Outside

For most complicated things in our world, there is an inside and an outside.

It’s a repeating pattern.

If there is some clump of complexity, most often not all of that complexity is fully transparent. It is only visible locally. You have to be in there to see it and understand it. That causes a difference in perception depending on your position.

It is at least a form of accidental encapsulation but it can also be intentional.

That lack of visibility forms a boundary, although it doesn’t have to be consistent or well-defined. It can wobble around.

What’s common though is that from the outside it is too easy to underestimate the complexity. It is also true that the inside complexity may twist the dynamics in very non-intuitive ways. From the outside, you cannot guess what lies beneath.

Fuzzy encapsulation borders are everywhere. Most of the specializations or skills in our modern world are heavily wrapped in them. Common knowledge is tiny.

The deeper you go, the more you can come to terms with this built-up complexity. This applies to history, science, art, politics, law, engineering, and any sort of company, institution, or organization. Everything, really. It’s evolved over the centuries. It’s all very convoluted, at least from the outside.

It is always best to always assume that you are on the outside. That whatever view you have is grossly oversimplified and likely not correct. This is not pessimism, just being realistic. Grounded.

If you are outside, then you should step lightly. There is more that you don’t understand than you know. If you expect that with any increasing depth, the story will get tricker, you will not be disappointed.

Just blindly leaping into things is not always a bad idea, so long as you don’t lock your expectations in advance. You give it a try, it turns out to be different than you expected, but that is okay and not surprising. In that way, as you go deeper, you can keep adjusting to the new levels of complexity that you encounter. It is best if you always assume you haven’t ever reached the bottom. It’s a long way down.

This also decreases the frustration that things are not going as you expected them to go. Calms the fear. Your outside perspective may contain scattered elements of the truth, but the circumstances are always more nuanced. When it is different, you no longer get angry, but rather curious as to what parts of the complexity you might have missed. Being wrong is a learning opportunity, not a failure. The more you dig, the more you will unravel the complexity. Expect it to be endless.

This obviously helps with planning. You need something done, so you start with a list. But for lots of items on that list, you are effectively an outsider, thus getting it done will explode. It will get harder. The internal complexity will bubble up, throwing off your plans. Again though, if this is just playing out according to your expectations, it will be easier to adapt, instead of stubbornly forging ahead. You knew there were outside items, you accepted them as placeholders for lots more unknown inside items. With each new discovery, you revise your plans. Each new plan gets a little closer to being viable. A little better. One tiny step at a time.

Often as you are descending, you have to deal with impatience. Some people around you are stuck in their outside perspectives. They can be tricky to deal with, but generally trying to enlighten them often works. If you keep them in the dark, they lose confidence, which further agitates them. The relationship naturally cycles downward. If you spend the effort to carefully communicate the issues as translated into their perspective, they might be sympathetic, even if they don’t fully understand. It doesn’t always work, but being defensive or hiding the problems fails far more often and usually more dramatically. Communication is alway worth a try.

It’s okay to be outside. We’re outside of most things. It’s normal to stumble around blindly in the dark, knocking things over accidentally. It’s just that wrapping yourself in a delusion that your perspective is strong is rarely constructive. It is far better to be a happy tourist than to walk yourself off a cliff because you refused to accept its existence.