The Underlying Cause of Gridlock Is Complexity: Learn How You Can Break Free 

It seems that “gridlock” has become the norm in the world these days. We are increasingly stuck in traffic, our government doesn’t seem to be able to make the most basic decisions, and most of our institutions, from the schools to our health-care system, are becoming increasingly dysfunctional. We put out one fire here, and another one starts over there. We stop the “bad guys” in one part of the world, only to see even worse “bad guys” pop up somewhere else. More and more of us feel that things are going downhill and we are headed for collapse.

More than anyone else I know, socio-biologist Rebecca Costa offers a clear understanding of what is causing our traumatic slide towards collapse and what we need to do to prevent it. She says, “It doesn’t matter if you believe our greatest threat is pandemic virus, climate change, terrorism, or nuclear proliferation. We can all agree that, eventually, one of these problems is going to have catastrophic consequences.”

But when we examine earlier civilizations that collapsed, such as the Mayans, Romans, Khmer, Byzantine and Ming societies, a clear pattern emerges. The first symptom of impending collapse was that they all experienced gridlock when the magnitude of the problems they needed to solve exceeded their abilities. In other words, they hit some cognitive threshold where they could no longer understand or manage their biggest, most dangerous problems. They then began passing these problems from one generation to the next as the size and strength of the threats grew.

Costa found that environmental problems were the underlying cause of collapse. There may have been wars and fighting by young men with high testosterone levels, followed by physical and emotional losses and depression, but ultimately collapse came because the civilization failed to take care of their natural resources or their increasing population outstripped the resources available to them.

The Underlying Problem is Complexity

But unlike many researches on collapse, Costa continued to ask questions. “Why didn’t these cultures make better decisions to take care of their resources and limit their population growth?” The answer she came up with was simple, yet profound.  Put simply, the ultimate problem is “complexity.” It’s not something we are doing wrong in modern times. It’s been built into our biology for millions of years. Our brain capacity and problem-solving abilities evolve slowly, but we create new information very quickly. Ultimately, we become overwhelmed and unable to solve even our most important problems.

According to Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, every 48 hours we produce as much new data as we generated from the dawn of humankind to 2003. We are clearly living in an age where the creation of new data has far outpaced our ability to the information to make good decisions.

“This has created a condition wherein, at any point in time, we must make decisions, and act on, a miniscule subset of available facts,” says Costa. “It doesn’t matter if we are deciding whether to go to war, which medical treatment is best, how to invest for retirement or which packaging materials are most environmentally friendly or cost-effective. The truth is, it has become impossible for leaders, executives, and the person on the street to access, and analyze, the data which is necessary to make rational, empirically-based decisions – decisions which have a higher likelihood of being correct.”

When things become too complex, we have way too many options to consider. The number of wrong choices exceeds the number of right choices and we enter a “high failure rate environment.” We’ve all felt this when we are over-stressed and we make poor choices, which leads to other poor choices, and things come tumbling down and things grind to a halt. Costa offers a few examples of the levels of complexity we must deal with that leads to gridlock and ultimately to collapse:

• U.S. Tax Code:  1939—504 pages long.   Today—73,950 pages long.
• Credit card contracts: 1980—400 words.  Today—20,000 words of fine print.
• Google search, “How to Reduce Complexity?” 83,100,000 results.

Is it any wonder we feel overwhelmed? Our presidents, legislators, and business leaders have the same brains that we have. They are just as limited, just as overwhelmed, and just as susceptible to making more bad choices than good ones.  So, is our goose cooked? Are humans destined to become extinct like the Dodo Bird? Costa think we have a fighting chance if we heed the watchman’s rattle and wake up and deal with complexity.

How We Can Keep Complexity from Killing Us

In her excellent book, The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse, she offers a number of ways to get out of the fix we are in:

1. Knowing the problem allows us to take action. If we know complexity is the problem, we can better figure out ways to simplify things.
2. There are new technologies to train our brains to solve problems better. Posit Science has developed new ways to train our brains for maximum effectiveness.
3. Rather than looking for the one right answer, think like a venture capitalist and try many different approaches that seem promising and continue to support those that are showing results. This is how we saved the Chilean miners trapped underground. Rather than arguing over which result would free them, they began with 26 promising approaches and started them all. Finally, it funneled down to a few that looked promising and one worked to get everyone out alive.
4. Using “big data” technology and computers to help us make better decisions.
5. Beyond “left” and “right” brain problem solving, we can learn the power of “insight” or those “aha” moments where we see clearly and instantaneously what the right decision is.

I’d add some additional suggestions that each of us can implement:

1. Take a break from T.V., particularly the news. It’s mostly geared towards fear and conflict, which attracts our attention, makes us more anxious, and ultimately makes it more likely we will buy stuff to calm our nerves: i.e. junk food, products we don’t need, promises of this candidate or that one.
2. Walk in nature. The stars, the sun, the gentle breezes remind us of the simple pleasures of life.
3. Spend time with friends who you really enjoy being with. Social connections bring comfort and joy.
4. Practice stress reduction techniques. If you live, you build up stress. In my book Stress Relief for Men, I offer four simple, yet effective techniques that work equally well for women and men: Grounding or Earthing, Heart Coherence, Emotional Freedom Techniques or Tapping, and Attachment Love.
5. Tune into the gratitude and love you feel for the important things in life—your health, your family, your friends, your community.

We live in interesting times. Never before have we been so close to extinction as a species. And never before have we had the abilities, the insights, the technology and the desire to make the kinds of changes that can move us beyond gridlock to real problem solving that can lead us all to a more joyful and successful life.

Let me know what ideas you have for moving beyond gridlock. Together we can find the ways that work for all. If you’re interested applying these principles in your own life, I have books available here and you can contact me here if you’d like personal counseling.

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