Simple And Cheap Solutions For Terrible Problems

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'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems'
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
- Charles Mingus

In science they call it elegance. When a theory can be explained concisely in terms that most people can understand, that theory is said to be elegant. Not surprisingly, few scientists are so adept with words that they can explain their theories elegantly. That partly explains why they have so much opposition, as many readers misinterpret their complicated wording.

Most people recognize e = mc2 even if they don't fully understand Einstein's work with relativity. For many it's the only scientific equation they know.

Making the simple complicated is something we experience frequently. Politicians interviewed on television or radio, for example, use a continuous flow of easily understood words to dodge around answering a question that would make them or their party look bad by gradually changing the subject completely to one they want to address. They never answer the original question, no matter how often it's asked.

Preachers do something similar as well at times. When they want to discuss something about which there may be some debate as to its veracity or even its wisdom, they flower up their words and use quotes from scripture that often have nothing whatsoever to do with the issue. Listeners assume that they must have missed something and that the quoted scripture must have proven the point the preacher was making. Consequently listeners believe what the preacher concludes, believing that he proved his point by quoting a holy book. He didn't.

Making the complicated awesomely simple may be creative, but it doesn't necessarily convince the multitudes. Many people believe that if someone is able to give an easily understood solution to a complicated question, there must be something missing or defective or plain wrong with the solution.

Take the drug problem for example. Thousands of people in a few poor countries make a decent living growing crops that are eventually sold as illegal drugs on the streets of rich countries. Since so many people die or have their lives destroyed by these drugs, governments spend fortunes to hire police and judges and build courtrooms and prisons to catch and punish the guilty parties.

Without getting into the reasons why people take illegal drugs, the fact is that within certain communities and social circles, drug-taking is acceptable and socially encouraged.

The same people who take drugs may never consider breaking any other laws. So why do they take drugs? The answer to the question is very complicated and no one answer fits every drug taker. What is important is that if we want people to not take drugs as adults or as adolescents, we must teach them that taking drugs is wrong when they are young children.

Teaching young children about an "adult" subject is morally wrong to some people. Instead they wait until the kids get older and try to fix the mistakes and repair the destroyed lives.

What we learn as very young children--under the age of six years--forms the basis for what we believe as adults. We can show adolescents the effects that drugs have had on some people--by visiting them in prison or hospitals for example--but the first stage of the teaching must be done when the kids are very young. Then it becomes part of them, a component of who they are as people.

Most teens who don't take drugs likely don't even remember learning that taking drugs is wrong when they were very little. Yet somehow the message got through to them, whether they learned it through a formal lesson or by overhearing adult conversations. Kids learn about their world by listening to adults talk, whether the kids seem to be paying attention to the adult words or not.

Teach the children when they are young and they will follow the lessons as adults. That's a very simple statement of solution for a very complicated subject. But it's the only viable solution to the problem. It's the only way to address the problem effectively.

Your tax money is spent liberally on police, courts, judges, lawyers, prison guards and prison facilities every year. The numbers of each go up every year. Yet how many governments want to seek the desperately cheap solution of teaching young children (preferably their parents first) about how drugs are harmful?

The same solution applies to many other community (social) and even personal problems. Teach kids how to cope with their problems before they are old enough to have the problems and they will be ready to face down those problems with confidence when they arise.

Complicated problem. Simple solution. Lots of your tax money spent for no effective return. Nothing hard about that.

So why aren't you talking to others about this solution? Want to learn more? Check out the web site using the link below.

It won't cost you anything to learn and you only have to talk to others about it in conversations you might have anyway.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to teach the world some easy and cheap solutions for complicated problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com