There is a constant concern that modern society is far too complex for our children at this advanced stage of development, leaving the dears strung out and distracted.
But John Dewey was wringing his hands in the late 1800's about the prospect that life was too complex for the children, leaving them distracted and strung out, and that educational concepts needed to be simplified.
Alas, to the common perception, observable reality appears as infinitely complex. The Inupiat look out over the snow and see a vast textural galaxy and endless stories. Amazonian tribes possess dizzying accounts of the forest life. Various indigenous American tribes pass down traditions that map out complex spirit worlds.
So it seems that the complexity comes into play as a limited observer seeks to understand some swathe of the observable universe, so as to navigate, subsist in it, or even manipulate and control it.
This investigation never ends. The inflation theorists look out and find ever-stranger and sophisticated cosmic structures and movements, the further their inquiry pulls back. And the string and quantum theorists, the deeper they focus in, find unfolding landscapes of complexity that baffle and frustrate the understanding.
It is still meaningful to speak of complex societies, as there is an actual material and ideological extension of the administrative and technological structures, owing in part to the force of expansion and mass volume that is to be managed. Complexity, as we often colloquially refer to it, may just be that which lies within our locus of control, and our field of perception.
The tree extends itself in ever more complex networks of foliage above and roots below, so as to capture sunshine, water, and nutrients and maintain itself.
