North Korea and the rest of us

To engage in descriptive systems thinking requires a bit of an out-of-body experience. What is the benefit to humanity of North Korea choosing to thumb its nose at the rest of the international community by deciding to expand its nuclear program? This would be the equivalent of one of the organ systems in your body deciding to disregard the needs of the rest of the body. This is called disease and because North Koreans are humans and not aliens, it is the equivalent of an autoimmune disease or a cancer, in which the body attacks itself as an enemy.

For some people, like TOD LINDBERG who recently wrote an Opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, the best way to deal with situations like this is to "take them out." The Opinion piece is called "The Only Way to Prevent Genocide."

This is the approach we learned from the ways we deal with cancer today. Because we are unable to correct that have taken place in our DNA we have to use destructive methods like chemotherapy and surgery to eradicate cancer. But, as we have learned, these methods do not give us immunity from cancer in the future.

As Einstein so astutely noted, you cannot solve a problem with the same mentality that caused the problem in the first place. Cancer cells are not the problem. In fact, when views dispassionately, cancer cells are perfectly healthy cells that have "claimed" the immortality other cells do not have. It is the compromised DNA that is the problem for it is the DNA that instructs these cells to continue dividing, or in the case of autoimmune diseases to treat other human body parts or organs as "not human." The only guaranteed cure for cancer (or autoimmune diseases) is to be able to correct the compromised DNA. As long as the DNA maintains its flawed instructions cancer can reoccur.

North Korea is not the problem, at least in the long run. Humanity is the problem. Somewhere our "DNA", whatever it is that has guided the development of the human species, has gone awry and produced groups like North Korea that care first for themselves before thinking of the rest of the species. It is there we must focus our efforts, even while we try to mitigate the actions of groups like North Korea.

It can be done, but it will take bold thinking.