Antism Paradox

Life can sometimes feel overwhelmingly complex. So it’s natural to seek simplicity. This can mean buying products and services that make life that little bit simpler, and it can also mean subscribing to ideas with simple messages, like capitalism and communism. Indeed recently we have seen a resurgent trend towards monochrome ideas. But what do we give up in pursuit of simplicity?

A recent event prompted me to ponder on this topic. My son’s school introduced a new canteen queuing system. Children are given differently coloured tokens and should come up for food only when their colour is called out. He was given a green token. A few minutes later, brown token holders were invited to queue. My son joined the line and unsurprisingly was told off by the supervising teacher for jumping the queue. When asked why he did it, his answer was simple - he thought he had a brown token. My son is colour blind.

This event made me ask myself a question. Do we colour blind ourselves in our pursuit of ideological simplicity? And in doing so become unintentionally cruel. Do we fail to see threats and opportunities because we have chosen to give up the means by which to see them? Do we end up missing out on the natural beauty of complexity?