Viewing the past with rose-colored glasses doesn't solve current problems.

Eleven years ago, I wrote about the safety of Diet Coke.

If you asked me if I’d write that same post today, I might have said no. Then yes. Then maybe.

The point of that post and so many others is my frustration with how we humans cannot correct a problem without going way off-course in the other direction and creating a new problem.

Over-correction is the only correction we know.

I get it. It’s hard to know when you’re on course when all you know is being off-course. It would seem like being as far away from the thing you need to correct for is a good idea.

It’s not, exactly.

Over-correction keeps us all perpetually wandering from the goal we say we want. Years ago I wrote about course correction in terms of what I’d learned when I took flying lessons.

During flight lessons, my instructor would always remind me to make "small course corrections." If I got off course while learning to navigate, I would be tempted to compensate by yanking the yoke in the opposite direction to get an immediate course correction, unwittingly over-correcting, and setting myself off in an equally wrong direction. Whether I was off course in one direction and over-corrected to the opposite didn't matter. In either case, I'd never get to my destination. The better approach was to gently turn the yoke until the needle on the compass gradually was on course. It took time and meant that for a while, I had to accept I wasn't exactly on course, but I knew, with gentle pressure, I would get there. Patience was required.

Not only is patience required, but so is wisdom. It’s hard to know when you’ve hit the course line and need to straighten out, or if you’ve crossed the line and are now off on another wrong course because moments before, you were going in the right direction.

That’s the trajectory piece.

We have a lot of issues in our culture today related to health, education, intellect, ethics, motivation, morals, faith, and lifestyle.

Most of our reactions are just that: reactions.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion tells us that when two bodies interact, the force applied to each other is equal and opposite in direction. You throw a ball at the wall, it bounces back and hits you in the face. You react with full force against a problem, you bounce off in the other direction.

So the fix we’re chasing after today—more activism, more protests, more rage—sort of creates a confusing mass of objects whacking us in the head.

For example, the modern ills that are destroying life and culture are many. The answer is not to dig up the past and pretend like our ancestors had it all perfect because they didn’t have mobile and computer screens baking their eyes, chemicals in the food, and were not sedentary. Because it’s not exactly true.¹

There are things about life and culture today that aren’t better, that are harming us, for sure. But there are other things that are an improvement (see that Diet Coke post I linked earlier). There’s also a pretty good chance the Second Law of Thermodynamics is also at work but no one wants to talk about the world winding down and a fading genetic pattern.

As I wrote in that earlier blog post:

Somewhere, either to the left or right of this place we're at, is the correct course.

But we’re in a two-party system in more ways than one, and we will never be on the correct course. Everything is action and reaction and we’re just punching ourselves in the face with what we throw out there and hoping a bloody nose helps the problem somehow.