I’ve been extremely frustrated in recent years by one of the frost-free hydrants that I need for my hoophouse and greenhouse. I’ve had to dig four feet down to fix it twice. Some of that is my own fault — leaving hoses attached during a freeze, but some is the original design and materials. Either way, it’s become one of those huge problems in my mind that I just want to go away.
I shouldn’t feel this way. A faucet is a complicated problem, but it isn’t a complex one.
There are important differences between complication and complexity. Complicated problems are those that follow logical rules and can be understood and solved by humans. Rockets, wrist watches and frost-free hydrants are complicated technologies, but they follow predictable patterns and can be fixed.
Complexity, on the other hand, is something that has order and logic but that is also unpredictable. We as humans cannot fully control complex systems.
Complexity implies a thought-through design. Nature is complex. Not only do healthy soils contain a diversity of microorganisms; those bacteria, fungi, and algae — millions of different species and varieties — interact with each other and with plants in ways that we only understand in the most basic ways. The functions of the organelles within the single cell of any one type of bacteria are similarly complex. The molecules that make up the organelles are continually reacting with each other in almost infinitely different ways. The atoms that make up those molecules are made up of quarks, and maybe those are made of something else too, and we don’t understand the physics that make any of it work.
Complexity, then, is something to respect, to be in awe of, and to appreciate – not a problem to attempt to solve.
I realized recently that I was even confusing the complex with the complicated in my own relationships. I often err in thinking, “That’s too complicated”, and try to just make interpersonal problems go away. The better, more loving answer is to appreciate another person’s complexity. The person I wrongly judge as too complicated is actually concerned with many good things that I should likely be concerned with myself.
We do something analogous in farming when we think of weeds and pests as complications. Just get rid of the problem with this simple chemical solution, we’re told. The better course of action, of course, is to embrace the complexity. Weeds and pests — along with all the other plants, insects and animals on our farms — are there for a reason. They exist within a complex ecosystem that we do need to disturb in order to grow crops, but the ecosystem is too complex to fully control as humans. It’s much better to try to manage the complexity by encouraging nature than to just eliminate unwanted complications.
Don’t treat complicated but solvable problems, like frost-free hydrants, as complex. More importantly, though, don’t treat complex systems like nature (and people!) as mere complications that we can control.
And that’s the view from the country.
