[jargon|en] That's the symptom, not the problem

Day 2,027, 12:49 • Published in Canada Canada • by Kazuo Leblanc

"We need to liberate Canada." "We need to kick the Spanish out." "Our number one priority is freeing a region before the 22nd." We see these phrases thrown out all the time lately in the media, but what do they mean?

For those of you who may not know, I'm a little addicted to reality television, and one of my favorites is Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. It's a restaurant makeover show, where Gordon goes in to triage failing restaurants and help guide them back to success. The UK version is hands down much better than the American version, by the way - more time is spent on restaurant functions than people screaming at each other. Well, except for the most recent season finale, Amy's Baking Company of Scottsdale, Arizona - she be crazy.

When Gordon goes into a restaurant, meets the owner, and asks what the #1 problem with the restaurant is, the answer he hears over and over again is "We don't have enough customers." The next several minutes are then spent showing that that is actually a symptom of what the true problem is with the restaurant. Probability dictates that at some point, someone will decide to eat there - but then quickly discover what's wrong, and never return. It could be that the food sucks, or it could be that the prices are too high, or it could be that the decor is dated. Whatever it is, Gordon shows the restaraunteur how to fix the true problem, and brings in a group of new customers to show off how the problem is fixed.

At the end, and then in a couple of mid-season specials, the show follows up a couple of weeks later. The restaurants that succeed embrace the changes Gordon makes during his visit. The restaurants that fail insist that they were doing it right all along, and it was just that they didn't have enough customers as being the main problem.

I can't help but see parallels here. The problem is not that we've been conquered by Spain. If things were going right for Canada, we could fight that off like nobody's business. This is not the first time Canada has been conquered - I look back to the summer of 2009 or the summer of 2011, for example. Being conquered is merely a symptom of some strategic blunder we have made as a nation. And recent history has shown that even when we do win a resistance war, we lose the territory in less than 48 hours.

So what is the problem, then? Is it the choices we've made in our allies? Is it failing to maintain a cohesive social community that keeps people engaged enough to stick it out? Is it a lack of long term planning? It could be any of these issues, or it could be even others that we have not identified.

What we must do, though, as a nation, is to take a step back, have an honest look at where we've been, admit the mistakes we've made, and then seriously work towards fixing those problems. It will not be easy, and things will probably suck even more before they improve.

But if we ignore the problems and only focus on the symptom, if we insist that we are still doing everything right and it's just the occupation that we should focus on, we will spend another 6 months throwing away $10,000 per failed resistance war. When you put together flour, water, and yeast, it's only going to make bread, no matter how much you want it to be pizza.