As the Occupy movement creeps ever closer to Toronto, we who support it brace ourselves for the inevitable backlash, not only from voices of power, but also from an eerily complacent middle class. Toronto had a foretaste of this more than a year ago when the G20 leaders came to town and those who spoke out against this presence and what it signifies were rounded up and thrown into holding pens. This week we hear the echo of criticisms that were leveled against protesters more than a year ago:
• You’re incoherent. So many different voices saying so many different – sometimes contradictory – things. The message gets lost in the noise.
• You don’t make specific demands. How can change happen when you don’t seem to know what you want?
• You’re a bunch of hypocrites. Anti-corporate, anti-capital, while you tweet away on your iPhones.
These criticisms boil down to the well-worn KISS rule: keep it simple stupid. That’s what the critics demand. Not surprisingly, this rule is the prime directive of the very media responsible for disseminating these criticisms. If it can’t be reduced to a 3-second sound byte, or to a clever cartoon, or to a pithy headline, then it isn’t real. Methodically developed argument has no place here. Nuanced reflection has no place here. Careful research has no place here.
The KISS rule is as much about keeping people stupid as it is about making things simple. We find an illustration with the late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Inc., who steered the company to its present position as the second largest corporation in the world. Jobs was renowned for his AGM presentations. Always on message. He told everyone what he was about to say. Then he said it. And when he was done, there was never any doubt about what he had just said. This formula for clarity was an extension of Apple products themselves. They were designed to hide technological complexity so that users could focus on creative tasks like mixing audio tracks or editing videos or designing book covers. Since Steve Jobs’ death, millions have expressed a regret at his loss sometimes verging on a strange messianic grief.
Those who have not been swept up by the messianic fervor remind us that the hidden wires and complicated gizmos are still there, and no matter how simple the message, the complexity will not go away. More sinister is the possibility that simplicity has become a manipulation. The iTunes music store is easy to use, which means we are more likely to surrender significant gobs of personal information as a surreptitious cost of making purchases through this media portal. It also means that we are more likely to overlook certain awkward facts, like the iTune TOS which makes our contractual relationship with Apple Inc. anything but simple; or its history of censorship; or its supply chain to sweatshops in China and coltan mines in the DRC. The lure of simplicity blinds us to its cost.
People go on about simplicity as if it were a social value we ought to promote; simplicity is the province of the common man; it speaks our language, just like Don Cherry; complexity, on the other hand, is elitist and not to be trusted.
I take a different view of things. Imagine if a news reporter went to a quantum physicist and said: “Make it all simple for me so I can understand.” The quantum physicist would face two hurdles. First, the universe isn’t simple. Demanding simplicity from complex systems is like demanding that the sky glow pink with purple polka-dots. You can’t demand that the conditions of reality be changed at your whim. Second, even if the quantum physicist could make things simple, the news reporter might not have the cognitive ability to understand in any event. There are practical limits to the comprehensibility of complex systems.
Too often we confuse accessibility with simplicity. I differentiate them by noting that simplicity is a manipulation. Accessibility is its antidote. Simplicity can be benign, but as with my Apple Inc. illustration, it can be deployed to darker ends. While my hypothetical quantum physicist may rebuff the news reporter’s request to make things simple, he can still make his discipline accessible. He’s never going to say: “But there are a few facts we will always keep secret from you because quantum physicists have a special fraternity and you can never belong.” Instead, he will point the news reporter to books and university courses. To the extent the news reporter is able, he is free to learn all there is to know about quantum physics.
It bears asking whether the powers that influence our lives – government, corporations, media, financial institutions – are accessible in the same way that my hypothetical quantum physicist is accessible. Or do these organizations function more like a fraternity that closely guards its secrets?
The Occupy Wall Street protests are far from simple. They reflect a complicated reality. Besides, simplicity would be dishonest and would risk excluding those whose experiences were not captured by a simple message. Notwithstanding a lack of simplicity, the protests are accessible. As with the news reporter quizzing the quantum physicist, accessibility demands something of the critics who accuse the movement of being incoherent and too complicated. The critics won’t find their answers in three-second sound bytes. They’ll find their answers by listening closely. By spending time with individuals and hearing their stories. By asking: What have you lost? How have you been hurt?