The Problem of Problem-Solving and the Israel-Hezbollah Conflict
We are a great culture and an affluent culture in large measure because we are what I would call an "engineer culture." Engineers are people who see problems and "work the problem" until they find a solution. Engineers are always trying to refine processes and products to make them better. Engineers, writ-large, looked at the frontier and saw farms, looked at raging streams and saw mills, looked at rivers and, later, oceans, and saw commerce. Engineers looked at the sky and built planes and rockets. Engineers took us to the Moon and back.
[As a complete, unrelated sidebar, does anybody else think it's insane that we haven't made an effort to go back to the Moon in more than 30 years? It's like human beings did the greatest thing they had ever done in the history of man and said, well, that's boring, let's stop funding that. Weird. It's captured in the moment in Apollo 13 when Jim Lovell's wife realizes that the networks aren't carrying his broadcast from space because going to space had become tedious to American viewers. Okay, back to my post.]
Because we are engineers, however, we think that every problem has a solution. Even the math and science illiterate among us -- and there are many -- partake in this aspect of the engineer culture; they think that every problem must have a solution. If only we thought hard enough. If only we considered the problem from the appropriate perspective.
Indeeed, it is among the math-and-science illiterate in America -- the sociologists and journalists and writers and lawyers and politicians and English professors and, well, you get the picture... the chattering classes -- that the engineer culture finds its most common and insidious form. Here, they think... if only we got enough people together and talked through the issues, we would find a solution to the problem. In this manifestation of the engineer culture, experimentation and invention are replaced by committees sitting about in conference rooms around a long table, talking. If only we talked some more. If only we communicated.
But, unlike most engineering issues, there isn't a better mousetrap to build in southern Lebanon. Sometimes there are problems that can't be solved by talking. I do not believe there is a diplomatic "solution" to this problem. Conversely, I do not belive there is a permanent military solution either. If we somehow negotiate a cease-fire, Hezbollah will still hate Israel and Jews and still want to kill them all. Sooner or later, they will try again; perhaps sooner rather than later, they might have the means to do more injury to Israel, via WMDs. If Israel, on the other hand, succeeds in wiping out Hezbollah's capacities now, it will postpone future conflicts, but it won't "solve" the problem.
We cannot escape history, Lincoln said. Exactly so. There is no complete solution to the problem of evil in the world.
[As a complete, unrelated sidebar, does anybody else think it's insane that we haven't made an effort to go back to the Moon in more than 30 years? It's like human beings did the greatest thing they had ever done in the history of man and said, well, that's boring, let's stop funding that. Weird. It's captured in the moment in Apollo 13 when Jim Lovell's wife realizes that the networks aren't carrying his broadcast from space because going to space had become tedious to American viewers. Okay, back to my post.]
Because we are engineers, however, we think that every problem has a solution. Even the math and science illiterate among us -- and there are many -- partake in this aspect of the engineer culture; they think that every problem must have a solution. If only we thought hard enough. If only we considered the problem from the appropriate perspective.
Indeeed, it is among the math-and-science illiterate in America -- the sociologists and journalists and writers and lawyers and politicians and English professors and, well, you get the picture... the chattering classes -- that the engineer culture finds its most common and insidious form. Here, they think... if only we got enough people together and talked through the issues, we would find a solution to the problem. In this manifestation of the engineer culture, experimentation and invention are replaced by committees sitting about in conference rooms around a long table, talking. If only we talked some more. If only we communicated.
But, unlike most engineering issues, there isn't a better mousetrap to build in southern Lebanon. Sometimes there are problems that can't be solved by talking. I do not believe there is a diplomatic "solution" to this problem. Conversely, I do not belive there is a permanent military solution either. If we somehow negotiate a cease-fire, Hezbollah will still hate Israel and Jews and still want to kill them all. Sooner or later, they will try again; perhaps sooner rather than later, they might have the means to do more injury to Israel, via WMDs. If Israel, on the other hand, succeeds in wiping out Hezbollah's capacities now, it will postpone future conflicts, but it won't "solve" the problem.
We cannot escape history, Lincoln said. Exactly so. There is no complete solution to the problem of evil in the world.
posted by PDB at 9:59 AM
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