“A dilemma is a problem that can’t be solved without creating another problem. At the heart of every story is a dilemma. If we’re not sure what our story is about, let’s consider this for a moment: Problems are solved while dilemmas are resolved through a shift in perception.” — Al Watt, The 90-Day Novel

I’ve been teaching about dilemma this summer, even as the pandemic kept us close to home and the fires threatened to push us out. Even as safety cautioned us to isolate and human need urged us toward company. 

I love Al Watt’s insight here: problems are solved while dilemmas are resolved through a shift in perception. He’s talking about story, he’s talking about what story does: force characters to change. And this is exactly how: in the crucible of a choice between two irreconcilable goods or two irreconcilable evils, character is formed. In order to move forward, we must change. Our understanding of what we want and how to get it must shift. We must synthesize the thesis and the anti-thesis into something new.

In the American political landscape right now, this means most crucially not accepting the terms of the choice as it’s being presented. Michelle Goldberg wrote a piece a few months back in the New York Times about how trying to follow the rules of journalistic “objectivity” has become so skewed because the current “administration” is so irrational, so off-the-charts, that to present that as once reasonable side of some duality is itself to imbalance the news: 

“Before Donald Trump became president, most newspaper op-ed pages sought to present a spectrum of politically significant opinion and argument, which they could largely do while walling off extremist propaganda and incitement. The Trump presidency has undermined that model, because there’s generally no way to defend the administration without being either bigoted or dishonest.”

Our dilemma cannot be framed as Trump’s way or an alternative. Trump is so far off the spectrum, he must be removed, the way far outlying data is sometimes deleted from scientific calculations.

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard writes of learning how to chop wood after many misadventures, toppled logs, and flying chips: aim for the chopping block. Don’t aim for the wood, aim right through it. Keep your eye on the ball, they say, but also, look where you want the ball to go. 

We are aiming way past to “dilemma” that’s being presented to us now, politically: we are aiming for a liveable future. We require a change in perception. We must blast past either/ or, get out of the hellhole we are in and back onto ground where we can wage the battle that must be won, for the climate, for justice, for health.