Top-Down Solutions Don’t Work

I have written about this many times, but I don’t think I have ever written a whole article about it. If I am, indeed, repeating myself, my apologies to my long-time readers. That said, it deserves repeating.

Let me first explain what I mean by “top-down and bottom-up.” I use this phrase often in my psychotherapy work. I believe most therapy is designed to be top-down. This is where symptoms are treated, but not the cause of the symptoms. The first culprit on this list is typical psychiatry, where a 15-minute assessment determines a diagnosis, and a diagnosis determines medication protocol. If this modality of mental illness treatment worked, it would be an effective means of treatment. But like most things in life, determining the efficacy of this approach is not black and white; it actually does work in certain situations, for various reasons, but doesn’t in others.

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Some of the serious mental illnesses, such as psychosis, suicidal depression, and mind-numbing anxiety, treating the symptoms will often quell what is considered pathological about the underlying disease. It still doesn’t cure the cause, but it keeps the person contained, non-violent, so they don’t hurt others, and stable enough that they can proceed with a life that otherwise would be impossible to pursue.

There is also the placebo effect, which very often is the prime reason people seem to get better. Then, of course, there are the people who are taking their prescribed drug and also going to psychotherapy. If they feel better, they will invariably point to the drug as the reason, rather than the therapy—that seems a more scientific approach.

I could go on with this, but I don’t want to crowd the article. Top-down methods are not limited to psychiatry; we see them in regular talk therapy as well. Treating the symptoms rather than the root cause is the primary approach of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). To be fair, there are certainly legitimate success stories with this method. However, if we continue feeding the monster (the underlying cause) through our aberrant behaviour, it will continue to wreak havoc. But if we simply stop the symptom (the behaviour) we can, over time, often kill the monster—if it is weak or small enough. So CBT can be successful, but more likely than not, we merely put the monster to sleep, only for it to raise its ugly head again once the CBT tactics cease.

Now I will move out of psychotherapy into the real world of daily cause and effect. We are ensconced in a top-down solution source for nearly every problem we confront in our modern culture. Some top-down solutions, as in mental health, are important to maintain, but even if they work, they don’t get to the core cause of the disfavoured behaviour. Look at simple things like laws: speeding laws, laws against theft, laws against rape, and murder—all things people believe are absolutely necessary in a sane and decent culture. And as things are now (and for the most part always have been) these laws are indeed necessary to keep the community safe and functioning.

But they do nothing at all to cure the indecency, suffering, and drive to commit atrocious crimes. Or even simple crimes. (While overall crime rates in many Western countries have shown long-term declines since the 1990s, certain issues like property crime or localized spikes remain concerns in some areas.)

Now, those are my comments on law, and the only reason I bring it up is because it is the most obvious top-down solution the modern world (as well as the ancient world) has adopted, and for the most part (with some glaring exceptions) it works relatively well—but still, laws do not change the fundamental drive of a criminal.

Just recently, there has been discussion in parts of Canada around tougher penalties for serious crimes against children. I hear so many people saying, “Good for them! That should bring down the rate of child rape!” I doubt if it does. I don’t think people who rape children will stop just because the punishment is severe—and many might actually be indifferent to it. Maybe in some cases criminals avoid committing a crime because of the potential punishment, but they are still driven to do it. I know the reason I don’t steal is not the law, but my own personal sense of decency.

Now, not all laws are about indecency and decency. There are many laws, much more than there should be, that have nothing to do with right or wrong. And these laws are a problem I will not address here. Instead, I think you get my point. But as I just said, top-down solution solving isn’t just about laws. Laws are just a good example of their use and people’s reliance on them.

So, what is a bottom-up solution? Bottom-up work is about building character; it is about creating a person who is at the core decent, caring, and has an innate sense of the difference between right and wrong. Sure, this creates its own set of problems—what is right and what is wrong? I am of the strong belief that the most important distinctions we already know in our hearts. And if we were raised with strong character—or developed it later in life—we would live in a world where people naturally choose not to violate a moral code.

I don’t want to appear naïve here; this idea is not perfect, but I do believe it is a better system than what we have at the moment.

Top-down approaches dominate our institutions: more regulations, more surveillance, more enforcement, more “awareness” campaigns, more top-down mandates from governments, corporations, and experts. We see this in education (standardized testing and zero-tolerance policies instead of fostering genuine curiosity and moral development), in public health (mandates and restrictions rather than empowering personal responsibility and community resilience), and in social policy (welfare systems or DEI initiatives that often address surface-level symptoms while ignoring deeper cultural and familial breakdowns).

Bottom-up solutions require a much harder, slower, and less glamorous path: strong families, meaningful communities, education that builds wisdom and virtue rather than compliance, and a culture that rewards integrity over obedience or performative activism. It means rediscovering archetypal truths about human nature—shadow integration, personal responsibility, the development of a healthy ego in relation to the Self (in Jungian terms)—rather than outsourcing morality to the state or the latest expert consensus.

The tragedy is that our modern world has largely abandoned the bottom-up path in favour of the illusion of control through top-down force. Laws and policies can suppress symptoms temporarily, but without character formation at the individual and communal level, the underlying rot persists and often worsens. We see this in rising cynicism, declining trust, and the persistence of social pathologies despite ever-increasing rules and oversight.

True change comes from within—individually and collectively. It is cultivated in homes, in local communities, in the quiet work of self-reflection and moral courage. Top-down solutions may be necessary Band-Aids in a broken world, but they are no substitute for the real healing that only bottom-up transformation can provide. Until we prioritize the latter, we will continue cycling through the same problems, applying stronger and stronger top-down measures, wondering why nothing ever really gets better.

The shrew’s path is the bottom-up one: clear-eyed, rooted in truth, and committed to inner work that radiates outward. That is where real hope lies.

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