The Problematic Nature of "the Solution"

Everyone wants solutions to their problems and society's problems. The difficulty is that the very idea of "the solution" is itself problematic for theological, philosophical and practical reasons.

80. The Problematic Nature of "the Solution"

Sin. We don’t really like to talk about the idea of sin today. It makes us feel bad. Instead of sin, we talk about mistakes, or brokenness, or some such. Much of it is steeped in therapeutic language that wants to affirm our basic goodness. The problem with this is that it hinders a proper understanding our political and social condition. For you see, if you don’t understand the theological idea of sin or original sin, you cannot properly understand the technological society, or the administrative state, or the HR department of things. Many of the symptoms of the underlying problems we face all wind back to a fundamental denial of the sinful state of mankind. A thing that is broken can be fixed, if you have the knowhow. All that you need is the right solution and what is broken within you can be mended and repaired. We can rebuild you. We have the technology.

All we need to do is come up with the right solutions and we can fix everything. This is the big lie at the root of many of our problems today. If you look at people as being born fundamentally good, or a blank slate, or in a even neutral unformed condition, you will tend to look at much of the rest of the world in the same way. “Nature” itself takes on a kind of inert condition. The world around us just “is.” There is nothing good or evil about the world itself. It’s just there. What matters is how you use it. People are born the way they are. There is nothing inherently good or evil about their fundamental condition. It just is what is. This is at the root of much of the therapeutic approach to the human person. The decisive thing is understanding yourself and then accepting that this is just who you are. There is nothing inherently wrong with you. You simply have to accept this person that you have come to understand as “you.” Once you have gained self-knowledge, you will be able to accept you as you.

The problem comes when people try to inhibit or restrain who we are. Additionally, if you are ignorant of who you are and what your potential is, then the goal should be a proper education regarding one’s self and the world. If you are free to be yourself and know yourself and the world with openness and without restraint, without anyone imposing themselves upon, you will be able to be free to realize the fullness of your potential. The problem, then, is not me. It is “out there,” in society, in the constructs of man. Men, ignorant of themselves and of nature, impose upon each other social systems that enslave them, corrupt them and make them feel guilty about themselves. Once we have gained proper knowledge of the world, once we understand how the systems of interactions within societal constructs work we will be able to engineer solutions to fix all of the things about society that keep each and every person from realizing their fullest potential. And, thus, we pursue “the solution” for all of mankind’s problems. They are just waiting for us to properly understand them and then develop the right fix. Once we have managed this, humanity will enter its true golden period.

Beyond the merely practical question of whether human beings, with their subconscious, can actually be known, there is in the west also a competing view of humanity and the human condition. The older, Christian, understanding is that human beings are born sinful and corrupt. Not merely just “broken” in a way that might offer the possibility of a “fix,” but rather that there is presently something about us that we are incapable of fixing. This is the problem of “original sin.” Narratively, the story given to us is that we were created by God and declared by him to be “good.” God set up a boundary for us and forbade us to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There are many questions surrounding the narrative, most of them speculative, but for our purposes, we must understand that this account is meant to explain to us why things are the way they are today. That boundary was crossed, we ate of the fruit and gained the knowledge of good and evil. This then corrupts and taints us all, in a way that is inescapable. We are born, not good, or a blank slate, but already corrupted by evil and with a competing inclination within us to do what is evil.

It goes beyond this. This introduction of sin and evil corrupted not just us as human beings, but also everything in the creation. For us as moderns, since the rise of nominalism, which sees all things as discrete entities that have no metaphysical connection to each other, we struggle with this somewhat. In premodern thinking, we are all bound together in a great chain, pyramid or hierarchy of being. Fundamentally, we are all connected together. Christian teaching argues that we as human beings, for example, share a human nature, that is, there is something, unseen, metaphysical, that binds us all together as human beings. It is on this level of being or nature that the mechanism of sin, and with it redemption, works. Once being is corrupted in one place, then being itself has been corrupted. All that has being feels its effects. Even something physically located on the other side of the universe has been corrupted by virtue of the fact that it has existence, that shares in being. There is nothing you can find, nowhere you can go, that the taint of sin and evil has not had its effects. There is no idyllic alien people on some far away planet living free from sin. Even if you were to try to imagine them, you cannot, because your imaginings of what it means to be “sin-free” are tainted by sin.

What this means is that there is no privileged position that you can find where you are able to escape the effects of sin and evil. No amount of education, or therapy, or meditation, or discipline, will allow you to break free of your fundamental condition. Because you are stained by sin and evil, all of your solutions to the problem of evil are also corrupted by evil. There is no way for you to escape the fundamental human condition in which you find yourself. This is why “the solution,” that is, salvation, must come from outside the created order, from God who is beyond being. This is why the Western Christian teaching of the univocity of God is problematic for a proper understanding of God’s saving work in Christ.

I would argue, that this theological point, the teaching of original sin and the consequences of sin, perhaps more than any other, is what divides the “conservative” from the “liberal.” The blank slate idea, that we are born good or neutral, understands evil to be be something accidental to our nature, something foreign to us that isn’t “who we are.” All that is needed is for us to fix what is wrong with us and we will be fine. It is the same with society. Fundamentally, there remains a core part of us and our society that remains good — after all we were born good — and there is just these “problems” that are incidental to our core nature and if we just get rid of them all will be good again. The absolutely abysmal theological slogan, “love the sinner but hate the sin” is rooted in this modern blank slate-ism. We call ourselves “a sinner” but we don’t really mean it. What is required is that we see past the things people do in order to “find the good” in everyone. This is all part and parcel of the same mindset. If we could see the good in people, then everything would be good again. We could parcel off the mistakes people make and think about it as if “that’s not who they really are.”

But this is who we, you, us are. There is no part of you, not one aspect of your being that is free from sin and evil. Every part of you to your very core, even your soul itself, is tainted by sin. There is no “good person” living beneath your “mistakes” just waiting to be released once a few fixes are made. You are detestable in the eyes of God. Not just your sin. You. God want to destroy you, to punish you for eternity regardless of anything you have done or not done. The mere fact of your corrupt, tainted existence is enough. Justice demands this. And yet, God in his mercy, stays his hand of justice, even if that is what you deserve merely for simply existing as a corrupt human being, and then sends his Son to endure the penalty that you deserve.

These theological points are vital to understand, especially in our relationship to science, the technical and the technological. Whether these are technique based solutions or new technologies, every plan, every solution, every institution we build, all of the artifacts and products that come out of us as human beings are stained and corrupted by sin. And there is nothing, no object, artifact or natural material that is also not in some way affected by the corrupting influence of sin and evil. “Nature” is not “good.” That said, we must also properly understand that evil is not something has existence or being of its own. Evil is the artifact, the residue of the corruption of what is good. Only what is good has being. But, because we are corrupted, and thus all of our actions are corrupted, there is no way for us on our own to unwind, unravel, separate or cleanse what is good from that which corrupts it because all of our effort to do are themselves corrupted. What this means is that any action we take to “fix” something in society is itself corrupted and will always come with trade offs. Any time we attempt do something good, something evil will come with it. This is always the case, because all things are tainted by evil. Always. No exceptions or exemptions.

What this means is that all of the usual ways in which people understand science, technology and human progress have to be set aside for one that better reflects a proper theological and metaphysical understanding of not just the human condition but also of the natural condition. The typical postures are that science and technology are either inherently a good thing or a bad thing or its a neutral thing. In the last category, the moral evaluations will depend upon the uses to which the knowledge is put. If you use it well, it renders it good. If it is ill used, it is not the fault of the science, technology or system; but rather of the user. Better user, better results. This is often the path of argumentation taken by people who advocate for a virtuous society. I would by no means argue against a virtuous society, nor against attempts to pursue science and technology with virtuous intent. To pursue virtuous ends is always better than chasing corrupted ends. And, the exercise of virtue can mitigate or slow corrupting influences in our society. That is not the argument being made.

Rather, we must understand that the world that we observe, even scientifically, is itself corrupted by evil. So for example, if you make the observation: homosexual behaviour has always been around; you cannot make a value judgement which says that homosexuality is therefore a normative behaviour. This gets us at the problem of where morality and moral standards come from. That is another whole question closely related to the question of authority and is one I have touched on elsewhere in “The True Source of Authority.”

The True Source of Authority

Carl Schmitt’s concept of the “miracle of law” also touches on this as well, in that in the older metaphysical world the archetypal role of the king as the earthy embodiment of the Divine Lawgiver would occupy a unique position of being both under the law and outside the law, able to pronounce law as if from “on high” as it must come from outside of our world which is tainted by sin and evil. And although no king, himself always flawed, ever lives up to the archetype, its operative reality remains a powerful force. But I digress.

What this means is that all human knowledge and all the products of human effort are, no matter how majestic or beautiful or powerful, always in some way corrupted. What this means in practice is that any and all technical systems or inventions, any human solution, no matter how organic or abstract and artificial, will always be flawed and corrupted in some way. When used, alongside the benefits they bring, they will always have some degree of corruption. There is no way to guard against this. Whether it is some device, or it is a process solution, or a policy that is put in place, or an institution which gets founded, all of them will carry within themselves some level of corruption and flaw that will manifest in the form of negative impacts. And if you try to solve the negative impacts of the previous solution with a new solution, this new solution will itself have problems. Because of the human condition and with it the condition of nature, you can never arrive at a point where you have eliminated all the problems. Every solution generates more problems, and it does so even while fixing things and bringing benefits. This goes back to the nature of evil itself. It has no being of its own, but exists as a corruption of the good. Even when trying to achieve something good, there is always corruption there with you, because we can’t get rid of it.

This brings us to one of Jacques Ellul’s mature insights in regards to technology. Even though it is fleshed out using plenty of real world observations and examples, and after the fashion of continental thinkers he tends not to mix his Christian thinking with his more academic works in sociology, it would not be surprising to find out that his framework for understanding technology be informed by his Christian faith. Ellul’s four laws of technological ambivalence dovetail very seamlessly with a developed understanding of original sin. Ellul argues that technology is neither good, bad nor neutral. Rather, the category he uses is “ambivalent.” In other words, technique will have certain qualities and effects regardless of the intent of the developers or its users. The techniques don’t care. What are his four rules of technological ambivalence?

“First, all technical progress has its price.

Second, at each stage it raises more and greater problems than it solves.

Third, its harmful effects are inseparable from its beneficial effects.

Fourth, it has a great number of unforeseen effects.”

As we go through these one by one, you can see the similarities to all that we have been talking about in regards to original sin. Technology and technique do not escape, nor do they lie outside of the effects of sin and evil. Ellul acknowledges that you will get gains from the use of technique. But those positives will always be tainted. There is no technology free of negative effects. All technologies bring both good and the evil that comes with the corruption of what is good by sin. Remember that this is ontological, at the level of being. Ellul goes farther and argues that as you try to fix the problems of one layer of technological development with a new technique, that while there will be new benefits, the new problems will be greater and more numerous than the previous level. Just like sin, you cannot parse out the good from the evil, somehow cleansing it. Nor can you predict many of the negative effects. Often the goods are front loaded and the evils come later after many of the goods have been realized. What you end up with is a world that becomes increasingly laden with more and more ill effects of trying to fix all of humanity’s problems with “solutions.”

So what is the alternative? The first is to acknowledge that we live in a world, not of “solutions,” but one of “tradeoffs.” Believe it or not, many of the ancients were more conscious of this than us, even if they didn’t say so explicitly. They tended to rely on what was “tried and true” rather than what was “ new and improved.” Why? Because, even though the old ways had problems, the problems were understood and accounted for, and integrated into the life of the community. They understood the evils and took them into account in the way they used various tools and techniques. And because they were cautious about these things, they didn’t rush to solve the problems of one tool by immediately jumping on a new, supposedly better or more powerful tool, in part because they didn’t “know” the new tool. They might, over time, begin using it here and there and integrating it into the life of the community, but if it was not a good fit, they gave themselves the time to stop using it. This is one of the things we don’t do. We constantly want new solutions, believing them to be inherently better than the old. We don’t give ourselves the time to properly integrate tools and techniques into our social fabric in an organic way. They are simply imposed or used. And so, our society today is largely an accumulation of the downstream effects from previous generations of technology, systems and solutions. We rarely get a chance to even understand their effects before they are set aside for something new. Ellul calls this the “unreason” of technological advance.

There is no way to get around this. As Christians, this should be more apparent to us than those outside the faith because we understand that sin affects everything. There are no true “solutions.” Everything is tainted by sin. There is no way to escape this. We cannot come up with systems that will fix us, fix society’s problems or overcome the fundamental issue, the problem of the human condition, of the condition of creation. This is why the divide between those of us who accept the teaching of original sin and those who argue we are born blank slates and that the world is just some neutral entity remains perhaps the most fundamental political divide. One of the reasons that politics has taken on a religious characteristic is that people, even many who call themselves Christians, have abandoned the notion of original sin. Fundamentally, religion answers for us the question of what is wrong with us as human beings and the world around us and then how is that fixed. Christians assert that the core problem is that we as humans and the created order with it are all tainted by sin and evil and the only solution for this can come from God. This “solution” came in the form of Jesus Christ. The full realization of that solution will not come about by any human action, but only by the return of Christ. In this sense, history belongs to God, not us as human beings. Part of our journey is that we accept our current condition as we wait, recognizing that our actions here do nothing to contribute to the coming of God or the building of his kingdom — at best we understand that God is at work and we are joining God in what he is doing: John 5:19 — but instead we are doing the best we can in a world where sin and evil remain a thing to act wisely and not increase the evils in the world by rashly looking to usurp God in his work of salvation, a work that belongs to him and to him alone. In this regard, we do not abandon the political and its necessary functions, but we do not ascribe to it utopian aspirations. Because in the end we know that the promises of “solutions” are a false promise of something that we cannot realize. We cannot fix the human condition.