I have been thinking a lot about economic complexity this week. This is all the more relevant as Alberta heads into yet another downturn. And our political leaders head off to Paris with a new “climate change plan”. The perfect storm.
The world is full of explanatory paradigms. A paradigm is a way of thinking. In science and philosophy, it is a set of concepts or thought patterns that bring legitimacy to an explanation. It is a world view.
Reality arrives through four universal perspectives. This thought arose when I was observing my first grandson.
What is complexity? The context in which complexity arises is the human search for order, which means a satisfactory arrangement of things in space, time and cause. Since the beginning, humans have searched for order in the natural world, and created order in the human-made world. Many of us believe that the creation of life itself was a search for order.
In 1962, Ayn Rand was challenged to explain her philosophy while standing on one foot. She did so by saying: “Metaphysics: Objective Reality; Epistemology: Reason; Ethics: Self-interest; Politics: Capitalism.”
I wish I could be so succinct.
A few years ago, I started writing a book. Its working title is Raising Our Game – Embracing Complexity Awareness. The purpose of this book is to describe how a better understanding of complexity theory would help leaders set goals, design and implement strategies and achieve results. But the intent of the book is to provide encouragement for us as individuals, groups and society to “raise our game”. By this, I mean taking us to a next level of human performance.