Complexity is something with which we have a love-hate relationship. We love the challenges complex problems bring. And equally, due to their inherit ambiguity, we hate them.
Complex problems, unlike those which are complicated, must be managed and mitigated rather than fully resolved. The real world is complex. It is full of inputs and outputs which we don’t fully understand. Take the story of a farmer that wanted to get in better sync with our environment. By its very definition, farming was one of our first and most successful attempts at trying to understand and control our complex world. Before agriculture, humans were left to the mercy of mother nature. Although we called ourselves “hunter-gatherers”, we were more gatherers than hunters. Hunting is difficult and its success rate is very low, whereas gathering is something everyone could do.
And while gathering was easier by comparison, it was not easy, and worse, it is unpredictable. Vegetables and fruits followed the cadence of nature, and were the prize of competing animals. As such, one had to plan carefully and take care when gathering. When agriculture was discovered and humans realized we could influence and sometimes even determine the food we ate, it revolutionized our society.
As agriculture and technology evolved, so did our ability to better understand this complex ecosystem. We have done our best to control it, and while we have been successful, its complexity is such that we’ve yet to fully master it (if ever). In the process, modern agriculture has introduced various unwanted side-effects like water pollution, antibiotic-resistance, pesticide toxicity, and junk food. All of which a farmer from Georgia, Will Harris, tried to reduce by working closer with nature. As most modern farmers, Harris used to raise livestock he’d sell as meat products. Before turning to nature, he used all the modern farming techniques which resulted in those unwanted side-effects we mentioned. But in 2010 he decided to switch his livestock to be fully pasture-raised and got chickens to help him fertilize. All was well, that is, until bald eagles got the memo of easy pickings. Within a couple of years Mr Harris was losing thousands of chickens to the protected birds.
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