I’m working on an article on the inherent messiness of our lives and how sameness and uniformity in our society is celebrated to our collective and individual decrement. It’s based on this wonderful conversation with Ron Kersic almost a year ago.
The analogy we use is this: like the Wizard of Oz, we try to fool ourself to believe in an ordered, simple and polished world. Like in the tale with the wizard, there is a curtain that hides the true mechanics on how things work.
However, the order and simplicity is a ruse and we unlearned how to deal with the things behind the curtain: the messiness, the complexity. This puts a lot of power to the ones that control the complexity and the complexity is ever expanding. In the meantime we have shaped our behaviour, looks and jobs to this overly simplified aesthetic of the world. Like soma it soothes us in a sense of comfort and complacency.
Inevitability the wizard of Oz is going to run out of curtain soon. The messiness cannot be hidden and complexity will be exposed. It might be caused by a sudden and disruptive event where all layers of our society are exposed.
Now, what skills and mindset should be abundant in such a scenario? How might we change our perspective from messiness, patina and complexity to it being our first nature, rather than an undesirable situation? Would our sameness still be a force that binds us, like a community, or would we wake up with a sense of disgust and need to undo our personal uniformity and being overwhelmed by the immense bandwidth of the future?
Should we perhaps embrace the messiness, tare down the curtains and equip ourself with the tools to deal with complexity, to grow into it and this way creating a more equitable world, where no one controls us implicit, or ‘protects’ us from complexity? Where community is the answer to uniformity perhaps?
I know, it’s a bit heady, but I just want to put this wonderful episode of It’s Just A Model in the lime light. More to come soon.
By the way: if you like books on these topics … Listen to Ron. He’s truly a fountain of interesting philosophical sources and books.
Embracing messiness, or the patina of complexity
