THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

I don’t know if it is unique to us here in the United States or a worldwide phenomenon, but when we have a behavior problem here in this country, we definitely have a strong tendency to characterize that problem by its symptoms and focus all our energies on trying to eliminate those symptoms; instead of focusing on the cause of the problem. 

When people use illegal drugs, like methamphetamine and heroin, we say we have a drug problem and declare war on drugs to try to reduce the availability of the drugs.  When Muslim Jihadists terrorize western cities we say we have a terrorist problem and declare war on terror to try to eliminate the terrorists. And when people kill other people with guns we say we have a gun violence problem and scream “Make it harder for people to buy guns.” None of these responses address why people do these things. Dealing with the symptom of a problem instead of dealing with the cause of the problem is as uselss as "putting the cart before the horse".

If you’ve been following this blog, you may remember I pointed out in my very first post (HOW BAD IS BAD – June 20. 2017) that bad behavior is willful. People choose to behave badly and they do so for a reason, usually because it meets a need. I also pointed out in a subsequent post (THE CATCH IN THE CONSEQUENCE – July 5, 2017) that if people are behaving badly because it meets a need, we are not going to stop that bad behavior until we figure out what that need is and address it.

Don’t get me wrong. I am NOT against regulation. In a civilized society, anything that is potentially dangerous to the public needs to be regulated; and most things are (i.e. driving a car, flying a plane, performing surgery, prescribing medicine, operating a restaurant, selling alcohol or cigarettes, building a house, etc.). Dangerous drugs need to be controlled, people associated with known terrorist organizations need to be kept off airplanes and it’s probably fair to say there need to be some restrictions on who can own guns and what kinds of guns they can own. I am just trying to point out that eliminating the symptom of a problem doesn’t solve the problem.  When we slowed the flow of cocaine coming into the U.S. from Latin America, the people who were using cocaine didn’t stop using drugs. They switched to using methamphetamine, which they could make themselves in a cabin in the woods. When we required passengers boarding an airplane to go through a metal detector, people who wanted to cause havoc on airplanes switched from carrying a box cutter in their pocket to putting a bomb in their shoe. Making guns harder to buy legally will just mean that people who want guns will have to buy them illegally.

Getting to the root causes of these behavior problems will be difficult. We may very well find that these behaviors, these symptoms, are caused by flaws in some of our basic belief systems, like capitalism and religion, or the failure of some of our essential institutions, like education and health care. In fact, I’m pretty sure that is exactly what we will find and I am also pretty sure we know that’s what we’ll find, which is why we don’t want to go there - don’t even want to look. It’s a lot easier to just go after the symptoms and tell ourselves we’re doing the best we can. It’s just that eliminating the symptoms of a problem won’t solve the problem. Our problems will just get worse until we deal with what’s causing them.

In 2002, a year to the date after 9/11, I attended the Youth Employment Summit in Alexandria, Egypt as part of a delegation from the National Youth Employment Coalition. Youth practitioners from more than 160 countries came to the conference looking for ways to deal with the fact that a billion young people worldwide would be entering the workforce over the next 10 years while only three hundred million workers would be retiring or otherwise leaving the workforce. Mrs. Hosni Mubarak, the wife of the President of Egypt, was the keynote speaker. She set the tone for the conference by calling attention to these statistics and pointing out that “If we, the nations of the world, do not find ways to provide these young people with gainful employment they will most assuredly disrupt our communities and destabilize our societies”. Apparently, her husband, President Mubarak, didn’t listen to his wife’s speech because nine years later, in 2011, he was thrown out of office and put in prison (where he remained for six years) during the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, which was led by young Egyptians who couldn’t find jobs because not enough new jobs had been created. 

Obviously, there is a moral to this story - Always listen to your wife.