Western Culture over-simplifies the ease of problem solving.  In Western culture you are told that in order to be successful, reach goals and problem solve, you need to ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ and ‘just do it’.  If someone is struggling in society to function in the way we would like them to, we just label them as ‘lazy and unmotivated.’  ‘They’re not trying hard enough.  They have to figure it out for themselves!’  Which is an extreme oversimplification.  Western culture emphasizes effort and motivation as the primary factors needed to solve problems.  While these are a large part of how we overcome an obstacle and solve problems, there is much more involved.

Solving problems requires a number of complex skillsets, often used together in specific orders, for example: impulse control skills, distress tolerance skills, emotion regulation skills, mindfulness (intentional awareness) skills and interpersonal effectiveness skills.  These are all skillsets that begin developing (or not) from the time we are born.  They depend greatly on not just genetics & biological tendency, but also our social environment.  If we don’t have parents, teachers & peers who teach us these skillsets in effective ways, we never develop them.  To learn a new skillset, that skill must be practiced and rehearsed in a variety of contexts (home, school, work etc.).  It must also be reinforced with positive reinforcement (a sense of accomplishment, internal or external reward, praise etc.).   

Western Culture relies instead more heavily on punishment as a form of behavior change.  This stems greatly from the puritan/religious frameworks that heavily dominated and influenced our culture from the beginning.  Using shame and punishment to get people to change their behavior works in specific contexts, and certainly there are natural negative consequences in life that can teach us.  Punishment only works when the punisher is present, it leads to avoidance of the punisher & relationship problems with the punisher (especially when it’s used in excess or ineffectively), and it leads to internalized shame which oozes out into a myriad of other personal & societal problems. 

Punishment ALSO does not teach the newer more effective behavior or skill needed.  For example, ‘Don’t hit when you get angry, instead, here is how you notice an urge, how you take a step back, how you take some deep breaths, how you counter your angry thoughts, how you communicate your needs etc. … yes, that’s it, good job.’

When the science of behaviorism (B.F. Skinner) is not applied effectively, something can developed called ‘Learned Helplessness’.  The original experiment for this included tying a dog in a crate with mild electrical charge on the floor.  Repeated uncomfortable zaps, met with the inability to escape, led to a giving up by the dog – even when its leash was untied.  When we over-use punishment, when someone struggles long & hard enough without help, teaching or support, learned helplessness establishes.  AND we have mechanisms to help get people out of that once we start applying positive reinforcement and teaching of skills.

Behaviorism is a science that has been well researched in not just humans but many species (B.F. Skinner 1904-1990).  We have the solutions and understanding of what’s needed to create societal change, we just have to be willing to support them.  They begin with early intervention (yep, we need to collectively invest in free maternity/paternity leave, skill training for parents and more).

‘That shouldn’t be provided by the state or society!  That should happen in the family alone!  They should figure it out themselves!’  I understand this argument which is centered on ‘personal freedoms’ and fear of collective knowledge.  And, here is another vast oversimplification of problem solving – the ‘should’.

Parents ‘should’ know how to teach these skills.  People ‘should’ just know how to function.  ‘Shoulds’ are a form of subjective judgment on reality, and they are like waving a magic wand and shooting a wish out into the Universe as if that will magically change reality.  It doesn’t.  Saying people ‘should’ know or do something, doesn’t actually change anything.  Again, if we want to problem solve or change something, we have to identify what the causes of the problem are and then change those causes – offer an intervention, change the domino effect, to create a new outcome.

Parents are doing their best with what they know, continuing generational cycles that they have learned.  If someone has never learned something or had the opportunity to develop a new skillset in the way we’ve outlined above, they can’t do anything differently – until they learn & practice the new behavior.

A final factor of this over-simplification of problem solving is the hyper-individualistic idea that people need to figure things out themselves.  Western Culture is way polarized into individuality to our deficit.  Certainly we are individuals and each responsible for our own lives once we reach adulthood.  And, we are equally a collective species that simply does not survive in isolate.  We are tribal, clan based and it has always taken a village.  And we now have the technology to combine the wisdom from many villages and share it collectively. 

Humans need help from each other, and this is not a weakness, it is a strength.  Western Culture frames help as a weakness (again, a ‘laziness’ or moral failure to ask for or need help).  The more fractured we become with hyper-extreme individualism, the weaker our species grows. The less able we are to problem solve & grow effectively.

So, the next time you hear someone say, ‘People are just lazy & unmotivated.  They should know better.  They have to figure it out themselves.’  Remember, it is more complex than that – AND we do have the solutions!  This starts with receiving help from others to learn & practice a new skillset, which must then be repeatedly rehearsed and reinforced with positive consequences.  Pure effort and motivation doesn’t cut it, but it is part of the equation.