Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

What problems do we want to solve? The simpler are usually the more difficult and more important.

“World hunger,” has been the answer for beauty queens and scholars my entire life. That was the answer to the problem we should solve.

The trouble is, world hunger was solved a hundred years ago. The technology was in place to grow and distribute enough food for everyone on the planet. Let’s move on the the next great problem.

But wait, look at … Yes, there are still people dying of hunger. That happens because some people decide not to distribute food to some other people. Those other people aren’t really people, so feeding those creatures doesn’t matter. There are still some folks who just don’t care about some other people.

What problems do we want to solve? Curing cancer would be a good one. Eliminating blindness or deafness would be good ones.

How about this one: we raise children so that all people value all other people and will distribute food and everything else that is available to everyone who needs it.

Wow. That last one… it’s just too tough to tackle. Let’s focus on something that sounds important but has already been solved—like world hunger.

Let’s not.