People facing complexity either resort to a state of defiant boredom or desolation - the attitude of 'Makes no difference' or 'There is no use to it'. When we reflect upon why complexity is that frustrating, we will soon discover an insufficent concept manegement. For usually human beings follow the digital example and adjust their world view to strictly two-valued notions: rational - emotional, single - married, stupid - bright, successful - scholar. But in doing so, they do not differentiate the conncetion between these two concepts, but incidentally assume a contradictory relation - just like the black and white pattern. Either something will be A or B. And nothing else.
But as classical logic teaches us these two-sided relations create different kinds of oppositions. And the author cannot quit suspecting the frustrating thing about complexity is people wrongly assume there is only a contradictory relation. In other words: when people must realize the one preferred value is intricately connected with the rejected counterpart. Sustainability, for instance, from that point of view means we hope for time development which will reveal this connection. For that reason people sometimes spend money so that they can earn it.
That kind of complexity is indicated by paradox. If X and Y are oppositions and we wish to achieve X, then it will be absurd to aim at Y - at least this is what we think. But, as has been pointed out, there actually are instances we will exactly have to do that.
A similar oposition pair discussed ad nauseam concerns theory and practice. Here the boundaries run virtually institutionally, namely at the university and factory halls with each drawing the line between the theoretical and the practical world. Border crossers are roaringly invited now and then, ist is true, but they will scrape up to the end of days at the gates of the alien world. This is because in the end both sides are afraid the visitor from outside might seize the opportunity to speak and disturb the routine they have grown very fond of. If someone in the theoretical realm deos without certain words in certain situations, he or she will be exposed to contempt just the way if he or she does use them within the practical realm. Along the university and factory gates words shimmer between technical terms and double Dutch.
This difference is comfortable enough to arouse suspicion. Which is to say it is justified, but insufficiently backed. After all, it might be worth a minute of thinking if it is not so much the lack of practice, but the unsatisfactory theoretical orientation which makes the theorists think they can make nothing of practice. In turn, it might be rewarding, too, to think if the practical persons do not rather cherish an empirical, not a theoretical blind spot. For if we assume that Immanuel Kant, who has been recently been done the honour of being remembered, really was bright, then we ought to remember he settled the quarrel between theory and practice more than 200 years ago. In those days the theoretists called themselves rationalists, the practical persons empirists. As Kant pointed out, theory without practice is void, just as practice without theory is blind. Which means that theory will have failed to reflect suffiently upon practice if it can only be theoretically practical - while practice so far has deprived itself of the practical opportunity to incorporate theoretical knwoledge into action.
Thinking very practically (or acting very analytically) will help us to relaize how absurd that concept management really is - every theorists will always be a practical person and the other way round. This is because theory and practice form complementary terms controlling each other. We do something and see (Ancient Greek: theorein) what happens so that we can do something again so that we can see what happens so that we can do something and so on. Even the theorist in the flesh will know someone to deliver his food into his ivory tower, and even the most radical practical person has a certain notion of what he is doing - beyond the single case.
All in all, the trench quarrels between the self-styled theorists and practical persons know only one winner: mediocrity. In the long run it will jeopardy both sides - the theorists because one day they are bound to practically experience research budgets from the practice are missing, the practical persons because one day they will tehoretically understand why they are not competitive anymore.
But as classical logic teaches us these two-sided relations create different kinds of oppositions. And the author cannot quit suspecting the frustrating thing about complexity is people wrongly assume there is only a contradictory relation. In other words: when people must realize the one preferred value is intricately connected with the rejected counterpart. Sustainability, for instance, from that point of view means we hope for time development which will reveal this connection. For that reason people sometimes spend money so that they can earn it.
That kind of complexity is indicated by paradox. If X and Y are oppositions and we wish to achieve X, then it will be absurd to aim at Y - at least this is what we think. But, as has been pointed out, there actually are instances we will exactly have to do that.
A similar oposition pair discussed ad nauseam concerns theory and practice. Here the boundaries run virtually institutionally, namely at the university and factory halls with each drawing the line between the theoretical and the practical world. Border crossers are roaringly invited now and then, ist is true, but they will scrape up to the end of days at the gates of the alien world. This is because in the end both sides are afraid the visitor from outside might seize the opportunity to speak and disturb the routine they have grown very fond of. If someone in the theoretical realm deos without certain words in certain situations, he or she will be exposed to contempt just the way if he or she does use them within the practical realm. Along the university and factory gates words shimmer between technical terms and double Dutch.
This difference is comfortable enough to arouse suspicion. Which is to say it is justified, but insufficiently backed. After all, it might be worth a minute of thinking if it is not so much the lack of practice, but the unsatisfactory theoretical orientation which makes the theorists think they can make nothing of practice. In turn, it might be rewarding, too, to think if the practical persons do not rather cherish an empirical, not a theoretical blind spot. For if we assume that Immanuel Kant, who has been recently been done the honour of being remembered, really was bright, then we ought to remember he settled the quarrel between theory and practice more than 200 years ago. In those days the theoretists called themselves rationalists, the practical persons empirists. As Kant pointed out, theory without practice is void, just as practice without theory is blind. Which means that theory will have failed to reflect suffiently upon practice if it can only be theoretically practical - while practice so far has deprived itself of the practical opportunity to incorporate theoretical knwoledge into action.
Thinking very practically (or acting very analytically) will help us to relaize how absurd that concept management really is - every theorists will always be a practical person and the other way round. This is because theory and practice form complementary terms controlling each other. We do something and see (Ancient Greek: theorein) what happens so that we can do something again so that we can see what happens so that we can do something and so on. Even the theorist in the flesh will know someone to deliver his food into his ivory tower, and even the most radical practical person has a certain notion of what he is doing - beyond the single case.
All in all, the trench quarrels between the self-styled theorists and practical persons know only one winner: mediocrity. In the long run it will jeopardy both sides - the theorists because one day they are bound to practically experience research budgets from the practice are missing, the practical persons because one day they will tehoretically understand why they are not competitive anymore.
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