Examples of how “root cause” is used:
How can we understand the root causes of poverty?
“…individual inadequacies have often been promoted as the major reason for poverty. The argument is that people are not motivated enough, not working hard enough, do not have enough skills and education, have made bad decisions in their lives, and so on. These individual inadequacies, in turn, lead people into poverty.
In contrast to this perspective, the argument made here is that the fundamental problem lies in the fact that there are simply not enough viable opportunities for all Americans… [and] the inability of the economic and political structures to provide the supports and opportunities necessary to lift all Americans out of poverty.”
“Criminologists and social scientists have almost completely overlooked the fact that materialism is the root cause of crime. False identification of the body as the self leads people to believe that sense enjoyment will satisfy them; and most crimes are directly or indirectly connected to the attempt to find satisfaction in sense enjoyment.
The media saturates us daily with the message that the goal of life is sensual pleasure, and that success in life depends on the acquisition of those objects that make such sensual pleasure possible. From a young age, we learn that we should strive to be the controllers and enjoyers of all we survey. We are promised that such “lordship” is the way to happiness.”
Opinion: Root cause of food insecurity
“The problem of hunger in the United States is not for a scarcity of food. The root cause of this endemic problem is a growing disparity between the rich and the poor.
Starting with education at the community level, the hope is to bring about changes that cause systemic inequalities for those living in poverty. Together we can collectively come up with creative solutions to educate, share resources, influence government policy and improve the quality of life of individuals and families.”
Common Themes:
Root cause attributions are often part of an ideological argument that highlights the opposition between Us and Them. Some common themes:
Their explanations of human suffering are false.
The dominant view is wrong.
The so-called experts are wrong.
Old ways of thinking must be discarded.
We know the true source of human suffering
We know how to think the right way.
People have been indoctrinated.
People need to be educated about the true nature of reality.
Those prone to root cause attributions include:
Progressives: the root cause is typically structural/systemic inequality.
Westerners influenced by Eastern religions: the root cause is desire/attachment.
Hucksters: the root cause of your problem is ‘x’, which our product will fix.
There’s also something called “root cause analysis”, which is used by organizations to identify and fix problems. But root cause analysis is focused on the problem-solving process and is not committed to a particular type of cause - much less to a particular ideology of why problems exist in the first place.