Tim Wyatt - England
The author near the village church of Rudston, East Yorkshire which has the UK's tallest megalith standing 27 feet tall
For many decades we’ve found ourselves swerving on a steep upward curve of ever-increasing complexity fuelled by the relentless ascent of Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence and other assorted bits of technology in what I suggest is fast becoming digital tyranny. This complexity has spawned the deeply flawed belief that simplicity is somehow primitive, uncivilized and therefore undesirable, something which doesn’t belong in the modern age. Some feel it should be consigned to the past.
Simplicity has become an enemy. We entertain the spurious notion that spiralling complexity equals sophistication and progress. The more complex, the greater the advancement. Hence, we opt for even more complexity without considering what this really entails.
We should pause – all of us – and reconsider this fallacy. And we should do it immediately.
Except we can’t. And we won’t. We’re too deeply locked into this technological treadmill which we adore, worship and fetishise. We’ve become too addicted to algorithms, virtual reality, hip hardware and all the other modern accoutrements and fripperies. These things which now control us are in turn controlled by powerful vested interests which always ruthlessly oppose those who question or attempt to scupper their plans. As well as having unlimited potential for mass manipulation, the deceitful digital agenda which assaults us may well prove to be both suicidal and genocidal.
Complexity provides an excellent weapon of control for the contemporary world. Mass confusion can easily be created via systems, data and digital over-doses and such deception spawns various by-products such as instability, uncertainty and chaos. Confusion produces a general sense of dis-ease and discomfort along with a lingering malaise which over time drives more and more people into the realms of temporary or permanent insanity. And mad people are easier to manipulate. Look at the monumental mental health crisis unfolding in the West – especially among children. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising when infants gravitate to smart phones almost as soon as breast-feeding stops. People desperately search for meaning like shipwreck survivors desperately clutching on to fragments of driftwood.
In a few short decades, technology has graduated from being a useful assistant to a potent foe and even arch-abuser. And yet it’s nearly always portrayed as the liberator and life-enhancer even when it quite clearly threatens to become the destroyer of souls – and to quote the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer’s famous words, maybe even the destroyer of worlds.
Technology now almost exclusively conditions our place in the world and the universe. It’s ubiquitous and is becoming more so every day. Even modern-day hunter-gatherers concealed in impenetrable jungle somewhere have digital connectivity. There is no escape from this web any longer. On the one hand technology moulds our perception and consciousness and on the other hand it eventually stops us from thinking altogether. This is the crucial and critical point we’re at.
Technology has created a world which no one likes nor understands very much any more. It perpetually throws up new barriers and discomforts. These days virtually nothing can be achieved without QR codes, passwords and negotiating the increasingly perplexing, bureaucratic and labyrinthine layers of cyberspace. The Zeitgeist is one beset by utter confusion and uncertainty as even the most basic values, norms of decency and cherished certainties are progressively dismantled. Why is it that more often than not technology communicates fear rather than hope. Why is it that a technology that was meant to simplify and enhance communication winds up alienating and enraging its users?
Money has always been problematic and for some deeply addictive. In recent decades it’s been made ever more incomprehensibly complex by the financial alchemists who’ve turned it from a simple means of exchange into a self-replicating behemoth with a life and hidden agenda all its own. Its original function as a simple means of exchange has long vanished. This new supercharged energy of money has pervaded every avenue and backwater of life. Money is a mystery concealed in a hologram of complications.
Complexity doesn’t make people happier. In fact, I suggest it very often it has quite the opposite effect. And despite all the propaganda, making things ever more complicated certainly doesn’t enhance personal well-being to any marked degree. We’re drowning in a foaming tidal wave of complexity which hasn’t only gone viral but has developed into a pandemic for which there appears to be no antidote. We’re suffocating from information overload.
The cyclic reality is that one day there will be a return to simplicity although it may take catastrophic and devastating events to achieve this. In the meantime complexity continues to disconnect us from the natural world and the rhythms of life. It also further distances us from our inner beings and higher selves. Why bother to use our minds when machines can do it much better? And quicker.
If we pursue the existing trajectory of entombing ourselves with a thickening patina of ever more complicated technology we run the risk that, ironically, the over-complicated systems that we’ve produced may well wind up destroying their creators. Even the ambitious and amoral architects of AI now admit this stark possibility. And so did the world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking shortly before he died. This grim scenario may be especially true as and when these devilish AI bots become self-reproducing and autonomous – and decide that destruction may be the best and indeed only option for mankind. Some people believe that because we’ve gone so far down this road that this option is now inevitable. I disagree. And here I adopt the advice of a stern old aunt of mine: ‘If you want your headache to go away, stop punching yourself in the face.’
One of the ineluctable cosmic principles is The Law Of Rhythm. Stated in its most basic form it means that things can only go in one direction for so long. The elastic can only stretch so far in any direction. Then a process of reversal is obliged to set in. This also involves The Law Of Cycles which dictates that a process of expansion must inevitably be followed by one of contraction – whether this be for the slimmest fraction of nano-second or for quadrillions of years.
Does this mean that complexity has stretched its elastic to its immediate pre-breaking point? Almost certainly not. And I’m sure that five, ten or fifty years down the line someone will longingly gaze back to 2024 with fond memories of how simple and easy life was back then. This is assuming, of course, that a natural disaster, world war, environmental, interplanetary or climatic catastrophe – or indeed over complexity itself – hasn’t destroyed us, or ironically, depleted us to a Stone Age level of simplicity.
Some people do yearn for simpler lives and a few manage to achieve it in one way or another. But seeking simplicity can get very complicated. In the same way that common sense isn’t common, those who do attempt to de-complexify their lives have to appreciate the deep paradox that simplicity isn’t always that simple to achieve. Moving from that well-paid job in the big, bustling, impersonal sprawling city to a steamy off-the-grid tropical paradise sounds ideal. But for a start you have to sacrifice those easily accessible cappuccinos for a hard-to-find fresh water. Food, shelter and fuel may also prove to be deeply problematic. And the snakes infesting your new jungle home are probably very different from those poisonous reptiles you encountered slithering through the office or the boardroom.
Throughout the world many young people have rejected the simplicity of village or small-town life for the alluring flesh-pots, cultural attractions and financial inducements the city offers. Village life can be dull, small-minded and lacking in innovation or stimulation. In Spain, Italy, Greece and many other places villages lie virtually empty as young people head en masse to their capitals or abroad for wider horizons and greater experience than village life can offer. They’re more than happy to exchange simplicity for the confounding complexities of metropolitan life. This is quite understandable even if it does turn the cities into exploding ants’ nests and leaves the countryside denuded and deprived of its young – or in other words, its future.
There is an intimate inter-relationship between material wealth and complexity. Without increasingly complicated technology and the complex systems needed to sustain life on this planet we wouldn’t own so many possessions. Nor could the global population have trebled in seventy years. This steep rise in population has, therefore, itself fuelled and accelerated complexity.
However, I strongly contend that many of the most satisfying and rewarding experiences of life are among the simplest. Falling in love, appreciating the stunning beauty of nature or being moved by a musical masterpiece are all essentially simple acts. A pauper and a plutocrat can stare at the same magnificent sunset. The man without wealth might look on it in awe and take it for what it is – a fiery and transitory phenomenon of the natural world. The billionaire might well do the same. But at the back of his mind he might be cooking up novel and ingenious ways in which he could patent and copyright this sunset and then sell it back to everyone else at a profit.
Perhaps throughout the ages old people like me have always railed about the growing complexities of life and yearned for long gone days when life was supposedly easier and people were nicer to one another. Maybe my fears and assertions about the dangers of over-complexity are well founded. But then we can only describe things as we see them.
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Tim Wyatt’s books are available from: www.firewheelbooks.co.uk
