Simplicity – The lost art we must rediscover
21st-century living is complicated. But must it be?
When you look around you, it's easy to feel as if complexity is a requirement of the modern world. Most workplaces run via series after series of overcomplicated processes. To 'exist' today requires an ever-growing number of online profiles. Life seems impressive only so long as it's being continually pumped with more, more, MORE.
How did things get this way?
One problem seems to be who benefits from increased complexity. And most often, it's the corporate overlords trying to satisfy the need for constant growth. How can you expect corporations to benefit from simplicity? The adage 'Less is more' may be true in regard to your quality of life, but when is less ever more in terms of corporate bottom lines? For the corporation to get more, you need more. And what better way to get more than from an entity that must grow, grow, GROW?
To hell with simplifying processes by reducing unneeded steps. The real answer is MORE: More software, more automation, more problems to one day be fixed.
The people who want to sell you more are quick to peddle their tech du jour: generative AI. Regardless of what the prophets of AI will tell you, generative AI doesn't save time; it instead shifts where you spend your time, if you care about accurate work. Large language models (LLMs) often hallucinate, so you must double-check all their work, which negates any efficiency gains you're hoping for. Sure, humans are fallible and capable of bullshit just like LLMs, but humans are not fallible and capable of bullshit at the same scale as LLMs and generative AI.
So many of the people pushing generative AI just want to get paid to play with tech for a living. And for them to do that, you need to complicate your life with this half-baked technology that doesn't fix real problems.
Why unplug and focus on relationships that matter and provide value? Instead, choose MORE 'friends', MORE 'connections'. The more complexity you can handle, the more capable a human being you are. The more PRODUCTIVE you are. But how capable, how productive, do you need to be? When is enough enough?
Simplicity makes life more manageable. Simplicity is sustainable. But simplicity is hard. It's hard to see how you can simplify when complexity is all you know. And it's hard when complexity is all your peers know. Are you sure you can do that? they might ask. What makes you think you know better?
But we all know this complexity is distracting and exhausting. And, it's bullshit.
We feel it in our aching bones, in our tired eyes, in our foggy brains. We're caught in a hamster wheel we can't find the courage to jump off.
This complexity isn't serving us. There's so much pressure to add more to our lives, but we often get nothing out of it, other than more problems, more headaches, more distractions.
Jake LaCaze is getting old and has less time for bullshit these days.
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