Life’s Wicked Problems
We are all familiar with the term of ‘’Complexity’’, there are different explanations for the term but if we look at it on the dictionary we find: ‘’the state of having many parts and being difficult to understand or find an answer to..’’[1] Another definition of the term is: ‘’The behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, meaning there is no reasonable higher instruction to define the various possible interactions’’[2].
From both explanations, we see that the term of complexity describes a situation in which we can’t find the solution or the answer with a simple method. Here comes the term of simplicity which stands on the opposite side; ‘’the state of being simple, something easy to understand or explain seems simple, in contrast to something complicated.’’[3] According to these explanations, it seems easy to distinguish a complex situation from a simple one. For example, in algebra it is easy to decide if the problem is complex or simple according to its solution.
When it comes to social issues, we use the terms in a different context and the definition of them changes depending on the way we choose to describe it. If we take the definition of complexity in a social context, we may say that a complex problem has impacts on a group of people, they are hard to define and generally multifaceted. By going one step forward we come to the term of ‘wicked problems’.
In 1973, two design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber found the term ‘wicked problem’ in order to highlight a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve. According to them, there are several reasons behind it; lack of knowledge, the number of ideas involved, economic load and the connection of these problems with different other problems. If we take Climate Change as an example which has been a common one for a long time, there are many explanations, causes, effects of it but we don’t have a solution yet and probably it is impossible to find a recipe to solve it. It has huge effect on different sides and the the long way which goes to the solution requires radical changes in different areas.
In these days, as humanity we’re facing another wicked problem with the outbreak of COVID 19 pandemic. For a year and more we’ve been living with a virus that we’ve never seen before. When it started, we didn’t even have any knowledge about the effects of the virus. Our first reaction after the shock was to stay in our homes as much as possible to stay safe, because we didn’t know how to take any other precaution.
The problem in this situation was a virus and because of that we expected all the information about the process from the professionals. At the beginning for most of us the only thing to do was to get the news from different medias and choose the best way to protect ourselves. Some of people who were living in big cities decided to move in small towns in order to have a safe place to live in this period.
Managers, company owners made radical changes in their work environment in order to protect their workers. Many people lost their jobs and had great difficulties to afford their living expenses. Other than having economic issues, many people have faced psychological problems, mainly anxiety. With the outbreak of pandemic we forced ourselves to change. We changed the way we work, socialise, entertain in short we changed the way we live. As a normal consequence, at first we got afraid, that’s way many of us had to deal with anxiety because we were not able to imagine the next step. We knew that the things had to change and we knew that we had to find new ways but we didn’t know how.
Today, as we passed one year and more with the pandemic, we’re still struggling in different areas because of it. Some people thought that the solution was the vaccine, but still today we see that it can’t be seen as a solution because it doesn’t cover every effect of the pandemic. The problem itself isn’t only the infection by the virus, in this period we’ve experienced many different problems. Economic crisis of some countries, unemployment in different sectors (mainly in creative sectors), travel restrictions, problems in socialising are just some of them. Overall, the main problem for us was to find a new way to live. With our one year experience, we may say that we found new ways to deal with it. Maybe the great solution will never come but I think the most important thing to remember ourselves is to keep trying new things not to reach the solution but to learn to live with our wicked problems.
References
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/complexity
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity#cite_note-steven-1
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicity#:~:text=Simplicity%20is%20the%20state%20or,in%20contrast%20to%20something%20complicated.&text=In%20some%20uses%2C%20the%20label,relative%20to%20what%20is%20required.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/wicked-problem-definition-examples.html
