Fixing the world is like grading math homework

As I've been grading papers, this weekend, I've been realizing that so much of what I'm seeing that just seems so foolish in the world to me is people doing exactly what I see on math papers all of the time:

People making the same mistake again and again.

And as I grade papers, I realize how easy it is to do that.

I have kids who consistently multiply zero times whole numbers as if they are multiplying one times whole numbers. It's an easy mistake, but it's a mistake that will mean a lot of wrong answers.

And that's what I see happening in the world today.

Lot's of people making a lot of mistakes because they just don't understand what they're doing, very well.

Except, in politics, the mistakes you make affect everyone, not just you. One of the primary reasons to leave as much freedom to make choices about life to individuals, as much as possible, and not mandated for everyone.

But the bigger reason is that people resist anything they don't understand or agree with or trust when it's imposed. And that people value their freedom whether you seek to take it away from them, or not, generally for good reason. And the most important reason for valuing that freedom is because they know that it is fundamental to the development of conscience.

We just perpetually take that fact of moral, intellectual, and personal development for granted.

And it's a mistake that gets made again and again in every culture, and democratic cultures are no different.

Democratic cultures are no different except in the respect that they provide us with ways to change those mistakes more readily, to check those with power with divided power, and to more readily both codify protections for freedoms and, far more importantly, build cultures committed to freedom, equity, and other important values. Thus the importance of education in liberal democratic cultures that perpetually take the value of education for granted.

Our culture, right now, is in the midst of an extended period of regression based on this very basic and perpetual mistake that democratic cultures make: romanticizing their less thoughtful, more forceful, more brutish histories.

It's just like watching my students multiply zeroes times sevens and answering seven. It's wrong. It's a very easy mistake to make.

But you won't get to the right answer until you see the mistake.

And that is where we are stuck, right now.

And we won't get unstuck until we see the mistake.

At some level, policy work is very much like mathematics or auto mechanics. If you want the problem fixed, you have to find where the problem is at and fix it. And if you don't find the problem, you aren't a bad person. You'll just keep dealing with the problem until you get it figured out:).

What most political leaders need are some good teachers to help them understand their mistakes, better, so they can fix problems. Joe Nye and Francis Fukuyama are two such teachers around international policy issues. I think I am too. Noone has all the answers. But some people have more answers than others. And good teachers, generally, have more of the right answers. And that's true in math, in auto mechanics, and in policy.

Here's to fixing the problems instead of self-righteously getting stuck on the wrong solutions:).

Love,
Ben