On the difference between complicatedness
and complexity
(1) Without first grasping the difference between true complexity
and mere complicatedness, how shall we ever know simplicity?
How shall we ever know the joy of discovering for ourselves
a route across an impossibly labyrinthian high mountain pass,
or of then returning to a camp with nothing but a stream, a fire,
and a roof made of stars?
(2) Complicatedness is difficulty which serves no purpose; it
is difficulty which is unnecessary and is therefore without reason
or meaning; Remarkably, in this sense, complicatedness
in Nature does not exist.
|
| go to the Picture/Poem Poster of the above Miniatures: Simplicity/Complexity (prints 81/2 x 11" (A4)) Also available as .pdf download (60 k) | |
 |
(3) Sometimes the shift in the usage of but
a single word reveals
a deeper, unseen, yet potentially radical transformation of
the way we perceive the world around us. New words in this
sense are not so much invented, but rather emerge out of a need—
sometimes an urgent one—to manifest in clear form new meaning.
The practice of metaphysics is in this sense by no means merely
an intellectual exercise, but is, like a yoga we do every day, a
space both public and private in which we can step back from
the pressures of the present moment and look at life together
as a living, moving whole. That is why poetry, once we come
to see it as the energy of essence, or of new meaning, or of insight,
made manifest in the speaking voice, stands at the very center
of this endeavor like a mountain made of the purest of light.
(4) The simplest and most powerful of all possible
tests
is the test of doing without.
|
| go to the Picture/Poem Poster of the above Miniatures: KEEP OFF! shown at the right (prints 81/2 x 11" (A4)) Also available as .pdf download (40 k) | |
 |
(5) A World of New Possibilities
There are inventions which impose structure
on the mind,
forcing us to think as we might walk with one foot tied behind
the back, in unnatural ways; And there are inventions which are
already implicit in the workings of the mind at its best, letting
us create with all the ease of freely flowing water. The humble
hyperlink, tying together all the unique thoughts of the world
without arbitrary limit or boundaries, brings home and makes
explicit a key fact of the new millennium—that the mind
of humanity is indeed somehow one.
