The How is Not the What

When all you do is perfect your how, you can never change your what

Here’s a tiny rule for accomplishing, creating, dreaming, living. When all you can do is perfect your “how”, the price is that you can never change your what or why.

Yet. We’re relentless “how”ists. Ruthless and single-minded pragmatists. Eyes on the prize. Endlessly seeking answers, solutions, efficiency. What do we do at work, play, life? Find, practice, perfect “hows”. How to make, get, win, control…money, stuff, power, fame.

Here’s the problem.

In times of decline, pragmatism only makes things worse. What got you into a mess probably can’t get you out. Only deeper in. That rule applies to societies and nations as much as it does to companies and lives.

Bernie was recently lambasted for “bungling” an interview. Leave aside the issue — very real — that any reasonable person should be far less concerned with whether a leader interviews smoothly than whether a leader governs well. We’re choosing a President, not a Kardashian. Or at least that’s what I think in my better moments.

Here’s the real issue. Piling onto the frenzy, tons of people (especially on Twitter) said: see! Bernie just doesn’t know how to get things done.

So what?

Here’s the truth. It doesn’t matter. Not at all. The rest of the rich world has what Bernie’s proposing, right? Public healthcare, college, less inequality, and so on. Every other advanced country. So the how is almost totally irrelevant. For healthcare, the US might choose a UK style NHS, or a French style semi-private system, or a Japanese style nonprofit system. Whatever. There are tons of hows! Not only that, but there are literally entire armies of civil servants in every advanced nation’s government whose sole job it is to figure out, implement, and manage the how. Saying Bernie’s (or any leader’s) main concern is “how” is like saying that Bill Gates’s main job was to write microcode for the Pentium , or Steve Jobs’ main concern was to figure out which printer driver to use — not come up with the point, purpose, raison d’etre for Microsoft or Apple. It’s a belief so staggeringly dumb even my pet hamster shouldn’t hold it.

The how is a tertiary question.

But like many people, you probably think how is the only question. The big question. The question of policy. Wrong.

A policy is not a how. What is a policy? Policy is the what. Let’s imagine that we’re debating if everyone should have free healthcare. That’s a policy debate. Let’s imagine we’re debating whether a society should have free education all the way through grad school. If. Whether. Should. What.

Policy debates are about the rules that govern our organizations, whether they are societies, corporations, or families. Those rules aren’t “hows”. They’re “whats”. What are we here to do, accomplish, live? The “hows” are just the mechanisms by which we hope to get there. And we can choose a different one next week if this week’s doesn’t work.

And yet, most of the public appears to believe that policy debates are “how” debates, not “what” debates. How did we get here? Brainwashed, dulled, confused…believing the opposite of what we should?

Let’s consider Hillary for a moment. She can endlessly discuss the minutiae of how to finance healthcare. Should the states pay, should the fed, should people? That’s not a policy debate. It’s a mechanism debate. It’s about how to finance stuff — not what stuff should be. The policy debate is: should, can, could people have free healthcare, truly public care, at all? Yet by conflating policy for mechanism, we’re all left convinced, persuaded, or maybe just resigned: the “how” is the “what”.

It isn’t.

When Hillary, Trump, whomever, debate “hows”, they’re mostly debating a very specific how. How to pay for stuff. Especially public goods. Healthcare, retirement, college, and so on. In other words, what they’re really debating is financial engineering — the very opposite of policy.

But you know what?

It doesn’t matter.

Interest rates are negative. Markets are literally throwing free money at societies. Why? Because there’s nowhere good left to put it! That’s how broken capitalism is. We could build not just one, but all of the healthcare systems of every other advanced nation, for free, right now, if we wanted to — and then decide on the best one later. The how doesn’t matter at all.

When markets are throwing free money at you, “how” you’re going to finance stuff doesn’t matter. It makes about as much sense as worrying about how you’re going to build a house when it’s raining bricks. Just start piling them up, dummy.

The how is not the what. The what supercedes the how. When how is free, then not only is how a secondary concern — it’s not a concern at all.

The American public conversation leaves me chuckling in amused desperation at the best of times. It’s hollow, performative, ratings-driven. But this latest round is more than all that. It’s absurd in its utter foolishness. The how doesn’t matter at all — and yet, an entire society in steep decline is pretending as if it’s the only thing that does.

What does that say about us? Like I said at the beginning, we’re die hard pragmatists. We believe that the how is the Alpha and the Omega of technocratic salvation. Crunch the numbers, solve the equations, find the solution. But sometimes that’s not enough. Because when all you can do is “how”, you can never change your what or why.

Hence, we settle for debates about financial engineering masquerading as policy — instead of having actual debates about policy — when financial engineering instead of creating things of real value is exactly what caused American decline. Gee, Bill, how should we finance healthcare, education, jobs, the young not eating themselves for sustenance? Dammit, Bob, I don’t know! I just can’t figure it — hold on, there are giant bricks of money falling on my head!! Let me throw them away, instead of using them to solve the very problem we’re debating.

**Audience applauds**

So maybe the problem isn’t them — but us.

Idealism must come before pragmatism in times of decline. Why? Because the great challenge is creating the uncreated, imagining the unimagined, innovation, not renovation. And we can only do that if we’re foolish enough to let go of yesterday’s “hows” so that we can create tomorrow’s great “whats”.

That’s the story of human progress.

I wonder if we’ll be part of its next chapter.

Umair
London
April 2016