Oversimplification

By reducing complexity to more cognitively comfortable levels, analysts not only diminish a problem's apparent difficulty, but also transform it from a technologically unanswerable question to yet another designer-engineering task. Thus the fact that a large percentage of the population is malnourished is transformed from a complex political and economic problem caused by a history of exploitation to the more comfortable and technologically familiar problem of growing food. Moreover, once this transformation has taken place, the technocratic mentality focuses exclusively on the dimensions of the redefined task, to the extent that moral and ethical responsibilities or involvement are minimized or even abrogated.

In a complex socio-political situation such as Yugoslavia, false simplification is not the best that can be done. It assures failure. The focus on Bosnia, for example, is an understandable mistake, since that is where most of the killing is occurring. It is an inadequate response since it comforts the illusion that the crisis can be resolved step by step, when, one way or another, all the people in the region are engaged in the complex, poisonous jumble of European history.