Fixing or repairing something that is broken or not working means taking action to make it work again. It means getting it to work the way it was originally intended to work. It means a return to the status quo, be it societal, psychological, or mechanical.
Fixing or repairing something might include making improvements to the way a thing works. But it doesn’t involve any fundamental changes in structure, function, or operation.
Some fixes are minor adjustments; some are quite elaborate. Sometimes a small fix applied to a small problem does the trick quite nicely. But most fixes applied to big problems are inadequate, incomplete, and temporary. As such, they’re not only a waste of time, effort, energy, and good intentions—they also exacerbate the problems they’re intended to address.
So why do we keep trying to fix things that clearly need to be transformed? Well, for one thing it’s a heck of a lot easier! It also makes us feel like we’re doing something. But the primary motivation to fix is that it relieves the psychological tension that results from dissatisfaction or a disruption to the status quo.
It’s an understatement to say we dislike psychological tension. The fact is that we will do almost anything to eliminate it, and by we I mean individuals, groups, and entire societies.
I don’t believe it’s a stretch to say that much of the world is powered by the desire to relieve psychological tension.
How It Works
This is a process that is easily observed everywhere and that has highly predictable results.
- A disruption to our status quo that can’t be ignored or accommodated generates psychological tension.
. - The discrepancy between our current state of affairs and the state of affairs we would prefer motivates us to take action.
. - We identify the problem we think needs fixing.
. - If the actions we take in response are effective in the short-term, our psychological tension is relieved. (If we don’t take action or our actions aren’t effective, we find other ways to relieve psychological tension that don’t directly address the problem.)
. - Once our psychological tension is relieved, we are no longer motivated to take action to fix the problem.
. - Once we stop taking action to fix the problem, we stop paying attention to it. (It sinks below our level of awareness.)
. - When we stop paying attention to it, we eventually find ourselves not only back where we started from but often even worse off than we were before—not to mention dismayed at being faced with this problem again.
But of course the problem was never accurately identified in the first place, so there was very little likelihood any fixes we applied would have significant impact on it.
All we really want to do, anyway, is make it go away. We don’t want to have to think about it. We don’t want to experience all that psychological tension.
But what if the wide variety of problems we have identified in ourselves, in each other, in society, and in the world are not problems that can be solved in this manner—or at this level of change? What if the way we operate is a much more fundamental problem—one that repeatedly undermines our most well-intended efforts?
What’s the solution to that problem?