Trying to find the solutions to the Covid-19 crisis (5 million dead and 6 billion lives disrupted) and the Global Financial Crisis ($400 Trillion debt, literally unpayable) are causing havoc around the world. This manifests itself as a battle between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, Capitalists vs. Socialists, Republicans vs. Democrats, Traditionalists vs Modernists etc. It’s leading to an increasingly fragmented world where each side believes it is 100% correct. But the truth is that every side believes there is a solution to the big problems; and the reality is that sometimes there is not a solution.
As modern humans, we are used to believing that we can accomplish anything. We can, for instance, put a man on the Moon, defeat cancer a lot of the time, travel faster than the speed of sound, and create vaccines for a pandemic outbreak in a couple of months (minus trials). There’s a lot of reason to believe we are very resilient, intelligent, and innovative creatures. Clearly we have built technology and civilizations that are more impressive, resilient, and complex than any ape, giraffe, or jellyfish ever could. Human beings are creative, innovative, and committed to problem solving. However, our prosperity and high quality of life comes at a cost: complexity.
Compared to our pre-civilized ancestors, our socities are complex social and economic systems that grow and conquer problems through technology, increasing knowledge, and new complex solutions. A neworked computer can do a lot more mathematical computation and problem-solving than a man with an abacus. That seems like a great thing. It is, except it creates an achilles heel; complexity.
In episode 1004/ Season 103 of my podcast “Get Your World On”, I talk about the 1989 crash-landing of a DC-10 airliner in Sioux City, Iowa. The problem was that modern airliners had become so complex, so filled with succesful redundant systems, and so technology distanced from human guidance; that in an event of a catastrophic failure, the pilots literally didn’t know how to solve the problem. Technological advancement had made airplanes extremely safe. But in the event of a catastrophic failure, all of that complexity and technology that worked 99.9% of the time, led to over 100 deaths in that airliner.
That’s the issue we face today. The truth is Capitalism, pharmaceuticals, our modern governments, and our technology HAVE WORKED EXTREMELY WELL; but they are not fool proof. Not only are they prone to errors from time to time, they are all extremely complex meaning that there will be problems that will arise that have no solution because our complex societies created unsolvable complex problems.
Yes, there are vaccines that work. Yes vaccines can kill people. Yes pharmaceutical companies are corrupt. Yes, they have saved millions of people. Yes Capitalism has raised global living standards like nothing else. Yes Capitalism has created a wealth disparity like nothing else. Yes, our political parties have passed meaningful legislation that has helped us to become prosperous societies. Yes, our political parties are corrupt, inefficient, and almost beyond repair.
For 12,000 years, human civilizations have solved complex problems with complex solutions that then led to problems with higher costs and diminishing returns. Ancient Rome passed a tipping point where it’s growth and wealth became an unmanageable problem. We will now go into a period of needing to re-invent and do our best to simplify, but also rely on more complexity. Whether it’s energy supply, supply-chains, financial instruments, dealing with pandemics, or processing elections, we will have to discard our old prejudices and well-known, standby solutions.
That means understanding that your political party or your favorite economic system may not have all the answers. In fact, it may have met it’s top level of effectiveness for the 21st Century. It may mean understanding that a non-living virus that mutates can destroy any easy “fact” narrative when it exposes itself to 6 billion very different, complicated, individual human bodies. It may mean understanding that the laptop or phone you are reading this on, is dependent on a dangerous level of manpower work-hours, supply, shipping and geopolitical security due to its dependence on microchips, rubber, coltin, silver, and many other minerals contained inside your device.
We live in an age that hates nuance because it’s looking for simple slogans that promise quick solutions. But unbundling our complexity will require a whole new frame of mind. The sooner people can let go of the things they THINK have always worked in the past, and consider the possibility that we need new solutions, the better. Paradoxically, the most dangrous thing in our complicated world is simplistic answers. Why? Because we have created a world that is anything but simple.