Wisdom, sleeping..
A conversation about worldly wisdom
 
Picture
A tip above, a world beneath
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Making things simple is complicated! To speak plain and clear you need time and depth; like an iceberg - a quiet crystal peak above the waters holds centuries of frozen storms underneath.
 
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You make things simple when you bring people to understand them*.

The skill to trigger understanding gives power; there is value in making things simple because complexity threatens and we need to escape it; simplicity feels familiar and practical.

The one able to translate misty complexity into familiar simplicity has therefore power.

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Why do I claim that complexity is threatening?

Much detail is foreseeable confusion. Too much analysis is paralysis. Accurate academic abstraction is an alien planet. Plenty of choice is perplexity. Multiple opinions spell conflict. Profuse words are suspect of ignorance and a will to mystify. Precise expert talk is unnatural jargon made to keep us dependent. Too many probabilities beat the mind. Erudite abundance and subtlety feel like insult to those who do not grasp them.

Complication causes uncertainty, insecurity and incompetence: Most people, as I found, are lost in complication, hate to decide among many choices and feel exposed when they do not understand.

Simplicity makes one feel in control; plain things are seen as elegant, obvious, reality itself; plainness gives a sense of understanding.

When you represent things in understandable form you diminish uncertainty; this is the power to make things simple; strength of the wise, provided it is not left to populists, false prophets, salespeople and other liars gifted to use it in unscrupulous ways.

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In exchange of clarity and simpler choices, to feel secure, people are willing to delegate part of their judgment and freedom.

We trust those who make us understand. We seek those who reduce our doubts. We entrust them to think for us and to explain how things are, what choices we have and what we should do. There is no stronger persuasion than understanding: the map in our mind directs what we think and what we do.

This is power indeed! And danger! When you make things simple you are responsible personally of what you do.

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* There is no such thing as "making things simple in general" simple means here and now, for these people in this context, with this purpose. Simplicity is relative. Universal simplicity is a machine-dream.

 

wisdom, criticism, losing, point of view, intuitive thinking, values, listening, silence, strategy, a time for everything, n±1, knowing people, surprise