A Final Word

Complexity is not simple, but to live the life we want, we cannot without some degree of complexity. The most elegant way to deal with complexity, to reduce its complicatedness without forfeiting the benefits of complexity, is to have a proper education, knowledge, a fitting style of thinking, which is a sufficient complex cognitive structure. This can be accomplished at an individual level, but is more difficult in a social setting with vested interests, sound bite type media, and pressure for immediate results, in which one needs some benign aggression to create time for thinking and in which communicating new insights is hampered by a sign type use of language. Understandably the narcissistic persons will be the best to deal with the increasing complexity. They do so by having a vision to change the world and to create meaning. Productive narcissists are independent thinkers, are willing to take risks, in a way simplify their world by not listening to other people, although they can be oversensitive to criticism. Narcissistic leaders only can be successful as far their ideas fit in the Zeitgeist, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. But the world has more types of personality who also are entitled to some ontological security in life through understanding instead of a continuous struggle of reflexes. We therefore need to educate each other, in the workplace and in institutions of educations. A challenge will be to produce management books that do not have the reductionist simplification and neither the escapism of romantic complexity.