There is no ‘other side’ to complexity
Except, perhaps, the void. Otherwise: it’s just greater complexity.
And yet, there seems to be a certain class of seemingly intelligent folk — consultants, mainly — who promise ‘simplicity on the other side of complexity’.
This is a misnomer.
What they may be referring to is the ‘second simplicity’ one may intuit to when traversing increasingly higher orders of complexity.
This second simplicity can appear very similar to the first simplicity — and, in turn, similar to the ‘third simplicity’ (if one were to arrive at such). These ‘similar simplicities’ could be considered as ‘fractals’ — reoccurring patterns that emerge at different levels of phenomena, abstraction and analysis. They are what inform the loose principles and fluid heuristics that imbibe and imbue the decisions we make. They are part of what makes for our wit.
Noticing these fractals requires a kind of ‘elevated vantage point’ — one must ‘sense-make’ from multiple (and increasingly ‘meta’) perspectives. The meta the better.
In this way, it is not at all like venturing through a tangled thicket of complexity to arrive at an open clearing (the ‘other side of complexity’). Rather — to put it very crudely — it’s like increasing the ‘resolution’ in which you sense things.
A higher resolution allows you more capacity to ‘zoom out’ and ‘see more’ at higher levels of clarity and fidelity (through more levels of abstraction and dimensions of interpretation). Our ability to access this vantage depends very much on our disposition at the time—and this is dependent on many factors (which, in turn, have their own contingent factors). Regardless, if you’re ‘doing it right’, you’ll realise: everything is more complex than any of us could possibly understand.
This can be a genuinely confronting realisation: a trigger for existential crises and ontological collapse (genuinely)—which is why we are often quick to reject the complex and retreat back to the known. The simple, stable and safe.
And besides—we’re all busy and distracted. Who has time to explore such domains anyway? The more complex an idea, the more time and attention one requires to make sense of it—which is why it is difficult to write about such matters succinctly.
There is, however, an efficacious equanimity that can be found amidst complexity (if you have the wit to see it askance). But to get there means relinquishing our fetishising of ‘simplicity’.
To be continued…
I’m on some fool quest to share 50 insights in 50 days. This is day 1. More at drjasonfox.com
