When I think about the problems of the world, I recall the game from my childhood (based on the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp) where you are told to pretend that a Genie has granted you three wishes, and you have to say what you would wish for. As children, you compete to see who can come up with the most creative or bizarre wishes.
In the past, when I thought about that story, I would fantasize about having three wishes to help fix some of the world's problems. But on reflection, I realized there were just far too many problems to put right.
If we took them one, by one, there was no way we would stand any chance of fixing them especially as they are all complex adaptive problems. They are all intertwined and as fast as we fixed one problem, we would break other things that were working well or we would create entirely new difficulties.
But remember the thrill as a child when you realized that one of your wishes could be “to wish that all of your wishes came true.” In this case, you would only need one wish!
So the question arises in my head: “If you had only one wish that gave you the power to do just one thing that in its turn would solve all the problems of the world, what would it be?”
Idealistic wishes such as “make everyone love each other” or “create world peace” are not allowed.
What is the one thing that we could do that would maybe not directly help improve the world but would create a vastly easier playing field?
This is a genuine question, I'd really appreciate your thoughts. You can comment here or email me :-)
