Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
— ATTRIBUTED TO LEONARDO DA VINCI
I had a friend named Carey who had a way of complicating arguments so they would go on for a long time and nobody would win. He would drag in all kinds of irrelevant information and go off on tangents that left me scratching my head, wondering, What were we talking about anyway? Eventually I gave up trying to win arguments, and just prayed to resolve the issue at hand. Even that was difficult.
Carey had developed a propensity to hide in complexity when he grew up as a child of an alcoholic and needed to feel safe from being hurt. So he learned to weave tangled webs around himself to keep people at a distance and avoid being wounded. He succeeded at staying safe but lost at being present. His mind and life were so layered with complications that he rarely saw the light they were covering.
One day Carey and I participated in a seminar led by an intuitive healer named Mary. Mary led an exercise in which each class member was asked to stand in the center of the group and improvise a silent dance or mime. When it was Carey’s turn, he stood in the circle by himself for a few moments and then began to pull people from the circle to join him. “Ah!” Mary commented. “Hiding in complexity!”
If Carey felt safe to be himself, he would not need to weave a camouflage to crouch behind. His value was not the problem—he was a great guy—but his perception of his value was shaky, so he had to don a costume to escape from being exposed. But the self he was hiding was not his true self. Only the false self seeks to hide. The best thing that could ever happen to Carey (like all of us) would be to recognize that his true self was lovable and valuable, and it did not need a thicket of complexity to disguise it.
Caves in the Mountains
Much of our society—especially government, law, medicine, economics, religion, and the corporate world—has piled layers upon layers of density to obscure what could easily be said or done in a simpler way. While some of these disciplines are complex by nature, practitioners often use their esoteric caves in their mountains to shield themselves from exposure.
The 2008 worldwide economic crisis offers a dramatic example of the ill effects of hiding in complexity. The crash occurred primarily because banks kept loaning more and more money to less-than-qualified borrowers, and leveraged themselves to a point where in some cases the institutions’ debt-to-asset ratio was as high as 30 to 1. When the volume of defaulting borrowers reached a tipping point, the house of cards caved in. The downfall was set up when mortgage lenders loaned money to unstable households and then sold the notes to larger investment banks, who then consolidated the mortgages with car, student, and credit-card loans into bulk collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which were then sold to investors all around the world.
No one in this chain of sale was at risk except the final holder, who by that time had completely lost track of the ill health of the original loan. Meanwhile each of the middlemen was making money on the transactions. As real estate values in America skyrocketed (doubling between 1996 and 2006), many financiers compromised integrity to close the sale. Lenders engaged in subprime high-interest loans, lending to risky borrowers at as little as .07 percent down and 99.3 percent financing. If the borrower succumbed to foreclosure, he could walk away with virtually no loss, leaving the bank with an unsellable property in a depressed market. Banks paid billions of dollars to Wall Street rating agencies, which gave them solid reviews even as they were collapsing. Banks were simultaneously selling loans and taking out huge insurance policies, betting that their borrowers would default, then collecting on claims when that occurred. This system offered so many illicit angles to turn a profit and so many places to hide that it became a runaway horse no one could harness.
Robert Gnaizda, director of consumer-advocacy agency Greenlining Institute, called Secretary of the Treasury Alan Greenspan’s attention to 150 complex adjustable mortgages by one lender alone. Gnaizda reports that Greenspan commented, “If you had a doctorate in math, you wouldn’t be able to understand which was good for you and which wasn’t.”
Yet the balance of nature will not perpetuate a system that defies integrity. Because the financial system was not sound, it had to crash. None of us enjoyed participating in the process, but ultimately it was a course correction toward fewer hiding places and more responsible investing.
The universe is not against complexity. Creation is complex beyond human understanding. The universe will just not put up with hiding in complexity, using a functional system for dysfunctional purposes. The nature of bubbles is to burst. The nature of healthy seeds planted in fertile ground is to grow. At every moment we are choosing whether to ride on a bubble or send our roots into solid ground.
How Simple Can It Get?
When Henry David Thoreau returned from his famous sojourn at Walden Pond, he paid a visit to Ralph Waldo Emerson (who owned the Walden property and had rented it to Thoreau). “What did you learn from your retreat?” Emerson asked Thoreau.
“Simplify, simplify, simplify,” Thoreau answered proudly.
“Hmm,” Emerson replied. “One ‘simplify’ would have been quite sufficient.”
The truth is simple. If it were complicated, everyone would understand it.
— Source unknown
The closer a statement is to the truth, the more simply it is expressed. The more words, the more moving parts, the more rules, the more sleight of hand, the more experts required to interpret … the more room for hiding and manipulation.
He who says does not know.
He who knows does not say.
— Lao-tzu
You can assess the integrity of a statement, person, or system by how many layers you need to plumb to get to the truth behind it. Perhaps you have had the experience of being with someone you love, and your communication is complete without words. If you try to use words, you diminish the pristine quality of the moment. Words can express the truth, but more often they are a substitute or distraction from it.
Real communication is energetic and has little to do with verbiage. If you want to do a rewarding experiment, see how few words you really need in order to say what you need to say. You will be amazed by how strong and clear your communication becomes when you say more by saying less. You will also be astounded by all the extraneous, meaningless, distracting words passing between people.
A web-design expert told me, “After you design your home page, go back and eliminate 50 percent of the words. Then go back and eliminate another 50 percent of the words. Then you will have an effective home page.”
I have learned the same principle when editors have asked me to cut back the number of words in a book or article. I love to edit this way because I must get to the essence of what I want to say. I am always surprised by how many words I can remove and still get my point across.
As you practice making your words count, you may find yourself becoming more telepathic. In Mutant Message Down Under, Marlo Morgan describes her walkabout with an Aboriginal tribe in Australia. During that sojourn the tribespeople spoke little and sang a lot. Most of their communication was psychic. They told Marlo that the purpose of the voice is singing, and real communication is from mind to mind, heart to heart.
Where to Search
Nasrudin’s neighbor came home one evening to find Nasrudin on his hands and knees under a streetlight, searching for some object. “Did you lose something?” the fellow asked.
“My house key,” Nasrudin explained.
Wanting to be of service, the neighbor got down on the ground with Nasrudin and helped him pick through the grass. Half an hour later the neighbor asked, “Do you remember where you dropped it?”
“Over there,” answered Nasrudin, pointing to a spot many yards away, near his doorstep.
Stunned, the neighbor stood up and asked, “Then why are you looking here?”
“Because there is more light here,” Nasrudin answered.
Sometimes there seems to be more light where everyone is looking, even if no one is finding.
If you take enough people to the middle of nowhere, it starts to feel like somewhere.
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According to A Course in Miracles, the ego created the world as a hiding place, and the values of the world are the direct opposite of truth. The Course further states that if you want to know the truth, reverse everything the world has taught you.
It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.
— Tom Stoppard
If you have not found solace in complexity, try simplicity. You might just find your lost key right where you left it.
As the world becomes more and more complicated, simplicity shines more brightly by contrast. Those who have an investment in hiding in complexity weave convoluted games and systems to conceal their spoils, while those who find clarity more attractive will exit the caves of illusion and find their way to the sun. Runaway complexity wins only a losing game, for no one escapes the web woven to entrap others. Those who trust the truth do not need to cover it up. They stand confidently upon it.