The Cat In The Hat approach to solutioning problems
Years ago I joked about writing an article about the problem with The Cat In The Hat approach to solutioning problems, and how it seems to…
Years ago I joked about writing an article about the problem with The Cat In The Hat approach to solutioning problems, and how it seems to influence (or reflect) other aspects of the culture in the U.S. It seems now it’s the time to do it, since it’s obviously no joke.
Back in 2017, when I became a foster parent, I was faced with the difficult task of putting a kid to bed. It was daunting, it was something I had never done before, and my (then) 2-year-old had trouble going to sleep.
Singing to him helped calm him down. I will always remember how he stopped, wide-eyed in the middle of his crying when he heard me sing “Good Night” by The Beatles, and asked me to keep singing over and over and over. It was one of the proudest (and most voice-wrecking) moments in my brief musical career.
Once calmed, reading -a lot of it- finished the task. We bought some children’s books, and my friend Fred gave us a Dr. Seuss box set as a present. That’s when I first got familiarized with “The Cat In The Hat” and “The Cat In The Hat Comes Back” (Dr. Seuss is not a thing in Argentina, where I grew up: other beloved children’s authors like Maria Elena Walsh occupy that space, and the translation of the material would probably not be easy with all those made up words, anyway).
One thing really caught my eye in those books, though (after reading them out loud about a trillion times in those late nights): every time the Cat tries to fix something, me makes a bigger mess, and the situation keeps escalating until a magical solution is applied and then Voom!. The problem is gone and everything gets back to normal
As wonderfully enjoyable as these books are, something bothered me: it was such an unsustainable, wasteful and impractical solution, that relied in a Deus-Ex-Machina resource to get a resolution.
And then it hit me- and I recognized the pattern.
An unsustainable, wasteful, impractical pattern of adding, supplementing the problem, creating side-effects and ramifications, in hopes of finding a silver bullet solution.
The Cat In The Hat pattern is present in TV shows where the hero gets in the kind of trouble that most people don’t get out of. And yet by the end of the episode, our hero emerges, unscathed, ready to take on the bad guy next week, same time on the same channel.
The Cat In The Hat pattern is present in consumerism, where you buy gadgets and accessories of ridiculously narrow range of use that take space in your kitchen cabinets.
The Cat In The Hat pattern is present in some of the approaches to health, where instead of stopping eating the type and amount of food that is harmful to your body, you take some medicine or a supplement to counter the effects. But that medicine has a side-effect of its own, so you have to take another medicine, and another, and another ad infinitum. Or when pain killers are prescribed so carelessly throwing patients into a downward spiral of opioids addition epidemic (Please, PLEASE do not take this as an anti-vaccine or anti-science argument: I am very much pro-vaccine and pro-science; I just think that some problems are more efficiently solved by removing the cause than by managing the effects)
And it’s also present in the approach to guns in America. Yes, I said it, you read me right. Yes, I went there.
The response I heard from a large number of people on social media to the escalating, horribly violent and tragic shootings that kill and maim our families and scar us as a society is “we need more guns” and “if there had been more guns, the shooter would have been stopped”, as if arming teachers or passersby could deter or help stop a determined madman. Yup, that’ll do it.
For the Record, both the school in Uvalde and the supermarket in Buffalo had security guards. The one in Buffalo even shot at the shooter, whose tactical gear allowed him to continue his massacre nonchalantly.
Instead of restricting access to guns, metal detectors are installed. Instead of treating mental health and controlling access to guns, a deranged shooter can legally buy 2 AR rifles at the age of 18. And the first response from some is “we should raise the age of purchase to 21”, as if 3 years of age could magically change things.
Steve Kerr’s press conference perfectly expressed the frustration many of us feel when we see this happen over and over (3 shootings in a little over a week!) and legislative action is not taken to defend us. All in a desperate attempt to hold on to power the power of the status quo.
We’re hurt, we’re scared, we’re tired. Thoughts and prayers seem less than effective measures, the Deus-Ex-Machina is not picking up our calls, and the Voom is not vooming. Time to try something new and fight the disease, not the symptoms.