How Embracing Complexity Changes the Way You See the World – and Can Even Transform the Way You Write
Inspired by Daoism and complexity science, Jean Boulton set out to write a book that mirrors its own message: that embracing flow, paradox, and noticing the detail of what is emerging can improve our creative process as well as inform our actions.
Over the last five years I have been writing The Dao of Complexity, working closely with De Gruyter since 2022. The book takes a science theory (complexity), connects it to a philosophy (Daoism) and applies it to the issues of our times.
I wanted the form it took and my approach to writing it to reflect the theory of change and the theory of living that it expounds. In this post, I begin by summarizing the theory before describing the writing and shaping process, which adopted the maxim that “the medium is the message.”
Complexity: Everything Flows
The Dao of Complexity introduces process complexity, a view emerging from the science of open systems, that emphasizes flow and change and shows the importance of history and context in shaping the future. It paints a picture of a world comprised of patterns of relationships that emerge, stabilize for a while, then shift and ultimately die away. It embraces paradox, mystery and emergence. Intriguingly, this scientific perspective is almost identical to that inherent in the ancient philosophy of Daoism, developed in China in the fifth century B.C.E.
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The Daoist view is encapsulated in the phrase of poet Antonio Machado, “the path is made through walking.” This emphasizes the centrality of co-creation and co-evolution. There is no path laid down to follow; we create the future through our collective actions and intentions. We are not, however, starting with a blank canvas. We step into a stream of life that is already in flow, and we need both to attune to that flow and contribute to its becoming.
The book starts by ‘making sense’ of this scientific and philosophical perspective and goes on to ask how this view shapes our approach to ‘making waves,’ to making a difference to the world.
The Write Path?
I was keen to mirror this perspective of ‘the way things work’ in how I approached the writing of the book.
Although I had a broad idea of where I was heading, I didn’t want to start with a fixed structure or a defined set of topics. I wanted to allow myself to respond to the actuality of what caught my attention and, to a degree, let things emerge. How did the events I was living through shape my interests and perspectives? How did conversations or things I heard or read trigger an inquiry into another angle, as I sought to describe complexity and consider its implications?
To give an example: one weekend I read a piece in a Sunday newspaper about the role of hope in patient recovery; then I heard a poem by Philip Larkin about the consequences of holding a lifelong and unfulfilled hope for romantic love. It got me thinking about the need to find a balance between desiring particular outcomes and accepting, flowing with ‘what is.’ Another example: I visited an art exhibition emerging from a collaborative project between artists from Ukraine and artists local to my hometown in the UK. I mused about the way art is both impactful – an agent of change – and also captures a form of knowledge that eludes rational logic. This led me to explore the work of philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty, writers who recognize the role of art and poetry in understanding the world through its phenomena.
“Allowing thoughts and intuitions to unfold, paying attention to each step, often led me to new insights – a very Daoist practice.”
I found I did my best writing when I loosened up, when I side-stepped my ‘inner critic’ and allowed myself freedom. I would write intensely for a while and then go off for walks or put on the washing, when a whole further set of thoughts would arise. Sometimes, on walks, complete sentences came to me and, returning to my desk, it felt like taking dictation. I also found that allowing thoughts and intuitions to unfold, paying attention to each step, often led me to new insights – a very Daoist practice.
The next task was working with these creative fragments, piecing them together, writing introductions and linking them, deciding what was missing and what didn’t fit. It was iterative and painstaking but allowed a richness of perspective and a deepening of exploration that would not have happened had I set off on this book with a fully fleshed out view of what it would contain and where it would end.
The Medium is the Message
Turning to the form of the book, I had known from the start that I wanted the ‘medium’ to reflect ‘the message.’ I was inspired to take this approach through reading the Dao de Jing, the Daoist text that has entranced me for decades. The Dao de Jing is written in short, paradoxical, overlapping chapters – often poetic, visceral, allegorical, and sometimes clear, forceful, challenging. It invites you to wrestle with them, respond to the feelings evoked, circle around, gain and lose clarity, and give space for meaning and implications for practice to surface. I constantly return to these chapters, and I am always struck by something different, gaining a deeper realization on each return.
I wanted to mimic this style as I aimed to explore the subtlety of ideas such as emergence, self-organization and paradox and illustrate their implications for living and working in a complex world.
“You may become energized, annoyed, amused, thoughtful, touched or piqued. I want to say to you – look, the world really is complex!”
With that in mind, I constructed the Dao of Complexity in similar vein, in short overlapping essays I called ‘pieces.’ I didn’t set out to write a primer; I wanted to bring alive the concepts and implications of the core ideas. My intention was to offer a variety of perspectives and stories and reflections that engage the imagination, cause you to question your beliefs and fuel your determination to act. These pieces aim to be dialogic; you are invited to disagree, consider what is missing, and muse on how these ideas link to your own perspective.
Recommended reading: Covid-19: Engaging with Complexity — If Not Now, When?
You may become energized, annoyed, amused, thoughtful, touched or piqued. I want to say to you – look, the world really is complex! How does that show itself in different contexts? What does it mean to you to say the world is complex, what do you think we should do differently? What should you do?
My underlying motivation is to bring about change in a world that is facing climate catastrophe, rising inequality, geopolitical unrest, ideological polarization and fragility. This book is my form of activism. It aims to rattle the cage held in place by the powerful worldviews that currently hold sway and shed light on a better way to forge the future.
Out now in paperback and eBook
[Title image by Simon Blakeman]