You probably remember the boy who cried "Wolf". He thought it was amusing to see the alarm in response to his fake news that there was a wolf prowling in the village. He spread a false alarm so often that people no longer believed his shouts. When a real lupine came stalking him, his cries were indistinguishable from his earlier fakes and no one came to his aid. His bones are still in a little pile behind that bush.
Today, we have a crisis in crises. We got a crisis in the schools, we got a crisis in medicine, we got toddler crises, children's crises, lots of teen crises, marriage crisis and crises in older people's lives. There are many others that I won't take time to mention: legal, incarceration, agricultural, climate, military, governmental and more.
It is time for Congress to explain how many crises we can deal with at a time. I recommend seven. Once seven crises are announced, nobody can announce another one until one or more of the seven are eliminated or at least demoted to the rank of former crises that we may pay further attention to at a later time. There was a famous psychology paper, The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus Two. The premise is that we humans can recognize about 7 items at once, without counting or calculation. We can hold up a playing card with 7 pips on it and immediately recognize it for what it is. For some people, 5 is the max and others can deal with 9.
We do alright with seven days in a week, we fight seven deadly sins, there were seven brides for seven brothers. I think we can handle 7. If we have 7 crises officially announced already, you can get your badges and banners ready to campaign for your favorite unannounced emerging crisis to be officially recognized, but you can't launch your campaign until one of the current 7 is officially declared over. Or, at least, in abeyance, or on hold.
I realize there are going to be fights at first since we have an oversupply of crises, emerging crises, mini-crises and unrecognized crises. There is going to be a tussle for a position, but I hope you realize we have a crisis of crises and we need to get organized.
