The simplest problems have become insoluble

Consider the case of Daylight Savings Time (DST).  It goofs up everyone in its grip. It costs billions. It even kills people: speeding, late for work or driving, under slept. It confuses entire nations. We try to turn it off, yet every year it evades eradication merely by requiring that we coordinate our decision to end it.  Which year? Leave it on? Leave it off? Double it up!?! Is our software ready?

Thankfully though, very few people's jobs depend on Daylight Savings. No billionaire is bribing anybody. No corporation is massing an army of trolls. No intelligence agency is tracking influencers. There are no scientists incentivized to shill for it.  No activist editors are skewing Wikipedia. No tribes have unholstered their bullhorns to bray at one-another. No politicians have tied their reputation to it. We haven't become numb to it to protect our sanity. No odious epithets are being flung about. In short, there is no confusion about the truth of its malignancy because the information space around it is not weaponized. For these reasons, it is probably the SIMPLEST problem we have.  Yet, we can not solve it.

So if the simplest coordination problem is insoluble, what about all those other conundrums where identity, reputation, legacy, jobs, money, power, health, liberty and lives are at stake? To merely mention them is to raise hackles, close minds, divide camps, ruin the party and burn the library. I’ll bleep them so no one swoons (Bi*en, Cli*ate, Co*id, Tr*mp, Tr*ns, Ch*na, Pu*in, Is*eal, Ukr*ine, Br*xit, Ta*wan). What about existential mayhem like Robots, Bioweapons, Nanotech, A.I. or Nukes?  For extra fun try mixing the lethal ones together — our governments are.  We can’t deal with setting back our bloody watches! How can we possibly cope with anything actually complicated?  Seriously.  Face this.

We’re screwed seventeen ways to Sunday and it is essential that we raise up our eyes from the details of any particular stupifyingly vast catastrophe and consider a more comprehensive view. We’ve got to figure out how to talk and think and actually WORK together.  Globally.  Immediately.