🕸 TREE 210: Complexity and simplicity

This week I’ve written about the complexity of parasites, forests, your cells, your body and all the bacteria inside it. I wrote about how what you eat is connected to how you grew up, industrial production, capitalism, economics, culture, politics, media and psychology. It’s all leading to this:

When someone tells you they have an easy solution to a big problem, they are either selling you something or trying to win your vote.

Also, they are wrong.

Once you start to see the complexity of all the systems of existence, it’s easy to despair. The problems seem too hard. They seem literally impossible to solve. At this moment of dis-illusionment, when you see complexity and your instinct is to retreat into ignorance and inaction, the most important thing to do is to keep seeing. Lean into the complexity.

When you do the work of understanding complex systems – not perfectly, but enough – you begin to see simple actions that move things in the right direction, that set off virtuous cycles of improvement.

We love to applaud the few people who beat the odds. But they will always a small minority. We know about the mouse of willpower. The truly amazing work comes with understanding complexity enough to find simple actions that raise the odds for everyone.

Fun fact: you don’t have to figure it all out for yourself. Learn enough so you can use your energy and actions intelligently to help the people and organisations who do have a deep understanding of the complexity of the thing you care about. Big problems are solved by communities.

Something for the weekend

Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone 25 years ago. That one action has transformed the complex ecosystem of the national park for good. Start reading about it here. Then maybe do some googling. It’s a wonderful story.

Happy complexificating
Jeff

Had to be done.

The Memory of TREE playlist – every song from every email: