On the Danger of a Single Solution

I was speaking to a friend today about the danger of a single solution. (I was reminded of Chimamanda Adichie's famous TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story). My friend was sharing that he met someone who kept insisting that the solution for all jail inmates is a certain kind of meditation technique. While there is no doubt that meditation is a powerful process, it may not be 'the solution' to all problems. I find this to be the case across many learning communities where they think that their specific tool/process/methodology/training is 'the solution'. When pitching their solution as the best, regardless of the local socio-cultural and political context, they in some way morph into ugly cousins of Amway salemen, who notoriously exploit people's vulnerabilities and social relationships in order to sell their 'product'. This single solutionist approach is, of course, more dangerous when their solution is tied to a corporate business model for commercial gain. I have found that several things happen when one gets trapped into single solutionist dogma even in a non-commercial context. One starts thinking others are 'stupid' if they don't follow your brilliant solution as prescribed and a false sense of superiority and judgment ensues which hampers mutual co-learning relationships and trust. One is also unable to be fully present to other emergent possibilities that exist in the specific context as they struggle to 'convince' others of the greatness of their solution. One's own (un)learning process becomes stuck. While any 'solution' may be a useful point to start an interaction with, we must develop the capacities to pivot to other approaches as we listen deeply and understand the local people and context better; not a solution but more like a conversation starter or game. In a world of complexity, maybe we need to be more solution-agnostic. Not every person, community or situation calls for the use of a 'hammer'. Maybe we need to become more self-aware of our solution-bias and conditioning towards hyper-specialization and monoculture and how it might blind us. Maybe we need to be open to collaborating with others who have different diverse solutions rather than enter into an artificial competition against each other. Maybe we need to bring more playfulness, risk-taking and laughter into our solution. Maybe we need to even think beyond our modernist tendencies for jumping into instant solutionism mode like a bowl of instant oatmeal. The more we dive into this, the more we will be able to understand the difference between art vs. technique as we continuously engage with the diverse realities and paradoxes of the world.