The Solution of my Problems

"An Iranian student, shortly after his arrival in Berkely, took a seminar in metaphor from one of us.  Among the wondrous things that he found in Berkeley was an expression that he heard over and over and understood as a beautifully sane metaphor.  The expression was "the solution of my problems" - which he took to be a large volume of liquid, bubbling and smoking, containing all of your problems, either dissolved or in the form of precipitates, with catalysts constantly dissolving some problems (for the time being) and precipatitating out others.  He was terribly disillusioned to find that the residents of Berkeley had no such chemical metaphor in mind.  And well he might be, for the chemical metaphor is both beautiful and insightful.  It gives us a view of problems as things that never disappear utterly and that cannot be solved once and for all.  All of your problems are always present, only they may be dissolved and in solution, or they may be in solid form.  The best you can hope for is to find a catalyst that will make one problem dissolve without making another one precipitate out.  And since you do not have complete control over what goes into the solution, you are constatly finding old and new problems precipitating out and present problems dissolving, partly because of your efforts and partly despite anything you do.

The CHEMICAL metaphor gives us a new view of human problems.  It is appropriate to the experience of finding that problems which we once thought were "solved" turn up again and again.  The CHEMICAL metaphor says that problems are not the kind of things that can be made to disappear forever.  To treat them as things that can be "solved" once and for all is pointless.  To live by the CHEMICAL metaphor would be to accept it as a fact that no problem ever disappears forever.  Rather than direct your energies toward solving your problems once and for all, you would direct your energies toward finding out what catalysts will dissolve your most pressing problems for the longest time without precipitating out worse onces.  The re-appearance of a problem is viewed as a natural occurrence rather than a failure on your part to find "the right way to solve it."

George Lakeoff & Mark Johnsen

Metaphors We Live By

Traditionally, we model problems and solutions in a strictly linear relationship:  I desire some outcome, so I perform actions x, y & z to achieve it.  The weakness of the linear model, which is elegantly accounted for in the chemical metaphor, are unintended consequences and trade-offs.

It's not an especially happy perspective, but if you take the view that life is a long series of problems, it's easy to see how problems and solutions connect with each other - we get into romantic relationships to solve the problem of loneliness, but this introduces the new problem of having to live with someone who's preferences conflict with ours, so we have to negotiate that.  Then we have too many quarrels and break up, and now we're back to the problem of loneliness.  &etc.

The chemical metaphor captures offers a more realistic, anticipatory model for how solutions are implemented in reality - our actions (getting into a relationship) are going to have unintended consequences (fighting), which will involve making trade-offs (compromising on our preferences to keep both partners happy).

In a sense, the biggest problem of our lives is acquiring and maintaining happiness.

You can kind of see this everywhere - computers are probably the best example of a solution to a problem (that we didn't know we had...) with massive unintended consequences and trade-offs entailed.

Another example is cars - the biggest unintended consequence is traffic accidents.  A solution - the self-driving car - is in the works.  How will self-driving cars entirely restructure the way we do transportation?  An interesting exercise is to write down everything you can think of.  Then, read the article Forbes recently published on the subject - you'll probably be surprised.  Now think of the potential for unintended consequences...