Of cows and men

(with apologies to Steinbeck)

This article first appeared in Exhibit: A Quarterly Review of Alternative News, Gamma issue, Summer 2003.

It was while growing up in Louisiana that I was given one of those earthy pearls of wisdom that sticks with you for life, although I can no longer remember the source. ‘When cows escape from the farm, you’ve g o t two problems. You have to catch the cows and you have to mend the fence’. This may not be as powerful a tool as the BCG matrix, or anything produced by Michael Porter, but it is a simple representation of the duality and multifaceted nature of issues we face in everyday problem solving.

When cows escape from the farm, you’ve got two problems.You have to catch the cows and you have to mend the fence

In fact, I couldn’t help but think of this issue while observing Washington DC’s response to world governance since 11 September. Mr Bush was quick to start chasing the cows (disguised as terrorist organisations) and he was quite right to do so. The land of the free and the home of the brave had felt the brunt of international terrorism in a most foul manner for the first time. But I would have been more supportive of his actions had he embraced at the same time a fence mending programme of bridging the growing gulf in cultural understanding between America and the Muslim world. Or, America and the rest of the world, in some cases.

Recently, I was lucky enough to chat with a Washington-based Futurist and I asked him ‘What would you have said to Mr Bush in the week prior to 911, knowing what you now know?’ His answer was, starkly, not at all related to informing the President of a growing dislike for American foreign policy or its gunboat intervention methods. Rather, it was that ‘planes could be used as missiles’. This seemed a bit short-sighted as a comment coming from a Futurist, so I asked again, this time suggesting that it might be better to get significantly higher numbers of Americans to have and utilise passports (excellent fence mending tools), with increased travel to foreign countries and thus increasing the level of cultural understanding. ‘No’, he said, ‘This administration doesn’t want to hear that. I’ll have to wait for a new one.’

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