Have be become addicted to "simpler"?

Everything should be as simple as it can be but not simpler.

Albert Einstein

We talk a great deal about complexity, from terms like VUCA to our focus on resilience and antifragility. But, unfortunately, complexity has become a modern-day villain, usurping our comfortable lives when in reality, it is nothing new. The nature and wonders of life are that it is complex.

I think that we need to consider that life has not become more complex. On the contrary, it is that we have become simpler. We have transgressed Einstein's dictum and moved beyond simplicity to convenience. We have tamed craft through process, enabling scale and cost reduction but left behind the intimacy that craftspeople have with the materials they use. They know where the material comes from, have respect for it and work with its natural variations. They create something unique. Beauty doesn't do uniform.

The search for efficiency has led us to force it into submission by applying heat and pressure to ensure conformity and…