At an event yesterday, maybe four different men asked me: Why didn’t you write a book about solutions? (Women almost never ask this.) It’s a businessman’s need, this thirst for “actionable” solutions. And I’ve come to believe this need masks another, deeper one: for absolution.
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I take every question provoked by the book seriously. But in recent weeks I’ve started to realize that this thirst for insta-solutions is a psychological reflex and need more than an intellectual inquiry.
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One man after another asks it, and often seems to think he’s the first to ask it. There is frequently a suggestion that writing criticism is easy. He could have done that himself! What would be useful is a plan, maybe even numbered.
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Pause for this great insight from a Twitter follower.https://twitter.com/lisakaysmsw/status/1046454919157485570?s=21 …
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Sometimes I hold out on principle. Sometimes I give in and start suggesting new tax rates. But what I always want to say is: Why does the existence of a book with criticisms so rankle you? Why do you itch to move on so fast to answers? What if you sat with it a moment?
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The books with solutions have already been written! If you are persuaded by
@winnerstakeall, persuaded of the need for systemic reform, hundreds of experts have written thousands of books on what fairer tax, labor, social, gender, education policies would be.Show this thread -
The rush to solutions reflects this hope: that barreling past diagnosis to get to prescribing will bypass the phase of blame. Criticism takes sides. Solutions can involve all.
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But would you ever trust a doctor who skipped past diagnosis and opened up the pill cabinet and started tossing bottles at you? Prescription follows diagnosis. Solution follows analysis. Action follows reflection. Doing follows seeing. And it has ever been so.
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End of conversation
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I have had a lot of people (esp men) ask me this as well. It's almost a way of invalidating and silencing, telling you not to speak up unless you've managed to fix it, a nearly impossible standard that means criticism is forever kept quiet
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I love your book and that it doesn't provide solutions. In this realm you're a scholar and we need straight critique. I would posit many women/poc don't ask because we often do the quiet, steady, (often) unrewarded work of actual change. We know. Your book distills our argument.
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They don’t want solutions; they mean tell us how you would solve these problems so we can create counter arguments and call systemic racism and post colonialism behaviors— tradeoffs
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It also masks a need to avoid the logical revolution that not writing such a book would mean. MLK and Mandela wrote no such book ...
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