Walk into any coffee shop these days and you’ll see complexity. You hear orders of lattes with almond or soy milk, made with extra foam. Then you can see people adding cinnamon and chocolate to these lattes.
It’s now a given that most businesses will be catering to every taste. Newspapers tell stories of how “you can have it your way”. “Customization” is now the rage in our society.
And that’s because we believe that complexity is good. More selection is generally better than less. Right?
But it becomes a major problem, when you have the entire system wanting more and more complexity. You can’t see or predict the changes that result once everyone interacts with the system.
For example, if one person orders a latte with almond milk, it’s fine. But when entire countries order lattes with almond milk, it changes the dynamic of the food system. From an ecological perspective, this has tremendous negative effects. More land has to be cleared away to plant almonds. More fertilizers are used that leech the soil of its essential nutrients. More oil is produced to ship the almond milk to the locations that need it.
When you change the scale of the solution, there are ripple effects. Massive ones. And you are disconnected from them in our current system. Which means you don’t feel empowered to make a change until it directly affects you.
The truth is every choice you make has an effect. Just like when you throw a stone in the water, there are consequences.
It’s something to be aware of when next you order your latte with almond milk.
A New Source Code 