#23: WHY COMPLEXIFY IF YOU CAN GENERALIZE?

I was recently reading some texts about subjects that are very new to me and I was amazed at how much different and complex information there was. I didn’t know that in such a simple subject there could be such a diversity of relevant subjects to think about and discuss. Then I thought: we spend so much time ignoring the complexity of so many issues in our daily lives that we don’t even know how reasonable we are being in relation to our own lives.

Generalization saves our internal “battery”, because, of course, if I am at the market to buy potatoes to make with my fish, “all potatoes are the same” is much easier to process than “potato A has more fiber than potato B but potato A has a more prominent taste than potato C, and we still have to consider potatoes D and E which are local and cheaper…..”

Of course, a certain kind of generalization is important if we are to operate in the world more effectively (because, really, if we are going to debate which potato is better every time we go to the market, it gets tricky to do anything else but go to the market to buy potatoes!). But the generalizations of complex situations in our lives, which have a very big impact on the quality of our existence, must be debated and taken into consideration.

The reduction of complexity and generalization of social events can have great repercussions not only in our lives but also in the lives of the people around us, and this should be something that we should pay a little more attention to when talking about it being simply this way or that way. Immigrants are not the same, viruses are not the same, and delusions are not all the same either. Everything is much more complex and admitting that complexity is the first step to having a clearer view of what is really going on around us.

So, to practice, think of a very simple subject that you usually generalize about, but try to make it more complex. Go deep and try to see beyond this general statement. You will surely discover things that you never knew could exist, and from then on you will see the world with different eyes: eyes of complexity.