
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 30, 1993                   TAG: 9309080434
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

13,167 PROBLEMS

IN CASE your spirits aren't appropriately down, perhaps by oversight of the misery made constantly manifest in the media, or through dereliction of your duty to shoulder a fair portion of the burdens crushing humanity, it is our responsibility to remind you:

There are now, exactly, 13,167 world problems to worry about.

This, according to the recently published Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, Third Edition.

The third edition presents 10,607 more world problems to worry about than when the first edition of the encyclopedia was published in 1976. (That, recall, was the year Jimmy Carter was elected president, and it wasn't long before he had us fretting about malaise.)

The latest categories of world problems to worry about include:

Incompetent management, shortage of animal protein, victimless crime, secret laws, underground economy, harassment of the media, illegal abortion and inadequate sex education.

The usual and not-so-usual suspects also include witchcraft, abduction by extraterrestrials, sin, and that old standby, the devil.

We'd add to the litany another concern: We're worried about this trend toward officially compiling problems.

As Virginia Hall, an editor at The Kansas City Star, suggests, it may be that the very act of identifying and describing world problems tends to cause more of them.

``Perhaps,'' wrote Hall, ``identifying problems encourages efforts to solve them that inevitably give rise to new sets of problems - as in some dire need leading to government intervention (i.e., spending), leading to dependency thereon, leading to `excessive social expenditures' (problem No. 6,215), leading to revenue shortfall, leading to borrowing, leading to debt, leading to higher taxation, leading to resentment - all accompanied by neglect of other areas, which then become problems requiring government solution.''

Hall's thesis may become world problem No. 13,168 when the fourth edition of the encyclopedia is published.

Our recommendation for world problem No. 13,169 is that the song, ``Don't Worry, Be Happy,'' can still be heard occasionally on the radio, poisoning listeners' minds.

The lyrics contradict everyone's civic responsibility to fret.

It is difficult, granted, to fuss about so many problems, giving each the concern it deserves. We are gravely concerned that people may be distracted by life's simple pleasures.

Which points to another concern: Is there time enough in the day to anguish over all the problems we face?

Fiddlely-dee, as Scarlett would say, we'll worry about that tomorrow.

by CNB