Fixing politics requires problem-solving. With a perplexing problem, that usually requires exploration and giving up the notion that we understand the problem. We must bring some not-knowing to it.

Problem solving begins with exploration

When I approached politics, I had no idea what I would find or where my efforts would lead. In the beginning, I just tried to get involved in politics. I wasn’t even intentionally problem-solving. I was just exploring. I had let go of my resignation about politics and I tried newly to make my voice heard. But I couldn’t. It was frustrating. There seemed to be lots of people and things to blame.

The main breakthrough occurred when I gave up trying to use our political system. Instead, I asked myself and others: What do we really want? The easy answer was “results.” But the desired results are different to different people. What desires could we agree on? A better political system. What would that look like? Our officials being accountable to us. That rang true.

Problem solving often means admitting we don’t know

So I looked for accountability. What was that? I realized I wanted it, but I wasn’t clear on what it meant, especially in politics. Research revealed no one in our culture was talking about it. There were a few interesting definitions of political accountability, but not from an operational point of view.

So I realized two things. There was little operational accountability in our political system. And we didn’t see it as a problem because we hadn’t really thought about what accountability would look like if we had it in politics. With our very fuzzy ideas about it, we assumed it just happened during elections. When it didn’t happen, we blamed politicians and parties and the wealthy and lots of other things.

Not-knowing is rare in politics

Letting go of what we think we already know seems to be very rare in politics. Perhaps it’s because politics is so important. It determines how fair and just our society is, and how safe we are and whether we’re prospering.

I had been moderately informed about politics for years and thought it was full of problems. But mostly I was learning about what was wrong or who was to blame. And it was always inside a specific problem area. I was furious at Bush for lying to get us into a war, mismanaging both wars, Congress agreeing to spend trillions on them, and the Middle East being destabilized. My anger and blame didn’t lead to a solution.

Lots of people have written books about various political problems. Most stay on the surface of problems. Some dig deeper and find more pervasive symptoms. Some even find egregious behavior and people to blame. But that kind of problem solving only works well if you happen to be right about what you’re looking for. In politics, we’re so fixated on who or what is to blame, we miss the truth.

In the next article, we’ll look at a key to finding truth- identifying context.