“Solutions” Which Cause More Problems

Increasingly we view sexuality with the impoverished imagination of the technician scouting out solutions to problems. Disease? Use a condom. Unwanted pregnancies? Here’s the Pill. Heartbroken youth? Give them sex-ed. Resulting despair and purposelessness? More condoms, more pills, and more sex-ed. The feedback loop is by now fairly obvious, with “solutions” causing as many problems as they “solve.” Yet we cannot imagine anything other than to double-down on the solutions. So we try the same things again and again in the naïve faith that these mysteries are really just problems.

R.J. Snell, “Ancient Wisdom in Barren Times”