Infantalism 5: All problems have solutions

I really hate advice columns and their t.v. counterpart, the afternoon talk show. Let me illustrate:

Dear Captain Smartypants,

I am a paralyzed midget with Turrets Syndrome. I'm extremely overweight, and I constantly emit putrid farts. I'm a severe alcoholic, and I beat my kids. I live in Sudan, and my only marketable skill is whistling. My boyfriend is a tree. Lately, he seems distant, and along with my kids' refusing to speak with me, my life is just getting really hard. What should I do?

Stationarily yours,

Private Shortypants.


Dear Private Shortypants,

It sounds to me like you've been barking up the wrong tree. Tell that boyfriend of yours to shape up or make like a tree and leave! And tell your kids you're sorry for beating them and then bake them something! A well crafted muffin is usually all it takes to mend years and years of abuse. You just need to get to the gym, and stop eating so many eggs! Then, you can start looking for a job as a professional whistler! Have you thought about working for Paul Simon? He loves African sounds. And if that doesn't work, try a whistling internship! Pretty soon you'll be whistling dixie, all the way to the bank! Then you can really whistle while you work!


Captain Smartypants


Obviously, there is no conceivable way that somebody can fix somebody else's systemic life problems in a paragraph or two. Or, and I'm talking to you Dr. Phil, in a 20 minute talk show. Simply repeating the words "Are you serious?" or "Get real!" over and over is not going to cut the mustard.

These ubiquitous cultural abominations are symptomatic of our culture's underlying faith that all problems have solutions. Here's another example. When I worked in the disability services field, I was charged with engaging my clients in structured daily "training" sessions. The two gentlemen I worked with were middle aged and moderately mentally retarded. They were very cool guys. But let me tell you this...no matter how many times I worked with one of them on how to count change, he was never going to learn it. N.E.V.E.R.!!!! Those gentleman had a problem. It needed to be managed. It could not be solved. There is no "solution" to that problem.

"Billy...Billy...White.Men.Can't.Jump."

Whenever I hear people spout truisms and platitudes in the face of tremendous grief and suffering, my stomach turns. "Everything happens for a reason." "They're in a better place now." "Maybe this death will bring you closer together!"

Fuck off. Sometimes things just fucking suck. Keep your platitudes to yourself, please. I'd just assume you stick something hot and barbed in my urethra, thank you very much.

There are a lot of examples of this in the policy world. Hey, we don't like that there's a dictator in Iraq...what should we do about that? How bout we invade their country and kill him! Yeah! That makes perfect sense! What could possibly go wrong?!

We may be to the point where we're facing this sort of problem in global warming. Copenhagen's anemic showing was perhaps the point of no return on dramatic climate change. It may very well be that this is now a problem without a solution. I'll leave it to the experts to decide on that, but it seems clear that, at some point relatively soon, we'll be there.

Oh, and we're all going to die. That's the oldest problem-without-a-solution in the book.