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We cannot grasp the full causal web behind any event—its linkages sprawl into near-infinite detail.
So we simplify: we model the visible threads, stitch coincidences into a satisfying "cause."
Expand the model far enough, however, and it becomes a conspiracy. As the network grows, correlations weaken and fray; what remains dominant is not evidence but an emotionally directed story that "feels truer" than a mass of fragmented facts.
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A senator’s demand for a yes-or-no answer on Edward Snowden’s status as a traitor reveals a trap by stripping context. Reducing complex truths to binaries repeatedly fails, yet it is a tool continually employed.
Are all whistleblowers traitors or ethical paragons? Is revealing a partner’s health issue betrayal or care?
Simplistic binary (or tribal) thinking obscures nuance, undermining responsibility and understanding of categorical delineation. Thus, to avoid the trap, we eschew firm statements, falling into another trap: to be labeled untrustworthy relativists.
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Nature counters pollution with systems that redistribute toxins, restoring balance.
Yet, purity is elusive—creation and destruction intertwine, and every act of purification risks new pollution.
Philosophically, no “natural state” exists; everything evolves dynamically with no set point in the past to draw comfort from and no fixed lines in the present upon which to rest.
Lessons emerge: poison is simple, purity complex; destruction easy, creation hard.
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Hand-pump water and the goal is the water itself—simple, direct. Bolt on a motor, and suddenly it’s not just water but a resource, reshaped by progress into something more complex.
The progressive sees a new tool demanding new solutions and rushes to embrace, adapt, and dream of water flowing freely; the conservative sees the same old needs now tangled with a motor to fix.
According to Victor Davis Hanson, the difference is to assume that because we have progressed, certain ideas, such as free speech or due process, are no longer applicable in the modern world.
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Reality is inherently complex, while fiction can be simplified.
Truth, bound to explain reality, often demands complexity. Those who favor simplicity reshape truth as fiction: simple.
Consider the oddity in this “preference for simplicity” when applied to labor: cognitive labor is complex and dabbles in the fictional as it simultaneously complicates and creates/narrates the world, while manual effort is seen as dumb, machine-like simplicity, yet it is based entirely on reality.
The truth/fiction and complex/simple comparison falters, with much labor based upon once complex and seemingly fictional theories that are obviously truthful now but reduced to accessibility.
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We know the most straightforward answers are not always the truth (Occam’s razor), and the shortest path is not through (cutting the Gordian knot), and occasionally greater complexity, such as quantum mechanics or string theory, may describe our universe more accurately than Newtonian mechanics.
Still, in the case of ideology, it always discards complexity for reductive universals. It is where these ideas clash with reality that complexity emerges, meaning our need for simplicity creates complexity by revealing actuality.
Instead, our ideology forms idealism: "we will dream a world in which we shall not be taken advantage of," and our rebellion against the actual shall be punished. However, we will have made the world more complicated in our attempt to simplify it.
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It is a common truism that you ignore what too easily comes to you, taking it for granted to your detriment. (too much love, too much stability, too much confidence)
How about having too much information accessible too easily?
The reduced (pre-synthesized) data we access online atrophies our ability to think rationally and engage in healthy logic. Much like processed food, which diminishes health in favor of artificial, quick, excessive caloric uptake, informational sound bytes and scintillating headlines are a stand-in for the labor of intelligence.
In the infosphere, we no longer have to work to “make sense,” so we ingest ready-made nonsense: Hamburger-helper politics. The ease makes us lazy and forgetful, treating “convenience” as preferable to “quality” or “complexity.”
Many of us are looking for a return to gourmet intellect but no longer possess the palette after our fast-fact diet. It really is easier to shift positions against your own desires and claim McDonald’s is not just acceptable but preferable (tweeting a pithy line about anti-elitist class solidarity) than to learn, labor, and prepare your own meal.
We have been given a gift of too much, making us irrational and self-destructive, tasteless, and intellectually obese: bloated on empty facts.
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Reading Foucault and Nietzsche convinces us that power relations and the “will to power” underlie all dynamics and institutions.
However, this revelation reduces everything to a single drive of importance, ignoring the traditional binary of secular/profane versus holy/sacred.
The acceptance of “power” instead of “sacred/profane” collapses the binary; it flattens humans back into utilitarian monsters, entirely secular.
More interestingly, to accept that there is an unattainable realm of ideals and hold them sacred creates a universal hypocrisy: we cannot achieve perfection and must remain humble and merciful given our failure to achieve the unattainable perfection. Yet, acceptance is not condoning.
Instead of limiting hypocrisy through attempting sacred alignment “power” sees hypocritical behavior as necessary and useful, valid as a stratagem. This denies justice and civility to reinstate “might is right.”
In this sense, power as priit macy only reverts humanity back to animality.
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The only reason an idea takes hold is because it answers an emotional need. This is an instinctual recognition: the idea or message makes sense of the world in a way that aligns with your experience.
This implies two things:
1. The previous ideology and common sense messaging are no longer adequate.
2. As the world progresses and grows more complex, we need more intricate and nuanced ways to interpret and process information.
Yet, in the face of increasing complexity, the appeal of simplicity endures, hence the rise of conspiracy theories. These fantasies offer neat explanations (aliens, government cabals, Jews, a fake moon landing), but reconciling them with reality requires increasingly convoluted arguments, leading to shambolic constructions. Complexity, it seems, is inescapable.
Historically, humanity’s progress has involved learning, moving beyond, and creating ever more complex systems to sustain ourselves and stave off boredom. Our simple pleasures require oddly sophisticated machines. As such, the most simplistic answer revert back to understanding human truths; classic myths which are never simple.
Even access to these stories and information increases, meaning every response must account for more variables than ever before, necessitating more sophisticated tools for reduction and understanding to break through what we fail to see.
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To explain where you are now and predict (or forecast) the future requires understanding history, mythology, human nature, and science.
With only partial models (or only a couple of disciplines), your predictions will be biased and your forecasts will be askew.
Amplified ignorance across an entire democracy, manipulated by mediated algorithms, reduces the ability of people to model; they only react instinctively, emotionally. The result is that simplistic governance will take over as citizens become simpletons.
There is nothing wrong with simple. The problem is that complexities manifest, seemingly producing themselves from simple starts (just a few proteins produce all of life), and require multifaceted consideration and foresight to evolve even moderately alongside.
