Solutions
Nathan Bierma
Sightings
December 9, 2004

We are a society that loves "solutions." The word combines America's can-do spirit of self-reliance and its capitalist impulse to sell things. And so "solutions" has become a marketing buzzword, a sudden synonym for "products." ...

"Solution" used to be the opposite of "problem"; now it's the opposite of "need" (which, in a consumer culture, usually means "want"). A company called Integraph tips its lexical hand and offers this definition: "a solution implies a complete and well-matched response to a need." The word has come a long way from its original meaning; "solution" derives from the Latin word "solutio," meaning "a loosening or untying." Perhaps it adopted its meaning of "answer" because an answer, in a sense, unties a knotty problem. But another meaning of "solution"-"substance in which another substance disintegrates when immersed," as in chemistry-is even more telling when we look at "solutions" slogans today. Society's "solutions" frenzy is one big chase to make our worries go away.

Is it any surprise, then, that the "solutions" mentality has seeped into Western Christianity? ...

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