The Complexity Equation
It all began with headlines. With newspapers vying for the punchiest title, that one-liner that would attract eyeballs. Then radio and tv came along, and eventually the soundbite was born. Clips that were easy to consume, that could be played over and over on a loop, conveying an idea without the need for extensive analysis. In the hands of savvy marketing people, it became a powerful tool in the rush to control messaging.
With 24-hours cable news channels, speed and churn rate took over. Information became a never ending flood of topics meant to glue viewers to their screen. The news turned into infotainment, numbing us with incessant banter, too often in lieu of serious examination. With shock jocks, the lines blurred further. Journalism, entertainment, editorials, facts...all indistinguishable, all wrapped in faux outrage to score points and jack up advertising revenues.
And then came social media.
In his book Stolen Focus, Johann Hari discusses a study by Sune Lehmann, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark, that looked at the average lifespan of topics on media platforms, going back to the 1800s. The resulting mathematical model shows a steady reduction of their shelf life, due to the ever-increasing quantity of content, with each passing decade. It's a clear correlation, with signs that point to a reciprocal erosion of our attention span:
“But we told ourselves we could have a massive expansion in the amount of information we are exposed to, and the speed at which it hits us, with no costs. This is a delusion: “It becomes exhausting.” More importantly, Sune said, “what we are sacrificing is depth in all sorts of dimensions…. Depth takes time. And depth takes reflection.”
Yes. And a complex world requires depth.
Decades of skimming, of glitzy chyrons and shallow commentary, have left too many of us uninterested in serious, prolonged focus, on any subject. Social media only accelerated the trend. We can't learn anything in thirty seconds. We can't grasp a complicated issue from a paragraph, or a video rant. And yet we've acclimated to this impatient world of short summaries and digests, conditioning ourselves to rarely read, or listen, beyond a few irate sentences scattered across an algorithmic feed. We bury ourselves in echoes, believing repetition is knowledge.
The consequences are global, and catastrophic. A return to isolationism, intolerance, and the very real danger of modern democracies falling. Because populism—a term I deeply resent for implying an actual concern for people—depends on an indifferent, or uninformed, populace. It depends on intellectual apathy and a refusal to acknowledge truth if it doesn't square with one's tribal beliefs. Populism feeds on anger and prejudice, sure. But it also preys on genuine pain and fear, on the hopes of an easy fix in a world that cannot easily be fixed.
The irony of authoritarian regimes is that they often come to power democratically, allowed to rise through the very principles they seek to destroy—integrity, fairness, objectivity, justice, neutrality. They use honour-bound institutions to their advantage, squeezing the juice from every possible loophole, while they play by different rules. Fear of bias will push traditional news organizations to tread lightly, to equivocate, in effect minimizing the threat. When both sides are presented as legitimate, regardless of words, or actions, or ideology, it provides the illusion of normalcy, and shelters the unacceptable from scrutiny.
Democracy doesn't die in darkness: it dies in cowardice and greed. In morass, in a haze of hubris, correctness, and complacency. It dies under a firehose of lies that overload the system until nothing is real anymore.
Until we stop thinking.
Until we're numb.
Until it's too late.
…
The laws governing our universe break down at the subatomic level, or past certain gravitational thresholds. Order would be but one, thin, overstretched layer full of splits and ruptures. It's a little dizzying, even frightening, to think of our reality as a system almost too complex to comprehend.... but isn't it exhilarating too? How truth is in fact so much more nuanced and intricate?
Life is a spectrum of ever changing greys and we shouldn't be terrified by this, or embrace those who dumb it down or twist it for the sake of power.
We should be awestruck.
