“It’s kind of a forum where people can talk about the good stuff they’re doing. There’s a whole manifesto on there,” Toronto's Helman tells Samaritanmag (see manifesto below).
“I was talking to my publicist, Steve Waxman, and I came to this conclusion that there’s all these big problems in the world and they all need to be solved. There are also problems that are a lot more local and solvable, smaller issues — not smaller; I don’t think you can quantify how big an issue is; they’re just more local issues and more relatable issues.
“Like for me, mental health is a really big thing. Not that I necessarily deal with that to the degree that other people do, but I have friends that have dealt with mental health and those issues just hit home for me. And I just think it’s such a local issue that we can work on and just to break down the stigma on that; it’s not that difficult of a task. It’s not like eradicating polio. Just educate people and get involved.
“So it’s just a forum where people can get involved with local, more personal issues and then talk about them.”
In the “Introduction” to Solve the Solvable, Helman writes:
The world is messed up. There's a lot of messed up people and a lot of messed up things. There's war and disease and starvation and sadness and confusion. But the world is also pretty beautiful. There's a lot of good people, and good things. There's love, and help, and progress, and music. I got to thinking and came up with this idea. It may be naïve and it may be idealistic but I think it's worth a shot.
So here's what I propose: Everybody who wants to be involved can be. All you have to do is something good, no matter how big or small, and post it here on the site.
If you want, you can comment on other people’s posts or take up where they left off. When you post, you automatically become eligible to win some cool things! When we have an army (for peace and love of course) we can all get together, and make some music, and talk about what more we can do for the planet. Sound like a plan? Go Solve the Solvable. - Scott
“I find that a lot of the times, because we live in this weird world with the internet that a lot of people should be way more connected than they are,” Helman tells Samaritanmag. “Like if I’m passionate about an issue, but no one in my immediate surrounding is, it’s hard for me to get involved because you want to do stuff with other people. So if I went online and saw that someone was doing a run for Crohn’s disease, maybe I would say, ‘Oh that’s really cool. My mom has Crohn’s disease and I will just join you.’ That’s the goal.
“I just think it’s so great that people want to get involved with stuff that’s local. If everybody did that, you would have more time to breath and think about these bigger issues.”
Solve The Unsolvable is quietly sitting in cyberspace waiting to bust wide open to his fans. Helman, who is joining Walk Off The Earth on tour in the UK and Europe through to the end of October, says, “I haven’t talked about it much because I’m opening a lot. When I had my headline show at the Mod Club I did talk about it. I’m going to wait until things are a little bit bigger and then hopefully people will make their way there and find out. I think I’ll start talking about it more and getting people involved.”
“For me, it’s all good. It’s up there. People can see it. It doesn’t need to be a big thing. It’s just a place people can go on the web site that people can talk about stuff that’s important to them.”
Scott's Manifesto
- While there are a lot of problems without answers, there are also problems with answers.
- Everybody has the ability to do good, whether it's giving away a million dollars, or being kind to someone who looks like they're having a hard day.
- The world needs people to solve the big, complicated problems, but it also needs people to solve the smaller, solvable ones. If everybody helped to solve the problems closest and dearest to their hearts and in their communities, the world would be a lot better off.
- If we do this together, we could get pretty strong and help solve some stuff.
- There's a system that churns out a status quo, or a centralized idea of what “being a good person” means. We're told that if we eat organically, or donate to this charity or that organization, or support this ideology or that ideology, we graduate to the big leagues of the philanthropists and the activists. But sometimes it's hard to tell what's good. If we localize and personalize goodness, what WE want to see changed in our communities and lives, and by effect make our communities better and stronger and more connected, we could create a force bigger than that system!