It seems that any time we become complacent, a tragic result follows.  (Sadly, we become reminded of our complacency only after a tragedy takes place.)  These are the dark clouds that have lingered in our skies since the events of September 11, 2001, whether we choose to look up, or not.

I could not bear to look at low-flying airplanes for many years since September 11.  (It still makes me uneasy.)  But who alive wants to look into a blue sky with fear?  We want to feel safe, and so we adjust and accommodate and deny.

Instead of asking Americans to “understand” how it is for the rest of the world to live under the threat of terrorism, maybe our approach should be more like that of Bill Gates: just as he hopes to eradicate malaria from the earth, we might demand that our State Department start to acknowledge and address the poverty, hate and other factors that breed terrorism.  Such an effort may take 30, 40, 50 or 100 years.  But I would rather we pay billions of tax dollars toward a safer and saner world than for, say, drone technology or brain-mapping research.

My heart aches for the victims of this tragedy.  There are three traditional responses to such events: fight (go get the terrorists), flight (hunker down) and resignation (such is the world we live in).  I advocate a fourth option: engineering.  Work on it.  At least, let us try, and be able to say we have tried.  It is early 2oth-century American fix-it thinking mingled with late 20th-century Bill Gates-style goal-setting.

I believe that people live more happily and confidently when we solve problems, not just beat them down or evade them or accustom ourselves to them.  As much as I suspect the motives and skills of social engineers, taking only a reactive stance to the cultural problems of our day is done at our long-term peril.  Whether the psycho-cultural conflict that inflicts its damage originates within our borders or across borders is immaterial.  United States, Europe, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, North Korea, China: strive not to fight or take flight or live with fright.  Let’s fix.

[Please forward this post to the leader of your respective nation.  Thank you.]