The challenge of solving a wicked problem

A

 wicked problem defies solution.



Charles F. Keating.

It is complicated by its contextual, ethical, moral and philosophical intrigue, and has implications that will not respond to practical and physical ideas around which the contemporary world is built.

A wicked problem is defined as a social or cultural question that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. Climate change is a wicked problem, but there is more; much more as there is a social impasse – climate change cannot be resolved within a relevant human time scale, and so there is an intergenerational issue that demands much of our understanding, compassion, patience and generousity.

Unequivocal evidence illustrates that no matter what we do now; Earth will continue to warm taking us into a temperature regime never before experienced by humans.

How we live under those circumstances is something we will have to learn, quickly.

However, although we have caused this difficulty, we have arrived at the top of the food chain mostly because of our adaptability, a trait the may well favour us as we wrestle with the vagaries of this wicked problem.

The human species has been about for some three million years and for most that time our distant ancestors lived a precarious existence as hunters and gatherers, and this kept numbers small, probably less than 10 million until agriculture was introduced about 10 000 years ago.

With the certainty of food, population began its exponential growth planting the seeds of our wicked problem and it is within that frighteningly small potted history that we must look to plot our way through this maze of incomplete, contradictory, opinion ridden, financially confusing and interconnected troubles.

No, it is not the life of a hunter gatherer for us (that’s impossible anyway and wouldn’t work), but what we need, urgently, is a more restrained and simpler life in which success is not measured by your ability to exploit the other, but how you help shape and build your neighbourhood; how you step forward to play your part in building resilience within your community; how you offer your ”muscle”, be that physical, intellectual or emotional, to help your society weather the rapidly unfolding difficulties.

American inventor, engineer and the head of research at General Motors for nearly 30 years, the late Charles Kettering, said: “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved”.

Yes, we have a problem; a wicked problem so let’s acknowledge it as climate change and if we believe Kettering’s philosophy, the problem is half-solved.

There is, however, a further difficulty as climate change presents challenges on which common-sense morality is largely silent.

by Robert McLean