“Nothing is more permanent then a temporary fix.”
At first glance, this sounds paradoxical.
After all, temporary solutions are meant to be just that — temporary. They are supposed to buy time, act as stopgaps, or serve as provisional measures until a more appropriate or lasting fix can be implemented.
But in practice, these “temporary” solutions have a strange habit of becoming permanent.
Why?
This is not just a quirk of human laziness.
It is a structural pattern.
When we do not yet have the perfect way to solve a problem, we invent something that works well enough.
It is makeshift, suboptimal, perhaps even a little absurd — but it functions. It does the job, more or less.
And because it works, however clumsily, people stop looking for the better alternative.
Soon, the “provisional” fix is reinforced:
- Bureaucracies adapt around it.
- Money is invested into it.
- Systems are built upon it.
- Entire hierarchies of power begin to depend on it.
And by the time someone proposes going back to rethink the whole thing — it is already too late.
The cost of change is too high. The new solution is too radical. There is no time, no budget, no political will.
As they say in France, “Il n’y a que le provisoire qui dure”: only the provisional endures.
Because these solutions function well enough.
Because replacing them requires effort, planning, or courage.
Because systems tend to stabilise around the path of least resistance.
Once a temporary fix is in place, the urgency to address the root problem often fades. People adjust. Bureaucracies adapt. The patch becomes the norm.
Behind the phrase lies a quiet warning:
Beware of what you call provisional.
It may outlast your intentions — and shape your future more than you realise.
People will even defend these imperfect systems — not because they are good, but because “they work.”
That phrase — “it works” — becomes a kind of spell, used to dismiss deeper inquiry, to justify inertia, to silence imagination.
But working is not the same as working well. Function is not the same as vision.
Stability is not the same as justice.
So the warning remains: beware of what you call provisional.
It may become the future — by default, not by design.