Solution Is The Problem
- Madhukar Dama
- 5 days ago
- 21 min read
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PROLOGUE
Solution Was the First Crime
Long before kingdoms, long before scriptures, long before machines and medicines and gods and governments, there was only life. The sun rose, the rains fell, people gathered roots and fruits, fire burned when it pleased, rivers flowed, and hunger met food without middlemen. Nothing was a problem.
Then came the first “solution.”
Not born from necessity, but from cunning. Someone shaped a stick into a spear and declared: “This will save us.” Save from what? There was no enemy yet. There was no famine yet. But the tool needed a purpose, so suddenly the world was rebranded as dangerous. The spear was not just a stick anymore, it was the first solution looking for a problem.
From then on, the pattern never broke. Every “solution” gave birth to its own “problem.” Every new invention, every new ritual, every new rule created fear and dependency where none existed before. Problems did not fall from the sky — they were manufactured, named, spread, and cemented to justify the already-present solutions.
Civilization grew not on the strength of human needs, but on the weight of human “solutions.” A wheel that demanded roads, a priest that demanded sin, a king that demanded enemies, a doctor that demanded diseases, a trader that demanded scarcity.
The story of humanity is not the story of overcoming problems. It is the story of drowning under the weight of solutions.
And so we must retell history correctly: not as a timeline of problems solved, but as a timeline of solutions imposed. Each one carried four shadows — the invented problem, the cycle of entrapment, the hidden purpose, and the mountain of new problems born from it.
That is the true chronology of civilization.
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STONE AGE
1. The Solution
The first chipped stone, the first sharpened stick, the first domesticated fire — presented as breakthroughs. A “solution” to hunt better, to protect against wild beasts, to cook food “safer.”
2. The Imposed Problem
Suddenly, nature became an enemy. Hunger was no longer met by roots and fruits but by fear of scarcity. Survival was reframed as a daily problem that only tools could solve. Fire became not a wonder but a necessity — without it, life was declared unsafe.
3. The Control Mechanism
Whoever held the tool, controlled the fire, or stored the food gained authority. Strength was no longer in living together but in hoarding and commanding. Skill and cunning began to dominate over simple sharing.
4. The Hidden Purpose
The deeper aim was not survival — humans had survived without these for ages. The hidden purpose was power: the power of one over many, the rise of hierarchy, the first seeds of inequality.
5. The Exhaustive Problems Created
Violence: the sharpened stone became a weapon against other humans.
Dependency: people became helpless without fire or tools.
Scarcity: food began to be stored and guarded, creating the idea of shortage.
Fear: nature was rebranded as dangerous and untrustworthy.
Ownership: the first division of “mine” and “yours.”
Inequality: tool-makers and fire-keepers gained superiority.
Distrust: human unity fractured, tribe against tribe.
Endless Escalation: every tool demanded a sharper tool, every fire a bigger fire.
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AGRICULTURAL AGE
1. The Solution
Farming was introduced as the great answer: no more wandering, no more uncertain hunting. Plant grains, tame animals, settle down — food “secured” forever.
2. The Imposed Problem
But suddenly, hunger became constant. No longer the seasonal rhythm of fruits and roots, but a daily anxiety: What if crops fail? What if the animals die? What if the stored grain rots? Food, once freely found, was reframed as scarce unless endlessly worked for.
3. The Control Mechanism
The land was measured, fenced, claimed. The one who owned more land, seeds, or animals became the master. Tribes dissolved into classes — landlords, laborers, slaves. Work became mandatory, not optional.
4. The Hidden Purpose
Not to “feed all,” but to establish permanent control: over land, over people, over time itself. Agriculture created fixed settlements where humans could be counted, taxed, ruled. Power shifted from moving with nature to dominating it.
5. The Exhaustive Problems Created
Famine: dependence on single crops led to mass starvation.
Disease: close living with animals bred new plagues.
Slavery: conquerors forced others to farm.
Inequality: vast estates vs. landless poor.
Exploitation: work became endless toil.
Patriarchy: women reduced to childbearers and field laborers.
Overpopulation: farming supported more humans than land could sustain.
Warfare: land and water became worth killing for.
Environmental ruin: forests cut, rivers diverted, soil exhausted.
Permanence of suffering: hunger, hierarchy, and hard labor became “normal life.”
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BRONZE AGE & EARLY CIVILIZATIONS
1. The Solution
The new promise was order and record. Writing would store knowledge, contracts, laws. Money would ease trade. Temples would protect the people. Kings would “unite” the tribes. Civilization was sold as the ultimate solution to chaos.
2. The Imposed Problem
But chaos was redefined. Suddenly, to be without writing was to be ignorant. To be without money was to be poor. To be outside the king’s law was to be a criminal. The very things people had lived without for millennia were turned into deficits.
3. The Control Mechanism
Writing became a priestly monopoly. Scribes wrote history to glorify rulers.
Money made every human activity quantifiable and taxable.
Temples became centers of tribute, not worship.
Kingship turned obedience into divine duty.
4. The Hidden Purpose
The purpose was never order. It was permanent hierarchy. Writing created official truth. Money created permanent debt. Temples created unquestioned spiritual power. Kingship created total loyalty. All “solutions” merged into a machinery that ensured no one could live freely outside the system.
5. The Exhaustive Problems Created
Illiteracy: most were excluded from knowledge.
Debt slavery: the first recorded human misery.
Taxation: labor and harvests seized for rulers.
Wars of expansion: kings needed tribute and resources.
Divine right: religion used to sanctify oppression.
Urban disease: crowded cities bred epidemics.
Standing armies: permanent violence institutionalized.
Destruction of local autonomy: villages became dependent on far-off rulers.
First prisons: punishment formalized.
Loss of memory: only state-approved records survived, oral traditions erased.
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IRON AGE & CLASSICAL EMPIRES
1. The Solution
The promise this time was universal law, reason, and order through empire. Iron weapons made stronger armies; codified laws like Hammurabi’s or Roman Law were declared to bring justice; philosophy promised wisdom for all; empires promised stability and protection.
2. The Imposed Problem
But again, the baseline was redefined. To live without empire meant “barbarism.” To live outside written law meant “lawlessness.” To live without philosophers was to be “uncivilized.” What had once been freedom was now painted as backwardness.
3. The Control Mechanism
Law Codes: selective justice, harsher on the weak, softer on the elite.
Philosophy: monopolized by elites, turned into a tool to justify hierarchy.
Empire: armies occupied lands and rebranded conquest as “civilizing.”
Currency & Taxation: coinage centralized economies under rulers.
Education: rhetoric and classics reserved for the ruling class.
4. The Hidden Purpose
The real aim was imperial permanence. Laws guaranteed property for the powerful. Philosophy gave moral cover for inequality. Empires fed on perpetual expansion, branding it progress. Education molded obedient citizens, not free thinkers. The “solutions” made sure no alternative way of living could claim legitimacy.
5. The Exhaustive Problems Created
Mass slavery: millions reduced to property.
Permanent wars: empire meant endless conquest.
Legal inequality: one law for rulers, another for ruled.
Land dispossession: peasants lost land to elites.
Patriarchy hardened: women’s freedoms curtailed.
Cultural erasure: local traditions stamped out.
Militarization: society built around violence.
Intellectual gatekeeping: wisdom confined to elites.
Corruption: bureaucracy bred new parasitism.
Collapse cycles: empires created their own downfall through excess.
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MEDIEVAL AGE & ORGANIZED RELIGIONS
1. The Solution
This age declared: “We bring salvation, morality, and divine order.”
Religions gave meaning to suffering.
Scriptures offered certainty.
Churches, temples, mosques promised eternal life.
Kings claimed divine right to rule.
Monasteries and madrasas became schools of knowledge.
It was marketed as humanity’s bridge to heaven.
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2. The Imposed Problem
But first, a new fear was planted: life itself was declared sinful, unworthy, fallen.
The human body became a source of shame.
Desire became sin.
Questioning became heresy.
Living freely was redefined as rebellion against God.
Thus, people who once celebrated life now felt guilty for breathing, eating, loving, or thinking independently.
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3. The Control Mechanism
Priesthoods: middlemen to God, charging in wealth and obedience.
Holy Books: fixed interpretations controlled by clergy.
Rituals: endless rites to “purify” human life.
Confession & Inquisition: surveillance of thoughts and behavior.
Crusades & Jihads: wars declared holy, violence given divine cover.
Monasteries: storehouses of knowledge, sealed away from commoners.
Marriage Contracts: women reduced to property under religious law.
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4. The Hidden Purpose
The true agenda was authority without question.
By branding doubt as heresy, all alternative voices were silenced.
By making life itself sinful, dependence on clergy was guaranteed.
By fusing throne and altar, rulers gained divine legitimacy.
By controlling education, they shaped minds from birth till death.
Religion’s “solution” ensured permanent loyalty to both God and King — interpreted only through official channels.
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5. The Exhaustive Problems Created
Endless religious wars (Crusades, jihads, sectarian massacres).
Witch hunts, torture, burnings.
Mass illiteracy, as knowledge was monopolized.
Suppression of science and free thought.
Women chained into subservience.
Caste, race, and class sanctified as divine will.
Economic exploitation via tithes, offerings, pilgrimages.
Fear-based morality: obedience > compassion.
Colonization justified as “spreading the true faith.”
Violence against dissenters institutionalized.
Human diversity suffocated under dogma.
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RENAISSANCE & EARLY MODERN AGE
1. The Solution
This age declared: “We bring reason, science, art, and progress to free you from superstition.”
Humanism put man back at the center.
Science promised discovery and mastery of nature.
Art, literature, architecture glorified human creativity.
Exploration promised wealth and wonder.
Printing press spread ideas like never before.
It was sold as freedom from darkness — a new dawn after centuries of religious control.
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2. The Imposed Problem
But first, a new problem was created: “You are ignorant, backward, uncivilized, and poor in knowledge.”
The Middle Ages were branded “dark,” even though people lived rich folk cultures.
Common sense was dismissed as primitive.
Indigenous traditions were devalued.
Knowledge outside Europe was labeled superstition.
Human life was redefined as incomplete without modern education and science.
Thus, people began to see their own culture, songs, and traditions as inferior.
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3. The Control Mechanism
Academies & Universities: gatekeepers of new knowledge.
Patronage System: artists and thinkers chained to kings, popes, and merchants.
Exploration & Colonization: discovery turned into domination.
Scientific Method: monopolized by elites, inaccessible to commoners.
Printing Press: mass persuasion, shaping what counted as truth.
New Economy: birth of capitalism, banking, debt systems.
Education Systems: structured to create obedient citizens, not free thinkers.
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4. The Hidden Purpose
The real aim was control through “progress.”
By branding the past as dark, people were forced into chasing the “light” defined by elites.
By monopolizing science, power shifted from priests to professors, kings, and merchants.
By global exploration, wealth and resources were extracted.
By creating a “civilized vs uncivilized” divide, colonization was justified.
The Renaissance solution was not pure liberation — it was a transfer of control from church to science, from priests to professors, from temples to laboratories, from kings to corporations.
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5. The Exhaustive Problems Created
Colonization of Asia, Africa, and Americas under the banner of “civilizing missions.”
Slavery and exploitation justified as “scientific racism.”
Knowledge centralized, leaving common people dependent on experts.
Rise of capitalism — turning life into transactions.
Wars fought for resources and colonies.
Traditional wisdom crushed under modern education.
New hierarchies: rich vs poor, educated vs illiterate, civilized vs primitive.
Science divorced from ethics, leading to weapons and exploitation.
Industrial mindset seeded: production > people.
Human value tied to productivity, not dignity.
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INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (c. 1750–1914)
1) Solution introduced first
Steam engines, mechanized looms, factories, railways, clocks/shifts, “scientific management,” mass schooling for an industrial workforce.
2) Problem later imposed
Handcraft labeled “slow,” home/commons “inefficient,” sun-time “lazy,” skill guilds “obstructive,” dispersed villages “backward.”
3) How the cycle traps people
Enclosures push peasants into wage dependence; clocks capture days; urban factory towns bind housing → job → debt; schooling standardizes obedience to machines.
4) Hidden purpose
Concentrate capital, control labor, scale extraction (including colonial raw materials), convert all life into measurable throughput.
5) Exhaustive problems created
Child labor; 14–16-hour shifts; accident maimings
Slums, epidemics, polluted air/water; coal addiction
Loss of craft autonomy; deskilling; monotony/alienation
Enclosure of commons; criminalization of subsistence
Police/prisons scaled to protect property, not people
Compulsory mass schooling for discipline over learning
Global supply chains built on colonial exploitation
Boom–bust cycles; speculative manias; bank panics
Patriarchal factory hierarchies; wage gaps; domestic overwork
National armies fed by railroads; industrialized warfare
Uniformity as virtue; culture bent to the clock
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COLONIAL “CIVILIZING MISSION” (c. 1750–1945)
1) Solution introduced first
Empire arrives with railways, codified law, census, English/mission schooling, cash crops, and “modern administration” as ready-made fixes.
2) Problem later imposed
Whole societies declared “uncivilized/irrational/lazy.” Indigenous economies called “unproductive,” medicines “quack,” languages “dialects,” customs “barbaric.”
3) How the cycle traps people
Local industries displaced; cash taxes force monetization; schools create clerks dependent on empire; law/census freeze fluid identities; resistance must use imperial institutions.
4) Hidden purpose
Resource extraction, cheap labor, captive markets, geopolitical control—legitimized by the moral cover of “uplift” and “progress.”
5) Exhaustive problems created
Deindustrialization of crafts; famine via cash-crop monocultures
Racial hierarchies; internalized inferiority; divide-and-rule
Land alienation; plantation debt; forced labor
Cultural erasure; loss of languages/oral sciences
Borders drawn for empire → century-long conflicts
Surveillance states (census, pass laws, permits) as normal
Mission/boarding schools severing children from communities
Legal regimes displacing community justice
Health systems sidelining local healing; drug dependence
Export–raw/import–finished dependency trap
Co-opted local elites entrenching inequality
Food and seed sovereignty destroyed; biodiversity loss
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NATION-STATE & DEVELOPMENTALISM (c. 1945–1980)
1) Solution introduced first
Independence + centralized states, 5-year plans, big dams/steel plants, universal IDs/rations, national curricula, public health campaigns.
2) Problem later imposed
Villages branded “stagnant,” local knowledge “unscientific,” small farms “unviable,” subsistence “poverty,” uneven regions “backward.”
3) How the cycle traps people
Citizenship tied to papers; livelihoods tied to licenses/permits; big projects displace millions; farmers nudged into input-intensive models; local autonomy replaced by bureaucratic distance.
4) Hidden purpose
Consolidate sovereignty and administrative control; build loyal middle classes; showcase megaprojects; broker global aid/loans.
5) Exhaustive problems created
Development-induced displacement; weak rehabilitation
Permit-raj corruption; rent-seeking ecosystems
Monocultures; fertilizer/pesticide dependence; soil/water damage
Public health verticals that ignore prevention/lifestyle
Standardized textbooks erasing region/craft knowledge
Urban primacy; rural brain drain; slum expansion
Politicized subsidies → lock-in, not reform
Security apparatus normalized; emergency/exception habits
River/forest ecosystems fragmented by mega-dams
Metric chasing (targets, outputs) over human outcomes
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NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION (c. 1980–2007)
1) Solution introduced first
Liberalization/privatization, free-trade regimes, FDI, microcredit, management gospel, shareholder value, outsourcing.
2) Problem later imposed
“State is inefficient,” “barriers cause poverty,” “protectionism = backward,” “cash-only poor lack inclusion,” “craft/shops are ‘unorganized’.”
3) How the cycle traps people
Public assets sold → private tolls; debt-led consumption; supply chains squeeze producers; microcredit cycles; labor informalized/gigified.
4) Hidden purpose
Open new profit frontiers, financialize everything, shift risk from firms to households/states.
5) Exhaustive problems created
Inequality spikes; wage stagnation; jobless growth
Farmer and small-business distress; suicides/closures
Health/education privatization; paywalls for essentials
Trade shocks; local industries hollowed out
Microcredit debt spirals; predatory lending
Race to the bottom on labor and environment
Currency/financial crises; IMF austerity loops
Mallification; high-street death; culture as retail
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PLATFORM/SMARTPHONE ERA (c. 2007–2016)
1) Solution introduced first
Smartphones, app stores, social media, cloud, “there’s an app for that.”
2) Problem later imposed
“You aren’t connected/productive/visible enough.” Quiet life reframed as FOMO; paper cash as “friction”; privacy as “obsolete.”
3) How the cycle traps people
Attention captured by infinite feeds; identity tied to platforms; small firms depend on a handful of app gatekeepers; creators chase algorithms.
4) Hidden purpose
Monetize attention/data; charge platform tolls; enclose the open web.
5) Exhaustive problems created
Addiction, anxiety, sleep loss; family fragmentation
Polarization, outrage cycles, misinformation virality
Surveillance capitalism; data breaches; profiling
Local businesses disintermediated; winner-takes-all markets
Cloud lock-in; rent forever; e-waste from upgrade churn
Social credit–like norms via ratings/reviews
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DATA/AI & SAFETYISM (2016 → future-leaning)
1) Solution introduced first
AI assistants, predictive policing, credit/scoring everywhere, “smart” homes/cities, carbon offsets, longevity/biohacking.
2) Problem later imposed
“Human judgment is biased/slow,” “you’re unsafe unless scored,” “climate can be offset if you pay,” “aging is failure,” “manual is dumb.”
3) How the cycle traps people
Life mediated by opaque models; denial of services via scores; autopilot dependence; climate guilt commodified; perpetual subscriptions.
4) Hidden purpose
New rentier control, deeper surveillance, ownership of behavioral futures.
5) Exhaustive problems created
Algorithmic bias; automated exclusion from jobs/loans/services
Chilling effects on speech/association; normalization of tracking
Job displacement without safety nets; skill atrophy
Battery/mineral extraction; e-waste mountains
Greenwashing; offsets instead of emission cuts
Medicalization of normal aging; expensive regimens for the few
Fragility of systems; cascading outages affect essentials
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EPILOGUE – The Circle That Never Was
If in the beginning there were only solutions, then in the end there are only consequences.
Civilization, as it unfolded, never solved a real problem — it merely generated new needs, dressed them as problems, and invented answers that deepened the cycle.
We call them “eras,” “ages,” “revolutions,” but they are only masks over the same truth: each solution seeded the next crisis. Fire gave smoke. Farming gave famine. Writing gave authority. Religion gave guilt. States gave borders. Science gave pollution. Medicine gave side-effects. Technology gave isolation.
The deeper one looks, the clearer it becomes: the problems were never out there. They were born inside the solutions themselves. Every bridge carried its own cracks, every cure carried its own poison, every system carried its own collapse.
And so, humanity walked not a straight path of progress, but a spiral of entanglement — returning again and again to the same hunger, the same fear, the same longing. The only difference: with each return, the trap was wider, the chains finer, the cage more invisible.
In this way, history was never a march forward, but a tightening embrace. Civilization clothed itself in light, but stitched that garment with shadows. The world we inherit is not the sum of solved problems, but the weight of solutions stacked upon solutions, crushing the ground of life itself.
And the final irony? The greatest solution humanity seeks today is “escape” — escape into virtuality, into planets beyond, into fantasies of immortality. But even this, like every step before it, is not a door but a mirror. We are not walking into the future. We are staring back at the first fire, the first seed, the first word — still burning, still binding, still echoing.
Thus the circle closes, though it was never open.
Solutions were the beginning. Solutions are the end.
Problems were only the stories we told in between.
PROBLEMS WERE INVENTED FOR SELLING THE SOLUTIONS
-- a dialogue with Madhukar
They came to Madhukar’s courtyard before the sun had fully decided to climb. A mango tree threw a long shade; a thin steam rose from chai. Men and women, young and old, a schoolteacher with a satchel, a software engineer on a short leave, two travelling salesmen, a young mother with a baby, a retired headmaster — all of them sat cross-legged in a loose circle. Someone had put a low lamp in the middle like a quiet altar.
Nobody had come with the intent of hearing a lecture. They had come because Madhukar had a way of saying things plain, and because the question the village had learned to whisper around fires — “Why are we always solving, and never free?” — needed an answer that did not hide behind big words.
Madhukar waited until they were settled. Then he spoke, slow and steady, as if shaping clay.
“Listen first,” he said. “I will tell you a single story, and in that story you will hear every other story.”
He picked up a dry twig and kept it between his fingers like a pointer. “Look at this twig. If you rub it, you can make a spark. If you polish it, it becomes a spear tip. If you learn to keep the spark, you keep warm. If you teach ten others to polish spears, you can feed twice as many mouths with less wandering. That is the miracle part — a new thing appears and it works. People call it a solution.”
He let the word hang. The schoolteacher leaned forward.
“But solutions are good,” she said. “They save lives.”
Madhukar nodded. “Of course. A solution is good when it answers a real present need. But listen to the pattern. The twig became a spear. The spear did two things: it fed and it separated. Those who held the spear had power. To justify that power, stories were told: the forest is dangerous, raiders come at night, your child will die if you don’t have spears. The problem is named after the solution. The twig arrived first; the danger was declared after.”
He drew a small circle in the dust with his finger and then another around it. “This is the first lesson: Solution first. Problem later. That is how history stacks. A new thing appears. Then the world is rewritten to make that thing seem indispensable.”
An old woman by the mango tree said softly, “But why don’t we see it? Why do we keep being convinced?”
Madhukar smiled like a man who expects the next question. “Because the new thing helps. You cannot blame anyone for embracing warmth or a tool that fills the belly. It’s urgent, immediate. And urgency is the best mask. The second reason is that institutions and people who profit from the new thing will tell tales to keep it. They become storytellers: the priest who explains the ritual, the merchant who sells the lamp, the teacher who says only his test can make you succeed. Narrative follows profit.”
He traced five shallow lines in the dust and named them with his fingers: “There are five moves to watch.”
He spoke each move slowly, like a drumbeat.
“First: introduce a solution — something new, useful, bright.
Second: declare a problem — usually by naming what the solution is best at as a universal lack.
Third: institutionalise the solution — make rules, schools, laws, shops, priests, training.
Fourth: beneficiaries gather — those who profit or gain power organize to defend the setup.
Fifth: a cascade of side-problems — dependencies, wastes, hierarchies, new markets for fixes, and so on.”
He did not list kinds like a textbook. He gave examples with the patience of a woodcutter. “Take the plough,” he said. “Useful — plough the land, grow grain. Then: everyone must farm; forests must go; we measure fields; taxes appear. Those who could hunt or share freely are now told — this field will feed your child, but also it must pay a tax. The plough was the first act. The tax was made to fit it.”
A young software engineer tapped his phone once, like a reflex. “So this is the same with phones? Phones came first, then the problem that we were ‘disconnected’ and ‘inefficient’?”
“Yes,” Madhukar said. “Phone first. Disconnection declared later. And once ‘disconnection’ is on the table, entire industries grow — repair shops, apps, data plans, advertisers, counselors for addiction. A single useful thing becomes a whole world.” He let that sink in.
He wanted them to feel how invisible the process was. “The trick,” he said, “is this: a solution excels at solving one thing — immediate pain, hunger, cold, boredom. Humans want less pain. So we adopt. That is honest. The dishonesty is when we let the one solution define what life must now be, and we forget the world before the solution.”
The retired headmaster, who had read a lot but never spoken much, asked, “Is it always someone’s plan? Do people conspire to create problems?”
“No conspiracy needed,” Madhukar replied. “Sometimes it is deliberate. A trader may find it convenient if people believe the only safe salt is his branded packet. Other times it’s accidental: a useful thing spreads, people adapt, systems form. But the final shape is almost always the same: the solution needs customers, users, believers. It needs stories, norms, and institutions to survive. So it makes the space it occupies look necessary.”
He paused and folded his hands over his knees. “Now listen to why this becomes a trap.”
He spoke of five ways the trap grows—small metaphors, not long lists.
“One: invisibility — the immediate benefit washes out future cost. The smoke of the hearth is invisible while the warm body sleeps. But the smoke hides the climate and the burn.
Two: incentives — who benefits will fight hard to preserve the solution. Money and power make fences.
Three: path dependence — once roads, languages, rules are built, every choice nudges you onto the same track. Turning back becomes expensive.
Four: social proof — when everyone uses the same thing, refusing it looks risky, foolish, or shameful.
Five: metricization — once you count something, you value it; once you value it, you build more of it. Land becomes profit, health becomes test scores, attention becomes clicks.”
The schoolteacher said, “That is why we measure attendance and then forget what teaching is.”
Madhukar laughed softly. “Exactly. You measure so you can manage; you manage so you can command. It is tidy. It is deadly.”
He changed his tone. For a while he taught as though to a child. “What does this do to people?” he asked. “It makes us small creditors of our own lives. We borrow attention, take loans for tools, sign papers for promises. The system grows lungs; the lungs need oxygen. The oxygen is the very problems it created. So the only job of the system is to keep the problems alive enough to breathe.”
A young mother, who had been quiet, pressed the baby to her shoulder and said, “You scare me, Madhukar. Are we trapped? Is there no way out?”
Madhukar’s voice was soft. “There are ways to see and be less trapped. Not grand escapes sold as products. Not romantic rejections that leave the hungry unfilled. Small, stubborn practices.”
He listed them, but not as a manual — as habits of mind.
“Practice one: ask who benefits before you praise a fix. If a thing makes someone rich or powerful, watch closely.
Practice two: test scale. Does this solution make things simpler at human scale, or does it require bigger machines and debts?
Practice three: count long costs. Do not only measure the convenience; measure the dependencies and losses across five, fifty, five-hundred years.
Practice four: protect commons and repair. A system that survives only by selling you new things every year is not a friend. A community that can mend, share, and repair will be resilient.
Practice five: teach children the art of refusal. Saying no is a skill. So is living without apology.”
He watched the faces. Some were angry; some relieved. The software engineer scraped his chin and asked, “Isn’t this just nostalgia? People say ‘the old ways were better’ and stop there.”
Madhukar nodded. “Nostalgia is easy to sell. But this is not nostalgia. It is a discipline of seeing systems. The old ways sometimes worked because they were smaller, local, and reversible. They had fewer dependencies. When the power goes out now, we are helpless. That is not romantic; that is dangerous. We keep building nets and then climb into them and call the weave home.”
He bent down and scooped a pinch of earth. “This ground holds the village’s memories. If you keep adding solutions that take more than they give — water from downstream, soil that never rests, medicines you cannot make at home — you will change what the ground can do. It is not only a moral lesson. It is an arithmetic.”
The group sat with that arithmetic — the quiet, hard counting of consequences.
Madhukar closed with a story, because stories are stubborn ways to keep thinking alive.
“There was a man who sold ladders. His ladders were fine. One day he told the village that ladders were for more than reaching roofs — they were for reaching the sky. People believed. Ladders spread. Then he said: you are standing on the ladder wrong; you need a ladder per child, a ladder per house, ladders with certificates. The carpenter who cut the ladders became a tax collector for the ladder man. In the end, the village had many ladders, fewer roofs, and a heavy charge every month called ‘ladder maintenance.’ They had solved nothing. They had only multiplied ladders and debts.”
He let them chuckle, but the chuckle was the sound of something breaking.
“Remember this,” he said. “Solutions are not evil by nature. They are tools. The crime is the habit of letting every useful thing proclaim a permanent lack that only it can fill. That is industry. That is empire. That is what we call progress. If you wish to understand the world — your world, the city, the court, the market — learn to ask before you accept: Did this come first, or did the problem come later? Who keeps the problem alive?”
He rose as the sun slid over the courtyard’s edge. People stood too, a little altered, a little more lucid. The young mother tightened the baby in a sling. The headmaster patted the soil with a finger, as if pledging it a secret.
Madhukar gave them no final prescription, no sermon of impossible purity. “You cannot live without helping hands,” he said. “Nor should you. But you can refuse to be someone’s indefinite customer. You can repair. You can teach. You can keep your circle small enough to know the who and why. And when a new thing comes — any new thing — remember the twig and the spark. Ask: which came first?”
They walked away from the courtyard with the echo of the question in their pockets. The lamp stayed on for a while, then the wind put it out. The mango leaves whispered as if in agreement.
Outside, the road went toward the fields, the town, and the highway. The world kept selling its bright things. But in that small circle beneath the mango tree, people had found a way to look at them differently — slower, longer, and with the patience to see the trap before they stepped into it.
The Solution Came First
the solution came first,
always,
before the wound,
before the hunger,
before the sadness.
fire was not born out of cold,
cold was carved after fire,
to make the flame a savior.
medicine was brewed before sickness had a name,
sickness was manufactured to sell the cure.
gods were carved before guilt,
sin was engineered to keep them alive.
the wheel did not roll to rescue the tired,
the tired were invented later,
to make the wheel sacred.
the sword was hammered,
then came the war,
the army, the borders,
the glory, the graves.
the lock was designed,
then came the thief.
the police.
the trial.
the endless files stacked in dusty cupboards.
every invention screamed: look, a solution!
and man, dazzled,
forgot to ask: solution to what?
so they built needs where none had existed.
they stitched wounds into flesh that was whole.
they poured fear into veins that had only known silence.
they said—
you are naked, take clothes.
you are impure, take rituals.
you are weak, take weapons.
you are lost, take gods.
you are ignorant, take schools.
you are sick, take hospitals.
you are incomplete, take the market.
and people bowed,
because solutions are powerful,
solutions make you feel chosen,
solutions make you feel broken without them.
look closely:
the solution is the prison,
the problem is the keyhole,
and you—
you are convinced there is a monster outside the bars.
the cycle never stops.
they feed you salvation,
then invent the disease,
the poison, the punishment.
you run, gasping, chasing the cure,
believing in the sickness,
forgetting the truth:
there was no original problem.
only the solution,
standing naked in the dawn of man,
needing a shadow to justify its light.
---
now,
centuries later,
you walk in a city of answers
to questions you never asked.
roads everywhere,
but no one knows where to go.
hospitals everywhere,
but no one remembers how to be well.
laws everywhere,
but no one knows what freedom is.
temples everywhere,
but no one remembers what silence feels like.
the solution multiplies,
spreads,
consumes.
and behind it,
a billion invented problems
crawl like obedient children.
man becomes a caretaker of cages,
each cage labeled:
“my problem.”
each cage filled with air.
and so we live,
each day,
solving ghosts.
each day,
buying remedies for a hunger
that was never there.
---
in the end,
the first fire still burns,
the first water still flows,
the first silence still waits.
but we,
creatures of the solution,
cannot see them anymore.
we have fallen in love with the cure,
and forgotten
we were never sick.
Hello Friend,
If my words or work have helped you heal, think, or simply slow down for a moment,
I’ll be grateful if you choose to support me.
I live simply and work quietly, offering my time and knowledge freely to those who seek it.
Your contribution—no matter how small or big — helps me keep doing this work without distraction.
You can pay using any UPI app on my ID - madhukar.dama@ybl
Take Care
Dr. Madhukar Dama
