like puzzles to be solved.
Reality is far more complex. Our civilizational problems are, in the words of Evan Steiner, “intricate predicaments woven into the fabric of our existence, demanding nuanced and adaptable responses”. They require ongoing care rather than clear resolutions. They are also not just “our” work: the scale of the crises we face means that meaningful change will necessarily take place over many generations. We need the patience and humility to understand that we may not live to see the world we dream of.
This should come as a huge relief! The fact that our aspirations may take centuries takes pressure off our shoulders. Think about it like this: we are miniscule nodes in a vast interconnected web of efforts through time. It is not for us to solve the world’s problems. It is, rather, for us to care for them and empower future generations.
This type of thinking is new to most Western audiences, but lies at the heart of countless indigenous traditions. You might be familiar with the idea of seven generation thinking - a concept that invites decisions in the present to be weighed for their impact seven generations into the future. The number seven is arbitrary, but often overlooked is the deep ontological humility embedded in this framework. The ancestor worship and cyclical notions of time we find indigenous traditions allow these cultures to situate the present, living generation within a much wider web of life and time. In contrast, the quarterly business calendar that drives Western productivity keeps us incredibly short-sighted and thus incapable of making truly “sustainable” decisions.
Developing a longer temporal perspective also changes our understanding of success and failure. In her book, Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit argues that the utopian thinkers of the 19th century “imagined that victory would, when it came, be total and permanent, which is practically the same as saying that victory was and is impossible and will never come.” In other words: we shouldn’t be motivated by total victories and happy endings; instead, we can find motivation in small, partial victories, in the joy of feeling and engaging an imperfect, wounded world.
Which is why I find responses a much more interesting framework for action than solutions. Let’s get real: none of the big crises of our time are going away any time soon. Carbon emissions aren’t going down, green tech is a major PR scheme, we’re losing species at over a thousand times the natural extinction rate, and the Human Development Index has declined in 80% of countries since 2018.
This isn’t pessimism, and my point here isn’t to scare anyone away. It’s simply to show that we have an obligation to get comfortable with a radically changed world. Orienting around responses over solutions gives us the humility to consider nuance and complexity and thus to develop more holistic responses to our predicament.
In her book, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira argues that we cannot approach the polycrisis with the same modernist attitude that caused it. Much of Western civilization is premised on controlling nature for humanity’s own benefit and comfort. The way we approach crisis today is still dominated by the deep psychological impulse to make problems go away.
Can we let go of the impulse to solve things? I recognize this can be a tough pill to swallow. Everything about the world today feels so damn urgent, and there’s a deeply understandable desire to throw water on the flames. But…check yourself before you wreck yourself: how is your desire for solutions potentially reproducing the problems you aim to solve?
Orienting around responses allows us to recognize that there aren’t always easy answers, that we are biased in our worldviews, and that the best we can do is lovingly experiment. The response framework is fundamentally playful: it takes pressure off our backs, reminding us that we are imbricated within a much wider web of life and time. This spaciousness allows us to contemplate what we really want to do with our lives and approach problems from a place of calm and wonder, rather than mania and fear.
I don’t know about you, but I find this approach liberating. You see, I’ve often thought there was something wrong with me for gravitating towards perspectives that many consider dark or pessimistic. The reality is that civilizational narratives around progress and solutions don’t really allow for dissent. There is a sense of shame associated with the radical critique of modernity that prevents people from expressing how they actually feel. In fact, I’m an ebullient, life-loving human being. A core part of that love involves aligning myself with the open-ended, paradoxical, and often painful nature of reality. It’s a dive into the unknown whose rewards are a deeper appreciation for the manifold layers and textures of our world.
Thank you for reading. I am curious what you think about all this. At this moment, I’m actively exploring how this change in perspective can be applied in organizational and business settings. I’d love to hear your feedback.
Félix, I beleive you make an important point.
As a businessman involved in fighting the climate crisis, I observe we face two opposing challenges. Some people still beleive the climate crisis is exagérared by environmentalists. For these people, this is not urgent, we can wait.So they postpone much needed initiatives. Others beleive the opposite. They are convinced we are already very late in making the right moves.And therefore that a strong sense of urgency must be instilled and actions are needed now.The first school tends to encourage decision makers and citizens to be slow or even to wait. The second school tends to induce many people to be discouraged: if things are so bad, why do anything…. So each of us needs to find the right balance: not create a panic but an awareness that builds on will , patience and action.
Michel
Yeah!! I’d take it a step further and point to techno-optimists (cc: SF/Bay Area?) heavily relying upon a formula of creating solutions to invented problems. Merci Felix ✨