What Level of Complexity is Real?
Last week at Tilburg University, I attended a lecture / masterclass of the MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle. (Organized by the Dutch Nexus Institute).
The question that came to my mind, was not so much psychological as it was philosophical. Nature, the physical world, has many layers of detail and just as many realms of complexity. On the one hand, there are the microscopical and sub-microscopical levels. Little particles seem forever to be comprised of even smaller sub-particles. This level of complexity seems endless. On the other hand, there is the level of the stars, planets, milky way and universe. There is a countless number of stars and the universe is immense. So, at the macroscopic level, the complexity is endless to.
But even if you restrict you view to only the realm of humanity, there are different levels of complexity. On the one hand, you can have the social interactions within the family and on the other end the whole world with global trade, the Internet, global media. Life can be very simple, like the life you have in your street and the contact you have with your neighbors. Also, the contact with elderly people and children can be very simple and straightforward.
With all these different levels of complexity or simplicity in the human realm, the question for me is not which one of these levels are the reality, since they all seem to be real in their own vein. The question that I find interesting is: what is our natural level of complexity, what realm is the most relevant to the human condition, contributes most to our being?