I recently came across a blogpost entitled, Simple Thinking in a Complex World is a Recipe for Disaster. It was written by Prof. David Green of Monash University in Australia.
In it, he cautions against the tendency to oversimplify the complexities of everyday life, and gives some practical advice on how to take complexity seriously. In particular, he maintains that we should,
"... avoid following simple slogans uncritically. Avoid dismissing uncomfortable facts out of hand."
So far, so good.
Disappointingly, though, he immediately breaks the first of the two rules, in his own uncritical adoption of the slogan, "in an era of post-truth and pseudoscience", to dismiss events and activities that don't conform to the established order. In this case, he uses the themes of Brexit in the UK, the US election result, and climate change denial to illustrate his argument.
Seemingly without any sense of irony, he then ignores the second of his two rules; using these events as evidence of the failure of some people to "fathom complexity". "All [of the above] appear to have roots in the desire for simplicity," he argues. Although he doesn't offer any support for what itself might be thought of as an overly simplistic claim.
Prof. Green's headline statement quite rightly warns against the dangers of what he calls "simple thinking" in a complex world. Given that, though, he perhaps should have paid more attention to his own advice. In particular, he would do well to reflect on his own "confirmation bias" and "avoid dismissing uncomfortable facts out of hand."
Logic bubble
He's not alone in this, of course! We all tend to do it. As Edward de Bono might say, we are not all working within the same "logic bubble". Where others think or act differently from us, we can choose to regard them as stupid, ignorant, or malevolent (as has been the case in many quarters in relation to the issues mentioned earlier). Or else we can think of them as acting in an intelligent - even if sometimes unwelcome and unfathomable - manner, but from within a different logic bubble. It is too easy (and simplistic) to adopt the former position; dismissing what has happened by using the rhetoric of "post-truth" and "pseudoscience", in the way that Prof. Green does here.
In sum
Whatever our views and feelings on the particular issues that Prof. Green uses to illustrate his argument, the challenge of taking complexity seriously is not advanced by kidding ourselves that other people have been duped by lies. Or that they have been misled by what elsewhere have been labelled "populist" arguments; usually interpreted as socially regressive and intellectually bereft. It requires each one of us instead, to:
- listen respectfully (if questioningly) to others' perspectives, feelings, motivations, and concerns;
- reflect seriously on what, in light of this, we think might be going on;
- acknowledge and explore our own contribution, as a participants in - and co-creators of - the current context in which we find ourselves;
- accept that our own perspective - like everyone else's - can only ever be partial, in the sense of being both incomplete and one-sided.
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