Thoughts
March 3, 2009
As I try to put together new knowledge with old, I’m struck by how important culture and society are to me. I’m a scientist and engineer by experience and training. Qualifications and work experience coming out of every orifice, yet what I want to survive any of the various impending apocalypses (apocali ?) is not a physical form but cultural expression.
The most important thing in the world is not even on this world, but an expression of our internal worlds.
Cultural regression is the scariest thing imaginable. A step backwards. A reduction in mind.
I meet people who equate simplicity with merit and hark back to ‘the good old days’. It puzzles me. The known laws of physics, chemistry and biology tend to macro-scale complexity, so to strive for simplicity seems to me to be swimming against the tide. It is the hardest thing to engineer a ‘perfect’ surface or a ‘perfect’ sphere. The tendency for complexity gets in the way, and then it gets dirty or pockmarked and illusion of perfection is broken.
Maybe simplicity only exists in the complexity of the human mind.
