THE LAW OF EXPLODING COMPLEXITY

Few people realize that the explosive tendency towards complexity is the first law of the universe. We may know that the universe expanded after the `Big Bang’ at an explosive speed with untold billions of changes and mutations to form all the planets, stars, comets, galaxies and other celestial phenomena that are whirling, swirling and reforming all around us but we may not have observed that complexity also affects every aspect of our world. The exponential expansion of human ideas and the things they make now boggles the mind, confuses the perplexed and leads many to seek escape in meditation or even in fanaticism.

We have witnessed how comprehensively micro chips have revolutionized our world. The explosive speed with which computers, digital cameras and cell phones have evolved have made earlier models, that were treasures just a decade ago, hopelessly bulky, unreliable and obsolete. They have also so completely revolutionized our televisions, music systems, refrigerators and ovens that the old systems are overnight worthless. Modern cars have more chips in them than there are in packets of wafers to control engine management, suspensions, braking, steering, comfort and safety in ways that were unthinkable a decade earlier. The same applies to all manufacturing processes where electronics has sailed past the age of mechanicals at virtually the speed of light rendering old plants and production systems instantly obsolete.

 The advancements in weaponry are even more frightening. When the machine gun was first widely deployed during the First World War it wrought such devastation among the ranks of the opposing armies that it made cavalry instantly obsolete and permanently changed the rules of battle. Air power became a decisive factor during the Second World War while Desert Storm demonstrated how smart weapons launched from ships and planes commanded the battlefield without the enemies even seeing each other. New technologies to communicate with seek and identify enemies and new weapons to incapacitate or kill them quickly made the conventional ordinance of most armies and police forces pitiful. And the tragedy is that these expensive systems now become obsolete almost as soon as they are commercially available. It is little surprise therefore that small bands of terrorists, smugglers, poachers and criminals often have better arms and communications equipment than the army, police or other custodians of law.

In the cultural world we have seen how jazz music that was the funeral dirge of a few poor blacks in the southern states of America a century ago caught on like wildfire to quickly become a huge element in music around the world and was to even influence classical and popular music across languages and cultures. In painting, sculpture and the visual arts, and in the materials they use, we can see similar explosions of complexity.

We can even see the law applying to food that till recent times had widely different traditions in different countries or regions. Now these are not only incorporating numerous new edible products brought by modern refrigeration and improved logistics but also new cooking hardware and an incredibly rapid exchange of recipes accelerated by popular cook books and TV shows. 

The law applies to life forms as well. Those who question Charles Darwin’s theory of Man evolving in gradual steps from single celled Amoeba and mutating into fish, animals and monkeys, etc., have to only observe the miracle of human birth where in the short span of nine months a tiny spark of life in one small cell evolves to take the shape of a tadpole, a fish, a rat and a monkey before emerging as a fully formed baby composed of billions of cells.

In the world of philosophy we can see how the simple original words of the prophets or sages like Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Nanak and others were quickly elaborated into the huge volumes of scriptures written by thousands of pious scholars long after the death of the founders.

These explosions also contain a number of implosions wherever the edges of one system touches another. Larger galaxies swallow up smaller ones. Giant flaming suns collapse into minute dark holes. Electronics overwhelm mechanical, hydraulic and electrical technologies. Loan words leap from language to language until the weaker languages sadly vanish. Cuisines, music, visual arts, literature, cultures and philosophies all fuse and blend. The dividing lines between the traditional and modern become blurred.

The problem is that only open young minds seem able to handle such fast and accelerating change. But while they eagerly reach out for the new they often lose their sensitivity to nature, human relations and old values. For their elders there is a confusing, noisy and frenetic clutter of things that are increasingly difficult to understand. Philosophers may say that change is the nature of the world and their philosophies may help some of us to understand it better but where are the thinkers who can help us achieve peace and calm in an era of such chaotic change?

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