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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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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In thinking of a response you could give, based on the clinical one: “The solutions come from the feelings associated with exploring the event/situation/system. Solutions are also hard. We need the motivation of A to do B.”
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