Personally Wicked
Dear Nobody,
Does a wicked problem have to be world-spanning? The classic examples all seem to be huge, the solutions out of reach because it would require “a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior.”
But according to at least some definitions, a wicked problem doesn’t have to involve more than one person. Isn’t each of us facing our own wicked problems every day?
For example: What is the best way to minimize regret over my lifetime? Or more simply, what should I do today to be closest to what I care about? Or even, how do I finish writing this damn novel? Sometimes these feel like wicked problems.
When looked at from a short period of time, the answer to what you want to do with your life might seem solved. For a month or even up to a decade, you might be able to ride a solid wave of confidence in your path. But eventually the “requirements” change, or hidden, contradictory requirements that were there all along are discovered, or the journey down one solution’s path leads to much bigger, unexpected problems later.
These personal wicked problems are difficult or impossible to solve, and the idea that we can solve them, and that we should try to solve them as quickly as possible (“what do you want to be when you grow up?”) may be a side effect of the Hero’s Journey and the desire to shape our lives to fit it neatly.
These might even be “super wicked problems”:
1. Time is running out. That thing called mortality.
2. No central authority. I can’t ask anyone what to do.
3. Those seeking to solve the problem are also causing it. My own sense of requirements for fulfillment is the cause of the problem.
4. Policies discount the future irrationally. Policies means my own decisions about what to do day-to-day.
Perhaps part of what makes the classic wicked problems wicked is that most of us are already embroiled in our own wicked problems, and we can’t look up to face our collective ones. And if we need an alternative to the Hero’s Journey that helps us practice facing wicked problems, maybe it can start with wicked problems on a personal scale.
Kevin
