Functional Fixedness
This time of year brings to mind the art and science of the sandcastle. The bigger, the better. Never mind the threat of the incoming tide! It's simply what is done at the beach. Tradition! You build, fortify, trench, dig, pat, pinch and press for hours something that will get taken away or trampled by a dog or seagull.
Sandcastles aren't the best example of what I'm about to talk about because there's a benefit in and of itself just in the passage of time when building a sandcastle: you learn to meditate on the transient nature of what you are creating, knowing it will eventually be blown, swept away. Like the Tibetan monks with their mandala sculptures. I'm not anti-sand castle! It's all very meditative and wonderful and worthwhile. But I mention the logic—or lack—in digging a trench in the sand to protect a sand castle for one more hour because we apply the same logic to other parts of life where time money and resources are spent. Like children building and rebuilding the sand castles you see this time of year from coast to coast, we expend energy fighting in endless cycles, trying to preserve structures rather than considering what washing the beach clean would look like.
Diaper banks are the world's current solution to diaper need. It's human nature: we want to fortify and strengthen anything that's seen as the most viable solution to a problem. Nonprofits want to stay in business. they are motivated to be bigger, stronger—more galas, more money. More power. More decision-making. Do what we can to ensure the survival of the structures we see as the only tool we have. We're faced with functional fixedness: are we prepared to address our cognitive biases?
BDP is a nonprofit. And a diaper bank. How are we different from other nonprofits? Because our hope is that we reach a failure point in our need to exist. We are strengthening ourselves through fundraising in order to propel ourselves toward extinction. We recognize our place in the broken system. That continuing the giving through charitable organizations that must fight for money and select who receives them will only perpetuate the cycle of need and never end it. The idea that the world's current solution to diaper need is the only solution is a false paradigm, and we reject the principle of jamming ourselves into it. There is an immediate need to innovate beyond the never-ending cycle of giving away diapers as though they are something that need to be asked for.
We owe it to ourselves to see deeper, beyond our erroneous understandings of what we’ve been handed.
I'd like to make diaper banks an artifact of our society. What happens when we start advocating for diapers to be on hand in bathrooms and daycares? What happens when we start insisting that diapers should not be the domain of a for-profit enterprise? With diaper banks in our rearview mirrors, will there ever be a time when we forget this was ever not our reality?
Public restrooms are one way to bridge that gap between the philosophy of traditional brick-and-mortar banks and ending need altogether. Daycares should also be well-equipped. Shipped directly to public facilities and organizations, diapers can be filled in dispensers in the same way a janitor stocks toilet paper in stalls. We can also imagine a world where diapers are not stemming from for-profit companies but rather being manufactured solely because they are needed.
We can imagine a time in the near future where diapers are available in bathrooms and diaper banks fade away as artifacts of our society.
