The Reactive World Provides Few Solutions

Unfortunately, we leave in a reactive world. What does this mean, and why is it important? It means that we're rarely proactive but only reactive. This means that instead of looking for solutions to problems that might happen, we seek to solve problems that already occurred.

Think about it. 911 was one of the wake-up tragedies for the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Were we prepared? No, not at all. We were taken completely by surprise, and ever since then all of our politics have been about reactions. We reacted to the Taliban in Afghanistan, going after them because they were harboring the killers who attacked us. We attacked Iraq because of what we claimed they had done; let's face it, as much as we'd like to think we went into Iraq to stop them from doing things in the future, the war was sold on a linkage to 911 that never existed. Oh sure, we can pretend that lie wasn't sold back then, but it was, and it was sold well. Again, it was a reaction.

I was reading a story today about San Francisco. The Bay Bridge has been closed down because of part of it collapsed, again. The fix that proved to be a bad fix was a fix to a collapse during the San Francisco earthquake. More reactions. No preparations. So, now the bridge is closed, people can't figure out how to get across the bay, and people are all upset. All reactions. If people would have thought this out, they would have had a contigency plan in place for when the Bay Bridge goes down. Their solution? Take BART. Only, they don't have enough trains running, and BART's continuous reaction to all things politics in the San Francisco area has been to raise rates whenever anything happens. Expect a new rate soon now that BART has to work harder. They just raised it a short time ago because BART didn't have enough money. And then they raised it after that because they realized they had to pay their workers more because they wouldn't go back to work and threatened to strike. Great reactions. No proaction.

A young girl in the Bay Area was raped the other day by at least 10 gang members. The reaction? Shock. Claims that this sort of thing shouldn't happen "here". This morning, young people from the school where she was raped complained that the reaction has been so negative towards them, stating things like "What about the good things?" Well, sorry, but when a young girl gets raped and EVERYONE ignores what's happening to her, except for the few that jumped in and cheered on the rapists, well, sorry young people, but it's pretty hard to "think about the good things" that happen in your school.

Years ago, I used to serve as a security expert in the military. I used to complain that every time there was a huge terrorist action (this was during the 1980s when there was one happening every week in Europe), the US soldiers would go on alert, we'd start investigating every car that came onto post, and then two weeks would pass by and we'd go back to being morons again. Then terrorists would attack again, and no one would expect it. It was like playing security games with people who all had long term memory loss disorder. But it would keep happening. And I would keep complaining, and then they'd go back to what they were doing before. But that didn't bother me as much as the fact that someone would ALWAYS say, "no one could have expected that" when there were a few of us who kept saying: "Stop putting your heads in the ground and do something!"

I feel that way now. Gangs are pretty much ruling entire neighborhoods in some cities, and no one does anything about it. Oh, they talk about doing something about it, but they rarely do. Or they turn their police loose on the population for a few weeks and then tone them down again. Then the criminals come back out of the woodwork and do their thing over again. It's like the riots that took place after the big moments in time in the last decade or so, like the Rodney King verdict. People went nuts after that and started attacking innocent citizens on the streets. African-American gangs practically went to war against Korean businessmen in Los Angeles because...well, I don't actually know what were the actual reasons, but I guarantee they had nothing to do with the Rodney King verdicts against the police officers that were exonerated by the local jury. People were angry over other things, and as much as people kept warning that something bad was going to happen, no one cared. And then when it happened, people started in with the infamous, "No one oould have expected that" when everyone should have expected that.

That's part of the problem of living in a reactive society. We don't do anything to prepare for bad situations but hope that things will last long enough for us to retire or die before the powder keg goes off. Like social security. It's been falling apart for decades, but no one wants to do anything about it. Or health care. Or the recent problems with the national debt. It's almost as if we imbibe ourselves on American Idol long enough, we're convinced that the payment will never come due.

Well, it will. But it will happen when you least expect it, because that's how these sorts of things work. But honestly, we all know no one could have expected that. I mean, how could we have possibly have known?

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