This week’s selection addresses that age-old human challenge: the desire for the easy solution. Magic pills, of course, seledom turn out to be truly magic, and sometimes they carry more curses than their supposed benefits. But we fall for their promises over and over again.
Magic pills can look especially tempting in a VUCA moment, like this transition to the Fusion Era. And we have a lot of magic pills - convention centers, highway projects, even sports venues - that were touted during the Industrial Era as the Easy Solution for all that ails your community. We conveniently forget, sometimes, how chalky some of those pills tasted going down, and how they made other parts of our communities really sick afterwards.
Which is even more troubling because we’re still dealing with the side effects of far too many Industrial Era Magic Pills today. Talk to a Black family whose grandparents lost their business and their neighborhood to a 1950s highway expansion, and you’ll get a glimpse of what I mean.
Try It On
Magic pills are hard to resist because they’re so temptingly easy. And because the thing we’re trying to fix is so hard.
Think of a time in your past when you had something difficult to deal with. It might be a personal challenge, changing your line of work, confronting someone, instituting a new policy, etc. Preferably, pick a situation that happened long enough ago that some years have elapsed, so you have some distance from the situation and how you felt at the time.
Ask yourself:
If someone had given me a magic pill that just made that problem go away, what would have been different? How would my experience or learning or perspective today be different from what it is?
What might have happened instead?
If I had the choice to go back then and take that magic pill, knowing what I do now, would I take it?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.