We Need to Remember Problems We Solved
I need your help. I’m trying to find a phrase to describe an important phenomenon and maybe help people recognize it more easily. The phenomenon is this: When we fix a problem, we forget it. I don’t mean you and me in “we” — we, of course, remember. But pop culture forgets, and the mass media forgets, and young people never learn about the problem or how it was solved.
Maybe this will make more sense with examples. Have you ever seen a bald eagle? They almost went extinct! And now they’re everywhere, stealing fish from ospreys (which also almost went extinct) and getting in fights with peregrine falcons (which also almost went extinct). The pesticide DDT caused birds that eat fish that eat bugs to have thin eggshells, and the birds’ nests failed. It took a lot of science and journalism and public outrage, but we banned DDT and the eagles are back.
Do you remember (or have you heard about) the ozone hole? Chlorofluorocarbons were thinning the part of the atmosphere that keeps us from getting sizzled by ultraviolet light. It took a lot of science and journalism and public outrage and global cooperation, but we banned chlorofluorocarbons and the ozone hole is healing.
We fixed acid rain. We took the lead out of gasoline. We prevented catastrophic computer failures from the Y2K bug. These problems dominated news and pop culture for years, but now they’re gone, and we’re left with problems that seem unsolvable. But we can solve problems! We have, and we will.
Naming something can make it easier to recognize, like the Bechdel Test for movies or the Finkbeiner Test for writing about scientists. Shifting Baselines names the phenomenon that people get used to the environment we’re in and don’t realize it was once better. What I’m trying to capture is kind of the opposite of that, but not just for the environment.
When I worked at Scientific American, I held a brainstorming session on Slack to talk about what to call the phenomenon. (Brainstorming sessions should always be no-shame zones, all puns allowed, so some of these are goofy, but that stimulates the little gray cells.) Here are some of the ideas: Vanishing Victories. Stealthy Healthies. Bygone Betterments (I told you it got goofy). Achievement Amnesia. Unsung Solutions. Forgotten Wins. Problems Solved. Fixed and Forgotten.
What do you think? Do any of these names appeal to you? Would you like to suggest others? Please reply in the comments or on Bluesky, and thanks.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Kenneth Cole Schneider.